An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.

Author of a written or legally copied work

Legal significance

In copyright law, there is necessarily for little flexibility as to what constitutes authorship. The United States Copyright Office defines copyright as "a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U.S. Code) to authors of "original works of authorship". Holding the title of "author" over any "literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, [or] certain other intellectual works" give rights to this person, the owner of the copyright, exclusive right to do or authorize any production or distribution of their work. Any person or entity wishing to use intellectual property held under copyright must receive permission from the copyright holder to use this work, and often will be asked to pay for the use of copyrighted material. After a fixed amount of time, the copyright expires on intellectual work and it enters the public domain, where it can be used without limit. Copyright law has been amended time and time again since the inception of the law to extend the length of this fixed period where the work is exclusively controlled by the copyright holder. However, copyright is merely the legal reassurance that one owns his/her work. Technically, someone owns their work from the time it's created. An interesting aspect of authorship emerges with copyright in that it can be passed down to another upon one's death. The person who inherits the copyright is not the author, but enjoys the same legal benefits.

Questions arise as to the application of copyright law. How does it, for example, apply to the complex issue of fan fiction? If the media agency responsible for the authorized production allows material from fans, what is the limit before legal constraints from actors, music, and other considerations, come into play? As well, how does copyright apply to fan-generated stories for books? What powers do the original authors, as well as the publishers, have in regulating or even stopping the fan fiction?

Literary significance

In literary theory, critics find complications in the term "author" beyond what constitutes authorship in a legal setting. In the wake of postmodern literature, critics such as Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault have examined the role and relevance of authorship to the meaning or interpretation of a text.

Barthes challenges the idea that a text can be attributed to any single author. He quotes, in his essay ''"Death of the Author"'' (1968), that "it is language which speaks, not the author". The words and language of a text itself determine and expose meaning for Barthes, and not someone possessing legal responsibility for the process of its production. Every line of written text is a mere reflection of references from any of a multitude of traditions, or, as Barthes puts it, "the text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture"; it is never original. With this, the perspective of the author is removed from the text, and the limits formerly imposed by the idea of one authorial voice, one ultimate and universal meaning, are destroyed. The explanation and meaning of a work does not have to be sought in the one who produced it, "as if it were always in the end, through the more or less transparent allegory of the fictioni, the voice of a single person, the author 'confiding' in us". The psyche, culture, fanaticism of an author can be disregarded when interpreting a text, because the words are rich enough themselves with all of the traditions of language. To expose meanings in a written work without appealing to the celebrity of an author, their tastes, passions, vices, is, to Barthes, to allow language to speak, rather than author.

Michel Foucault argues in his essay ''"What is an author?"'' (1969), that all authors are writers, but not all writers are authors. He states that "a private letter may have a signatory—it does not have an author". For a reader to assign the title of author upon any written work is to attribute certain standards upon the text which, for Foucault, are working in conjunction with the idea of "the author function". Foucault's author function is the idea that an author exists only as a function of a written work, a part of its structure, but not necessarily part of the interpretive process. The author's name "indicates the status of the discourse within a society and culture", and at one time was used as an anchor for interpreting a text, a practice which Barthes would argue is not a particularly relevant or valid endeavor.

Expanding upon Foucault's position, Alexander Nehamas writes that Foucault suggests "an author [...] is whoever can be understood to have produced a particular text as we interpret it", not necessarily who penned the text. It is this distinction between producing a written work and producing the interpretation or meaning in a written work that both Barthes and Foucault are interested in. Foucault warns of the risks of keeping the author's name in mind during interpretation, because it could affect the value and meaning with which one handles an interpretation.

Literary critics Barthes and Foucault suggest that readers should not rely on or look for the notion of one overarching voice when interpreting a written work, because of the complications inherent with a writer's title of "author." They warn of the dangers interpretations could suffer from when associating the subject of inherently meaningful words and language with the personality of one authorial voice. Instead, readers should allow a text to be interpreted in terms of the language as "author."

Relationship between author and publisher

The publisher of a work might receive a percentage calculated on a wholesale or a specific price and or a fixed amount on each book that is sold. Publishers, at times, reduced the risk of this type of arrangement, by agreeing only to pay this after a certain amount of copies had sold. In Canada this practice occurred during the 1890s, but was not commonplace until the 1920s.

