Orson Scott Card is the author of the award-winning novels Ender’s Game, Ender’s Shadow, and Speaker for the Dead, which are widely read by adults and younger readers, and are increasingly used in schools. His most recent series, the young adult Pathfinder series (Pathfinder, Ruins, Visitors) and the fantasy Mither Mages series (Lost Gate, Gate Thief, Gatefather) are taking readers in new directions.
Besides these and other science fiction novels, Card writes contemporary fantasy (Magic Street, Enchantment, Lost Boys), biblical novels (Stone Tables, Rachel and Leah), the American frontier fantasy series The Tales of Alvin Maker (beginning with Seventh Son), poetry (An Open Book), and many plays and scripts, including his “freshened” Shakespeare scripts for Romeo & Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Merchant of Venice.
Card has won numerous awards including the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards. He was born in Washington and grew up in California, Arizona, and Utah. He served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) in Brazil in the early 1970s. Besides his writing, he teaches occasional classes and workshops and directs plays. He frequently teaches writing and literature courses at Southern Virginia University.
Card currently lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife, Kristine Allen Card, where his primary activities are writing a review column for the local Rhinoceros Times and feeding birds, squirrels, chipmunks, possums, and raccoons on the patio.
Orson Scott Card has been a judge of the Writers of the Future Contest since 1994, having earlier served as a guest instructor at the Writers’ Workshops, at both Sag Harbor, Long Island and Pepperdine University in Los Angeles. He was also the featured essayist in volumes four and twenty-two of the Writers of the Future anthology.