Bradford
Born: 1969
Ohio connection: Resident
John Michael Scalzi II was born in Fairfield, California. He graduated high school (Webb School of California) in 1987 and earned an A.B. from the University of Chicago in 1991. During his 1989–1990 school year, Scalzi was the editor-in-chief of The Chicago Maroon. After college, Scalzi took a job as the film critic for the Fresno Bee newspaper, eventually also becoming a humor columnist. In 1996 he was the in-house writer and editor at America Online and moved to Sterling, Virginia, with his wife, Kristine Ann Blauser, whom he had married in 1995.
Since 1998 he has been a full-time freelance writer and author. In 2001 Scalzi, his wife, and their daughter, moved to Bradford, Ohio, where they still reside today. Scalzi is best known for his Hugo Award-nominated science fiction novel Old Man’s War, released by Tor Books in January 2005, and for his blog “Whatever”, at which he has written daily on a number of topics since 1998. He has also written a number of non-fiction books. His work has been translated into Russian, German, French, Spanish, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Bulgarian, Czech, Portuguese, Romanian and Estonian. In 2008, his novel The Last Colony was on the New York Times bestseller list. In 2009, he was hired as Creative Consultant for the television show Stargate: Universe.
Awards:
Hugo Award nomination, 2006, for Old Man’s War; Joseph W. Campbell Award for best new science fiction author, 2006, for Old Man’s War; SCI FI Essential book, from SciFi.com, 2006 for The Ghost Brigades. Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Award (science fiction category); Geffen (Israeli science fiction award); Commended by the Ohio State Senate for being a writer. He won the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Novel for his novel Redshirts; 2013 Seiun Award for Best Foreign Language Novel of the Year for The Android’s Dream.