Commissioned: Publishers made publication arrangements, and authors covered all expenses (today the practice of authors paying for their publications is often called vanity publishing, and is looked down upon by many publishers, even though it may have been a common and accepted practice in the past). Publishers would receive a percentage on the sale of every copy of a book, and the author would receive the rest of the money made.

Relationship between author and editor

The relationship between the author and the editor, often the author’s only liaison to the publishing company, is often characterized as the site of tension. For the author to reach his or her audience, the work usually must attract the attention of the editor. The idea of the author as the sole meaning-maker of necessity changes to include the influences of the editor and the publisher in order to engage the audience in writing as a social act.

Pierre Bourdieu’s essay “The Field of Cultural Production” depicts the publishing industry as a “space of literary or artistic position-takings,” also called the “field of struggles,” which is defined by the tension and movement inherent among the various positions in the field. Bourdieu claims that the “field of position-takings [...] is not the product of coherence-seeking intention or objective consensus,” meaning that an industry characterized by position-takings is not one of harmony and neutrality. In particular for the writer, their authorship in their work makes their work part of their identity, and there is much at stake personally over the negotiation of authority over that identity. However, it is the editor who has “the power to impose the dominant definition of the writer and therefore to delimit the population of those entitled to take part in the struggle to define the writer”. As “cultural investors,” publishers rely on the editor position to identify a good investment in “cultural capital” which may grow to yield economic capital across all positions.

According to the studies of James Curran, the system of shared values among editors in Britain has generated a pressure among authors to write to fit the editors’ expectations, removing the focus from the reader-audience and putting a strain on the relationship between authors and editors and on writing as a social act. Even the book review by the editors has more significance than the readership’s reception.

Good relationships between authors and editors are largely found to be the product of an awareness of writing as a social act, and an effort to create a balance wherein the authority over the text is negotiated among all of the positions in the industry, so that the meaning is effectively carried from the meaning-maker to the readership.

Compensation

A standard contract for an author will usually include provision for payment in the form of an advance and royalties. An advance is a lump sum paid in advance of publication. An advance must be earned out before royalties are payable. And advance may be paid in two lump sums: the first payment on contract signing, and the second on delivery of the completed manuscript or on publication.

An author's contract may specify, for example, that they will earn 10% of the retail price of each book sold. Some contracts specify a scale of royalties payable (for example, where royalties start at 10% for the first 10,000 sales, but then increase to a higher percentage rate at higher sale thresholds).

An author's book must earn out their advance before any further royalties are paid. For example, if an author is paid a modest advance of $2000.00, and their royalty rate is 10% of a book priced at $20.00 - that is, $2.00 per book - the book will need to sell 1000 copies before any further payment will be made. Publishers typically withhold payment of a percentage of royalties earned against returns.

In some countries, authors also earn income from a government scheme such as the ELR (Educational Lending Right) and PLR (Public Lending Right) schemes in Australia. Under these schemes, authors are paid a fee for the number of copies of their books in educational and/or public libraries.

These days, many authors supplement their income from book sales with public speaking engagements, school visits, residencies, grants, and teaching positions.

Ghostwriters, technical writers, and textbooks writers are typically paid in a different way: usually a set fee or a per word rate rather than on a percentage of sales.

See also

Novelist

Writer

Lists of writers

Lists of poets

List of novelists

Professional writing

Academic authorship

Ghostwriter

Lead author

References

External links

A system for fast authorship by Daniel Hall Category:Writing occupations Category:Literary criticism

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name	George R. R. Martin
birth date	September 20, 1948
birth place	Bayonne, New Jersey
spouse	Gale Burnick (1975-1979), Parris McBride (2011–present)
occupation	Author
genre	Science fiction, horror, fantasy
notableworks	''A Song of Ice and Fire''
influences	J. R. R. Tolkien Robert A. Heinlein H. P. Lovecraft F. Scott Fitzgerald Robert E. Howard Stan Lee George MacDonald Fraser Jack Vance William Faulkner Roger Zelazny
influenced	Daniel Abraham Steven Erikson Scott Lynch David Anthony Durham Paul Haines Joe Abercrombie Patrick Rothfuss Michael Chabon
website	http://www.georgerrmartin.com/ }}

George R. R. Martin (born September 20, 1948), sometimes referred to as GRRM, is an American author and screenwriter of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. He is best known for his ''A Song of Ice and Fire'' series of epic fantasy novels, which HBO adapted into the dramatic series ''Game of Thrones''. Martin was selected by ''Time'' magazine as one of the "2011 Time 100," a list of the "most influential people in the world."

