Profile of Shauna Roberts

Shauna Roberts grew up in Beavercreek, Ohio. Her favorite memories are of digging holes in the back yard, reading on a quilt under a tree on warm summer days, and reading inside sprawled on a couch in winter. She never played with baby dolls as the other little girls did; instead she created a social structure and status hierarchy for the neighborhood troll dolls and spent many hours designing and sewing clothes for the trolls appropriate to their ranks.  
 
Her love of reading was fostered by her father, who took her to the library weekly to check out books, and her aunt, who was a librarian and a successful romance novelist. She started writing stories in elementary school.
 
She wanted to be a missionary or a baseball player when she grew up. Instead, she earned a Ph.D. in anthropology. Employment opportunities in anthropology were scarce in the Reagan years, so she took a job as an editor and writer. From 1986 to 2010, she worked as a science and medical writer and editor, first at scientific magazines and later (after 1989) as a freelancer.
 
In 2009, she attended the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. Now she plans a career as a fiction writer. It’s hard to succeed at that, you say? So is making a living as a freelance nonfiction writer, and she did that. Shauna Roberts likes big challenges. She rebuilt her life after developing systemic lupus in her early twenties; she rebuilt it again after the post-Katrina flood in New Orleans.
 
Website:  http://www.ShaunaRoberts.com

Personal blog:  http://ShaunaRoberts.blogspot.com

Group blog:  http://NovelSpaces.blogspot.com

Email address:  [email protected]

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Shauna Roberts is currently eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for best new science fiction or fantasy writer whose first work of science fiction or fantasy was published in a professional publication in the previous two years.

✥  CAMPBELL-QUALIFYING WORK  ✥ 

"The Hunt" (science fiction) in Jim Baen’s Universe, February 2010.

✥  NOVELS  ✥

Like Mayflies in a Stream (historical fiction; Overland Park, KS: Hadley Rille Books, 2009). Read the first chapter here for free.

Ice Magic, Fire Magic (fantasy; Overland Park, KS: Hadley Rille Books, coming in 2013).

✥  SHORT FICTION  ✥ 

"Bosphorus Dreams” (slipstream) in the anthology A Quiet Shelter There. Overland Park, KS: Hadley Rille Books. To be published in 2012.

"Moonlight, Reflected in Dewdrops" (fantasy) in 10Flash Quarterly, January 2012.

"Fissures" (science fiction) in 10Flash Quarterly, July 2011.

Untitled (flash fiction) in On the Premises Minicontest #14, May 2011.

"Rehearsal" (flash fiction) in Every Day Fiction, 25 April 2011.

"Global Warming" (fantasy) in 10Flash Quarterly, January 2011. 

"Ennui" (fantasy) in Night to Dawn, April 2009.

"Elessa the Restless" (science fiction) in the anthology Barren Worlds. Overland Park, KS: Hadley Rille Books, 2008.

"Coyote and the Gamblers" (science fiction) in the anthology Return to Luna. Overland Park, KS: Hadley Rille Books, December 2008.

"A Llama's Tale" (science fiction) in Space Westerns, 27 January 2008.
 
"The Hunt" (science fiction) in Continuum Science Fiction, Fall 2006, and reprinted in Jim Baen’s Universe, February 2010.
 
"Hero Home" (fantasy) in the anthology Clash of Steel, Book One: Reluctant Hero. Ormond Beach, FL: Carnifex Press, 2005.
 
"My Father's New Wife" (science fiction) in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, February/March 2004.
 
"Insipid Love Songs" (science fiction) in Fables, August 2003.
 
"Slipping Into Love" (romance) in the anthology Pleasure of the Heart and Other Stories. Douglas, MA: NovelBooks, Inc., 2002.

 

✥  AWARD  ✥ 

2011 recipient of the Speculative Literature Foundation's Older Writer Grant