Born into a working-class family in Congleton, Cheshire, Garner grew up around the nearby town of Alderley Edge, and spent much of his youth in the wooded area known locally as 'The Edge', where he gained an early interest in the folklore of the region. Studying at Manchester Grammar School and then Oxford University, in 1957 he moved to the nearby village of Blackden, where he bought and renovated an Early Modern building known as Toad Hall. His first novel, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, was published in 1960. A children's fantasy novel set on the Edge, it incorporated elements of local folklore into its plot. It was followed by a sequel, The Moon of Gomrath (1963). Garner envisioned a third part of the trilogy, Boneland, which will be published in August 2012. Instead he produced a string of further fantasy novels, Elidor (1965), The Owl Service (1967) and Red Shift (1973).

Turning away from fantasy as a genre, Garner produced The Stone Book Quartet (1979), a series of four short novellas detailing a day in the life of four generations of his family. He also published a series of British folk tales which he had rewritten in a series of books entitled Alan Garner's Fairy Tales of Gold (1979), Alan Garner's Book of British Fairy Tales (1984) and A Bag of Moonshine (1986). In his subsequent novels, Strandloper (1996) and Thursbitch (2003), he continued writing tales revolving around Cheshire, although without the fantasy elements which had characterised his earlier work.

For more information, please visit Alan Garner Tribute Website or visit his entry at ISFDB.

Source: Wikipedia

The unexpected commercial failure of his fourth book, The Armageddon Rag (1983), "essentially destroyed my career as a novelist at the time", he is said to have remarked. It began his television career, however, by causing him to be hired to write for a revival of Twilight Zone and the dramatic-fantasy series Beauty and the Beast. As a book series editor, he oversaw the development of the 20+ volume Wild Cards cycle, which takes place in a shared universe in which a small slice of post-World War II humanity gains superpowers after the release of an alien-engineered virus. Martin's own contributions to the multiple-author series often feature Thomas Tudbury, "The Great and Powerful Turtle", a powerful psychokinetic whose flying "shell" consisted of an armored VW Beetle.

Martin's novella, "Nightflyers", was adapted into a 1987 feature film of the same title.

Martin was also a college instructor in journalism and a chess tournament director. In his spare time, he collects medieval-themed miniatures, reading and collecting science fiction, fantasy, and horror books, and treasuring his still-growing comics collection, which includes the first issues of Marvel's "silver age" Spider-Man and Fantastic Four.

On February 15, 2011, Martin married his longtime partner Parris McBride during a small ceremony at their Santa Fe, New Mexico, home.

For more information, please visit George R.R. Martin Website or visit his entry at ISFDB.

Source: Wikipedia