Biography

George R. R. Martin was born on September 20, 1948 in Bayonne, New Jersey the son of a longshoreman, whose working class family lived in a federal housing project near the Bayonne docks. He attended, but did not enjoy his time at Marist High School, though he would later acknowledge that it was during those critical years that he developed his lifelong interest in the superhero genre, notably the Marvel Comics titles. As a youth, Martin became an avid reader and collector of 1960s "silver age" superhero comic books. ''Fantastic Four'' #20 (Nov 1963) features a letter to the editor he wrote while at Marist. He credits the attention he received from this letter, as well as his interest in the era's emerging comics fandom and its fanzines, with his pursuit of becoming a professional writer. In 1965, while a teen, Martin won an Alley Award for his amateur super-hero text story "Powerman vs. The Blue Barrier," the first of many awards he would go on to win for his fiction.

In 1970 Martin received a B.S. in Journalism from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, graduating ''summa cum laude''. He went on to complete a M.S. in Journalism in 1971, also from Northwestern.

Martin began to write science-fiction short stories in the early 1970s. His first story nominated for the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award was ''With Morning Comes Mistfall'', published in 1973 by ''Analog'' magazine.

In 1976 for Kansas City's MidAmeriCon, the 34th World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon), Martin and his friend and fellow writer-editor Gardner Dozois conceived of and organized the first Hugo Losers Party for the losing writers and their friends and family to commiserate following the Hugo Awards ceremony the night before. Martin was nominated for two Hugos but lost both that year, for the novelette "...and Seven Times Never Kill Man" and the novella "The Storms of Windhaven", co-written with Lisa Tuttle; the Hugo Losers Party became an annual Worldcon event.

Although much of his work is fantasy or horror, a number of his earlier works are science fiction occurring in a loosely defined future history, known informally as 'The Thousand Worlds' or 'The manrealm'. He has also written at least one piece of political-military fiction, "Night of the Vampyres", collected in Harry Turtledove's anthology ''The Best Military Science Fiction of the 20th Century.''

During the 1980s Martin also began to write for television and work as a series book editor. For television, he worked in Hollywood on the revival of ''Twilight Zone'' and the dramatic-fantasy series ''Beauty and the Beast''. As a book series editor, he oversaw the development of the lengthy ''Wild Cards'' cycle, which takes place in a shared universe in which a slice of post-World War II humanity has superpowers. 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. Twenty-one volumes having been published as of June 2011. Earlier that year, Martin signed the publisher's contract for the twenty-second volume.

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''.

A Song of Ice and Fire

In 1991 Martin briefly returned to writing novels, and began what would eventually turn into his epic fantasy series, ''A Song of Ice and Fire'' (reportedly inspired by the Wars of the Roses and Ivanhoe), which will run to at least seven volumes. The first volume ''A Game of Thrones'' was published in 1996. In November 2005, ''A Feast for Crows'', the fourth book in this series, became ''The New York Times'' #1 Bestseller and also achieved #1 ranking on ''The Wall Street Journal'' bestseller list. In addition, in September 2006, ''A Feast for Crows'' was nominated for both a Quill Award and the British Fantasy Award. The series has received praise from authors, readers and critics alike.

HBO series production

During completion of ''A Dance With Dragons'' and other duties, George R. R. Martin has been heavily involved in the production of a television series adaptation of the ''A Song of Ice and Fire'' books named after the first book, ''A Game of Thrones''. Martin's involvement has included the selection of a production team and participation in scriptwriting, and he is listed as an executive producer of the series.

