Orson Scott Card
Orson Scott Card is an American writer known best for his science fiction works., he is the only person to have won a Hugo Award and a Nebula Award in consecutive years, winning both awards for his novel Ender's Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead. A feature film adaptation of Ender's Game, which Card coproduced, was released in 2013. Card also wrote the Locus Fantasy Award-winning series The Tales of Alvin Maker. Card's fiction often features characters with exceptional gifts who make difficult choices with high stakes. Card has also written political, religious, and social commentary in his columns and other writing; he has provoked controversy and criticism for his public opposition to homosexuality.
Card, who is a great-great-grandson of Brigham Young, was born in Richland, Washington, and grew up in Utah and California. While he was a student at Brigham Young University, his plays were performed on stage. He served in Brazil as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and headed a community theater for two summers. Card had 27 short stories published between 1978 and 1979, and he won the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer in 1978. He earned a master's degree in English from the University of Utah in 1981 and wrote novels in science fiction, fantasy, nonfiction, and historical fiction genres starting in 1979. Card continued to write prolifically, and he has published over 50 novels and 45 short stories.
Card teaches English at Southern Virginia University; he has written two books on creative writing and serves as a judge in the Writers of the Future contest. He has taught many successful writers at his "literary boot camps".
Life
Childhood and education
Orson Scott Card was born on August 24, 1951, in Richland, Washington. He is the son of Peggy Jane and Willard Richards Card, and is the third of six children and the older brother of composer and arranger Arlen Card. Card's family has Mormon pioneer heritage. His ancestors include Brigham Young, Charles Ora Card, Zina P. Young Card, Zina Young Card Brown, and Hugh B. Brown.When Card was one month old, his family moved to San Mateo, California, so Willard Card could begin a sign-painting business. When he was three years old, the family moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, so his father could finish his bachelor's degree. The family moved to Santa Clara, California, when Card was six; they stayed there for seven years while his father completed his master's degree and worked as a professor at San Jose State College. In school, Card took classes for gifted students, but he was more interested in studying music—he played clarinet and French horn. He read widely, including historical fiction, nonfiction, and literary classics. At age ten, he wrote his first story, which was about an intelligent child who is assaulted by bullies and sustains brain damage. Ender's confrontation with Stilson in Ender's Game is based on this story.
In 1964, Card and his family moved to Mesa, Arizona, where he participated in mock debates in junior high school. In 1967, the family moved to Orem, Utah, where his father worked at Brigham Young University. Card attended BYU's laboratory school, where he took both high school and early college-level classes before graduating in one year. When beginning his college studies he intended to major in archeology, but after becoming increasingly more interested in theater, he began script-writing, writing ten original plays and rewriting other students' plays. Most of his plays were based on Mormon history and scriptures; one was science fiction. By watching the body language of an audience, he could tell when an audience was interested in his scripts. During his studies as a theater major, he began doctoring scripts, adapting fiction for reader's theater production, and writing one-act and full-length plays, several of which were produced by faculty directors at BYU. Charles W. Whitman, Card's play-writing professor, encouraged his students to write plays with LDS themes. Card studied poetry with Clinton F. Larson at BYU. He also wrote short stories, which were later published together in The Worthing Saga.
Before graduating, Card served as a missionary for the LDS Church in Brazil starting in 1971. During his mission, he wrote a play called Stone Tables. He returned from his mission in 1973 and graduated from BYU in 1975, receiving a bachelor's degree with distinction in theater. After graduation, he started the Utah Valley Repertory Theatre Company, which for two summers produced plays at "the Castle", a Depression-era outdoor amphitheater. After going into debt with the community theatre's expenses, Card took part-time employment as a proofreader at BYU Press, moving on to full-time employment as a copy editor. In 1981, Card completed his master's degree in English at the University of Utah where he studied with François Camoin and Norman Council. He began a doctoral program at the University of Notre Dame but dropped out to pursue his more lucrative writing projects.
