Introduction


Orson Scott Card
Orson Scott Card is a science-fiction writer whose novels Ender’s Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead both won the Hugo Award and the Nebular Award. That makes him the only author to win both awards in consecutive years. Card started writing poetry when he was a theater major in college. He later started writing short stories and then became a copy editor for Brigham Young University Press. Once his work began to be published, he left his job to become a full-time freelance writer. Along with his award-winning science fiction, Card has gone on to write contemporary fiction, comic books, and dialog for several video games.

Essential Facts

  1. One of Card’s ancestors is Charles Ora Card, Brigham Young’s son-in-law and a founding member of Cardston, Alberta, which was the first Mormon settlement in Canada.
  2. Card once said, “We care about moral issues, nobility, decency, happiness, goodness—the issues that matter in the real world, but which can only be addressed, in their purity, in fiction.”
  3. Card is a judge for the Writers of the Future contest, and he started his own science fiction magazine in 2005, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show.
  4. Each year, he runs a one-week workshop for up-and-coming writers. He calls the workshop “Literary Boot Camp.”
  5. Card has five children. Each child’s name includes the name of an author he admires.