HBO Productions purchased the television rights for the entire ''A Song of Ice and Fire'' series in 2007. ''Game of Thrones'' (the series title) began on April 17, 2011 and ran weekly for ten episodes, each an hour long. The first season covered events that occurred in the first novel in the series. During the run-up period in the months before the first season premiered, numerous advance trailers and behind-the-scenes short features were shown on HBO and made available at various Internet sites. This was part of HBO's extensive media blitz promoting one of their most expensive premium cable series to date, estimated to have cost more than 60 million dollars for the first season. On Sunday April 3, 2011, two weeks before the premiere of the series, HBO showed the first 14 minutes of the first hour-long episode, further ratcheting up expectations for the new series. Two days after its premiere on April 17, 2011, HBO announced that ''Game of Thrones'' had been renewed for a second season, following universally positive reviews and an initial viewership of 4.2 million during its three debut evening showings; by the end of the first week, nearly nine million had viewed the first episode. Not long after the series' first season finale, it was announced the show had received 13 Emmy Award nominations, including Best Dramatic Series and Best Supporting Actor.

Themes

Critics have described Martin's work as dark and cynical. His first novel, ''Dying of the Light'', set the tone for most of his future work; it is set on a mostly abandoned planet that is slowly becoming uninhabitable as it moves away from its sun. This story, and many of Martin's others, have a strong sense of melancholy. His characters are often unhappy, or at least unsatisfied — trying to stay idealistic in a ruthless world. Many have elements of tragic heroes in them. Reviewer T. M. Wagner writes, "Let it never be said Martin doesn't share Shakespeare's fondness for the senselessly tragic." This gloominess can be an obstacle for some readers. The Inchoatus Group writes, "If this absence of joy is going to trouble you, or you’re looking for something more affirming, then you should probably seek elsewhere."

Martin's characters are multi-faceted, each with surprisingly intricate pasts, inspirations, and ambitions. ''Publisher's Weekly'' writes of his ongoing epic fantasy ''A Song of Ice and Fire'', "The complexity of characters such as Daenarys [sic], Arya and the Kingslayer will keep readers turning even the vast number of pages contained in this volume, for the author, like Tolkien or Jordan, makes us care about their fates." No one is given an unrealistic string of luck, however; so misfortune, injury, and death (and even false death) can befall ''any'' character, major or minor, no matter how attached the reader has become. Martin has described his penchant for killing off important characters as being necessary for the story's depth: "...when my characters are in danger, I want you to be afraid to turn the page, (so) you need to show right from the beginning that you're playing for keeps."

Major themes and areas of exploration in his short fiction include loneliness, connection, tragically doomed love, idealism, romanticism and hard truth versus comforting deceit. Many of these occur in his magnum opus as well, but most of them are more abundant and obvious in his shorter works.

Fan relationship

Martin is known for his regular, decades-long attendance at science fiction conventions and comics conventions and his accessibility to fans. In the early 1970s, critic and writer Thomas Disch identified Martin as a member of the "Labor Day Group", writers who congregated at the annual Worldcon, usually held on or around the Labor Day weekend. Martin's official fan club is the Brotherhood Without Banners.

Martin has been criticized by some fans for the long delays between books in that series, notably the six-year gap between the fourth volume, ''A Feast for Crows'' (2005), and the fifth volume, ''A Dance with Dragons'' (2011). He responded online, saying he has many projects and was unwilling to write the Ice and Fire series exclusively.

Martin is opposed to fan fiction, believing it to be copyright infringement and a bad exercise for aspiring writers.

Bibliography

Author

Novels

''Dying of the Light'' (1977) — Hugo Award nominee, 1978; British Fantasy Award nominee, 1979 ''Windhaven'' (1981, with Lisa Tuttle) — Locus SF Award nominee, 1982 ''Fevre Dream'' (1982) — Locus SF and World Fantasy Award nominee, 1983 ''The Armageddon Rag'' (1983) — Locus SF and World Fantasy Award nominee, 1984

''A Song of Ice and Fire'' series:

''A Game of Thrones'' (1996) — Locus Fantasy Award winner, Nebula and World Fantasy Award nominee, 1997

''A Clash of Kings'' (1998) — Locus Fantasy Award winner, Nebula Award nominee, 1999

''A Storm of Swords'' (2000) — Locus Fantasy Award winner, Hugo and Nebula Awards nominee, 2001

** Part 1 Steel and Snow (UK edition; US edition published in a single volume)

** Part 2 Blood and Gold (UK edition; US edition published in a single volume)

''A Feast for Crows'' (2005) — Hugo, Locus Fantasy, and British Fantasy Awards nominee, 2006

''A Dance with Dragons'' (2011)

* ''The Winds of Winter'' (forthcoming)

* ''A Dream of Spring'' (forthcoming)

''Hunter's Run'' (2007, expanded version of the novella "Shadow Twin", with Gardner Dozois and Daniel Abraham)

Selected novellas

"A Song for Lya", originally in ''Analog'', June 1974.

