Jeff Vandermeer

Jeff VanderMeer was born in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, in 1968. He spent a notable part of his childhood in the Fiji Islands, where his parents worked for the Peace Corps. Upon returning to the United States, he lived in Ithaca, New York, and Gainesville, Florida. He attended the University of Florida for three years and honed his craft at the Clarion Writers Workshop in 1992. His early literary influences include Angela Carter’s novel ‘The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman’, which he credits for inspiring him to write with passion and boldness. He began writing in the late 1980s, contributing prolifically to small-press magazines and self-published works, including ‘The Book of Frog’ (1989) and ‘The Book of Lost Places’ (1996). His poem ‘Flight Is for Those Who Have Not Yet Crossed Over’ earned him the Rhysling Award in 1994, marking an early recognition of his talent.

VanderMeer’s career progressed with the publication of his 2001 short-story collection ‘City of Saints and Madmen’, which introduced the imaginary city of Ambergris, a setting he would revisit in later novels. His novella ‘The Transformation of Martin Lake’ won the World Fantasy Award in 2000. Further works set in Ambergris include ‘Shriek: An Afterword’ (2006) and ‘Finch’ (2009), the latter being a Nebula Award finalist. He also engaged in cross-media projects, including a movie based on ‘Shriek’ with an original soundtrack by The Church, and a soundtrack for ‘Finch’ by Murder By Death. His diverse work includes a ‘Predator’ tie-in novel for Dark Horse Comics, ‘Predator: South China Seas’, and a PlayStation Europe animation collaboration with Joel Veitch for his story ‘A New Face in Hell’.

A significant turning point in VanderMeer’s career was the release of his Southern Reach Series in 2014, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This trilogy, comprising ‘Annihilation’, ‘Authority’, and ‘Acceptance’, was strategically released over an eight-month period. ‘Annihilation’ earned him the Nebula Award and Shirley Jackson Award and was adapted into a Hollywood film by director Alex Garland in 2018. The series brought him mainstream success, with the second and third books reaching the New York Times Bestseller list. His 2017 novel ‘Borne’, a “biotech apocalypse” narrative, also received critical acclaim, with Paramount Pictures acquiring its film rights. He continued to expand the ‘Borne’ universe with ‘The Strange Bird’ (2017) and ‘Dead Astronauts’ (2019), and published the standalone novel ‘Hummingbird Salamander’ in 2021. Beyond fiction, VanderMeer is a respected literary critic, essayist for publications like ‘The Atlantic’ and ‘The Washington Post’, and an influential editor of anthologies, often collaborating with his wife, Ann VanderMeer. These anthologies include ‘The New Weird’, ‘The Weird’, and ‘The Big Book of Science Fiction’, which won a Locus Award. He has also educated aspiring writers through programs like Shared Worlds and the Clarion Workshop, and with his illustrated guide ‘Wonderbook’, which garnered a BSFA Award and a Locus Award.