Personal life
In 1977, Card married Kristine Allen, who is the daughter of Mormon historian James B. Allen. The two met when Kristine was in the chorus of a roadshow Card directed before his mission. They courted after Card's mission, and Card was impressed with her intellectual rigor.During their marriage, they had five children; their son Charles had cerebral palsy and died aged 17; their daughter Erin died the day she was born. Card's short story Lost Boys is highly autobiographical, but contains the death of a fictional child. One of Card's workshop readers, Karen Fowler, said that Card had pretended to experience the grief of a parent who has lost a child. In response, Card realized that the story expressed his grief and difficulty in accepting Charles's disability. Card stated that he rarely discusses Charles and Erin because his grief has not faded over time.
Card and his wife live in Greensboro, North Carolina; their daughter Emily, along with two other writers, adapted Card's short stories Clap Hands and Sing, Lifeloop, and A Sepulchre of Songs for the stage in Posing as People. Card suffered a mild stroke on January 1, 2011, and made a full recovery.
Works
Early work
In 1976, Card became an assistant editor for the Ensign magazine produced by the LDS Church and moved to Salt Lake City. While working at Ensign, Card published his first piece of fiction, a short story called Gert Fram, which appeared in the July 1977 issue of Ensign under the pseudonym Byron Walley. Between 1978 and 1988, Card wrote over 300 half-hour audioplays on LDS Church history, the New Testament, and other subjects for Living Scriptures in Ogden, Utah.Card started writing science fiction short stories because he felt he could sell short stories in that genre more easily than others. His first short story, The Tinker, was initially rejected by Analog Science Fiction and Fact. Ben Bova, the editor of Analog, rejected a rewrite of the story but asked Card to submit a science fiction piece. In response, Card wrote the short story "Ender's Game", which Ben Bova published in the August 1977 issue of Analog. Card left Ensign in 1977 and began his career as a freelance writer in 1978. Ben Bova continued to work with Card to publish his stories, and Bova's wife, Barbara Bova, became Card's literary agent, a development that drew criticism for a possible conflict of interest. Nine of Card's science fiction stories, including Malpractice, Kingsmeat, and Happy Head, were published in 1978.
Card modeled Mikal's Songbird on Ender's Game, both of which include a child with special talents who goes through emotional turmoil when adults seek to exploit his ability. Mikal's Songbird was a Nebula Award finalist in 1978 and a Hugo finalist in 1979—both in the "novelette" category. Card won the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer in 1978 for his stories published that year; the award helped Card's stories sell internationally. Unaccompanied Sonata was published in 1979 issue of Omni and was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula awards for a short story. Eighteen Card stories were published in 1979.
Card's first published book, "Listen, Mom and Dad...": Young Adults Look Back on Their Upbringing is about child-rearing. He received advances for the manuscripts of Hot Sleep and A Planet Called Treason, which were published in 1979. Card later called his first two novels "amateurish" and rewrote both of them later. A publisher offered to buy a novelization of Mikal's Songbird, which Card accepted; the finished novel is titled Songmaster. Card edited fantasy anthologies Dragons of Light and Dragons of Darkness and collected his own short stories in Unaccompanied Sonata and Other Stories. In the early 1980s, Card focused on writing longer works, only publishing ten short stories between 1980 and 1985. He published a few non-fiction works that were aimed at an LDS audience; these include a satirical dictionary called Saintspeak, which resulted in him being temporarily banned from publishing in church magazines. Card wrote the fantasy-epic Hart's Hope and a historical novel, A Woman of Destiny, which was later republished as Saints and won the 1985 award from the Association for Mormon Letters for best novel. He rewrote the narrative of Hot Sleep and published it as The Worthing Chronicle, which replaced Hot Sleep and the short-story collection set in the same universe, Capitol. The recession of the early 1980s made it difficult to get contracts for new books, so Card returned to full-time employment as the book editor of Compute! magazine that was based in Greensboro, North Carolina, for nine months in 1983. In October of that year, Tom Doherty offered a contract for Card's proposed Alvin Maker series, which allowed him to return to creative writing full-time.