Bruce McAllister

Bruce McAllister is a writer of literary fiction and fantasy, science fiction and thriller fiction, which he has been publishing professionally since a teenager. He was born in Baltimore, MD, to a peripatetic Navy family with an Annapolis-graduate father who served with NATO during the Cold War and an underdog-championing anthropologist/archaeologist mother whose specialties were Early Man and Native American studies. As children, he and his brother Jack lived in Florida, Washington D.C., California and Italy. From l974 to l997 he taught at the University of Redlands in southern California, where he helped establish and direct writing programs. Since l998 he has worked as a writing coach and book and screenplay consultant. His short fiction has appeared in literary quarterlies, national magazines, original anthologies, "year's best" anthologies, and college textbooks; won awards from literary magazines; and been a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Shirley Jackson awards. His short story "The Boy in Zaquitos" was selected by Stephen KIng for the Best American Short Stories series, and his Hugo-finalist short story "Kin" was chosen by LeVar Burton to launch the podcast LeVar Burton Reads. His "esp in war" novel, Dream Baby, which Publishers Weekly called a "stunning tour de force, won a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. His non-fiction articles on sports, popular science and writing have appeared in various publications. A number of his short stories have been optioned for film, and his fans over the years have included Stephen King, Theodore Sturgeon, Robert Bloch, and Philip K. Dick. He has three wonderful grown children--Annie, Ben and Elizabeth--and lives in Redlands, California, with his wife, Tai Chi and Qi Gong instructor Amelie Hunter.