Born in Buffalo, New York, John Kessel is the author of the novels Pride and Prometheus, The Moon and the Other, Good News from Outer Space, Corrupting Dr. Nice, and in collaboration with James Patrick Kelly, Freedom Beach. His short story collections are Meeting in Infinity (a New York Times Notable Book), The Pure Product, and The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories.

 

Kessel's stories have twice received the Nebula Award given by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, in addition to the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, the Locus Poll, the James Tiptree Jr. Award. His play “Faustfeathers'” won the Paul Green Playwright's Prize, and his story “A Clean Escape''”was adapted as an episode of the ABC TV series Masters of Science Fiction. In 2009 his story “Pride and Prometheus” received both the Nebula Award and the Shirley Jackson Award.

 

With Jim Kelly, he has edited five anthologies of stories re-visioning contemporary short sf, most recently Digital Rapture: The Singuarity Anthology.

 

Kessel holds a B.A. in Physics and English and a Ph.D. in American Literature. He helped found and served as the first director of the MFA program in creative writing at North Carolina State University, where he has taught since 1982. He lives and works in Raleigh, NC with his wife, the author Therese Anne Fowler. 

 

 

“John Kessel is one of American SF’s finest writers.”
--Nick Gevers, Locus magazine

"Kessel is our American Brian Aldiss, capable of the most artful and rigorous literary composition, but with a mischievious genius that inclines him toward speculative fiction . . . he writes with subtlety and great wit . . . and his craftmanship is frequently absolutely brilliant. Plus, his sense of comedy is remarkable." 
--Publisher’s Weekly

(about Corrupting Dr. Nice): 
"Superbly funny (and I mean falling-off-the-chair funny), with witty, crackling dialogue and a plot that grabs you round the throat and won't let go, there's also a distinctly vicious anti-American satirical thread which could only come from an insider (and only gains from its understatement); like all True Comedy, there's a serious and dark edge which never overwhelms, only underpins."
--Chris Terran, Matrix (U.K.)

"These are stories that liberate the mind, which of course is what escapism is all about."
--Gerald Jonas, New York Times Book Review