Born 1948, Louisville, KY. As a child, lived in several east coast states (USA) and Den Haag (Netherlands). Family settled in the Seattle, Washington, area in the early 1960s and declined corporate offers to be moved around some more.
Education: B.S. (hon), University of Washington, 1970. Clarion Writers Workshop, Clarion, PA, 1970. Graduate school, genetics, UW, 1970-1971. Discovered that as a research scientist she made a very good SF writer.
Writing: Received her first rejection slip at 14, not for prose but for a Fantastic Four comic book script. First short story sale: Summer, 1969, age 20. This was the second short story she sent out. Her first story went out 27 times before finding a home, a magazine whose editor emigrated to New Zealand and vanished, along with the magazine.
Joseph Elder, who gently rejected her first story, subsequently bought her first novel, The Exile Waiting, for Fawcett Gold Medal (1975). Fawcett also published the anthology she edited with Susan Janice Anderson. Aurora, Beyond Equality, was a humanist sf anthology, possibly somewhat ahead of its time. It included “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” by James Tiptree, Jr., which won the Nebula Award.
Teaching: Organized the first incarnation of Clarion West Writers Workshop (1971-1973), and has taught several times for the current incarnation (1984-present). Evans Chair Scholar at The Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA, during Winter Quarter of 2000. Other workshops: Melbourne, Australia; Auckland, New Zealand; Haystack Summer Arts Program, Cannon Beach, OR, USA; Willamette Writers Conference, Portland, OR, USA, &c.
As a youngster, she showed horses in hunting, jumping, and three-phase events. She still rides occasionally. She earned a first degree black belt in Aikido. She tried white-water rafting and is not inclined to repeat the experience until the sturgeon in the middle fork of the Salmon River returns the sunglasses she lost while spending several decades underwater in the space of ten seconds.
More sedentary occupations include amateur web design, a brief exploration of public-access tv production, where she discovered she is the world’ worst sound engineer; the promotion of cephalopods in sf, crocheting, handcrafts based on mathematical principals, and the invention and design of beaded sea creatures.
She is a founding member of Book View Café, which publishes her backlist and new short stories in ebook form.
She belongs to Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, and a number of knee-jerk liberal tree-hugging feminist organizations. She is a card-carrying member of the ACLU, where she volunteers.
Vonda N. McIntyre: The Real Story
(Few facts but much truth)
by Eileen Gunn
You people attending Lunacon probably think you know a lot about Vonda N. McIntyre, right? That’s why you invited her to be Guest of Honor, right? [continued]