"Night of the Vampyres," originally in '''Amazing'', 1975, re-published in ''The Best Military Science Fiction of the 20th Century'' "The Skin Trade" (1989) from the three-author collection Dark Visions; optioned for film by Mike the Pike Productions

"Tales of Dunk and Egg" series — set in the world of ''A Song of Ice and Fire''

* "The Hedge Knight" (1998)

* "The Sworn Sword" (2003)

* "The Mystery Knight" (2010)

"Shadow Twin" (2004) with Gardner Dozois and Daniel Abraham

''Shadow Twin'' (2005) published in hardcover as an illustrated, signed, and numbered limited-edition from Subterranean Press

Selected novelettes

''Sandkings'', Hugo, Nebula awards winner.

''Meathouse Man'', first published in 1976, in ''Orbit'' 18.

Children's book

''The Ice Dragon''

Collections

''A Song for Lya'' (1976)

''Songs of Stars and Shadows'' (1977)

''Sandkings'' (1981)

''Songs the Dead Men Sing'' (1983)

''Nightflyers'' (1985)

''Tuf Voyaging'' (1987, collection of linked stories)

''Portraits of His Children'' (1987)

''Quartet'' (2001)

''GRRM: A RRetrospective'' (2003); reprinted in 2006 and 2007 in two volumes as ''Dreamsongs''

Television

''The Twilight Zone''

* ''The Last Defender of Camelot'' (1986) — writer (teleplay)

* ''The Once and Future King'' (1986) — writer (teleplay), story editor

* ''A Saucer of Loneliness'' (1986) — story editor

* ''Lost and Found'' (1986) — writer (teleplay), from a published short story by Phyllis Eisenstein

* ''The World Next Door'' (1986) — story editor

* ''The Toys of Caliban'' (1986) — writer (teleplay), from an unpublished short story by Terry Matz

* ''The Road Less Travelled'' (1986) — writer (story and teleplay), story editor

''Beauty and the Beast''

* ''Terrible Saviour'' (1987) — writer

* ''Masques'' (1987) — writer

* ''Shades of Grey'' (1988) — writer

* ''Promises of Someday'' (1988) — writer

* ''Fever'' (1988) — writer

* ''Ozymandias'' (1988) — writer

* ''Dead of Winter'' (1988) — writer

* ''Brothers'' (1989) — writer

* ''When the Blue Bird Sings' (1989) — writer (teleplay)

* ''A Kingdom by the Sea'' (1989) — writer

* ''What Rough Beast'' (1989) — writer (story)

* ''Ceremony of Innocence'' (1989) — writer

* ''Snow'' (1989) — writer

* ''Beggar's Comet'' (1990) — writer

* ''Invictus'' (1990) — writer

''Doorways'' (1993, unreleased pilot) — writer, producer, creator; (IDW Publishing issued the pilot's storyline as a graphic novel miniseries in 2010)

''Game of Thrones

* Pilot — writer (story, teleplay), producer, creator

* ''The Pointy End'' - writer

Editor

''New Voices in Science Fiction 1'' (1977: new stories by the John W. Campbell Award winners)

''New Voices in Science Fiction 2'' (1979: more new stories by the John W. Campbell Award winners)

''New Voices in Science Fiction 3'' (1980: more new stories by the John W. Campbell Award winners)

''New Voices in Science Fiction 4'' (1981: more new stories by the John W. Campbell Award winners)

''The Science Fiction Weight Loss Book'' (1983) edited with Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg (Stories by the great science fiction writers on fat, thin, and everything in between)

''The John W. Campbell Awards, Volume 5'' (1984)

''Night Visions 3'' (1986)

Wild Cards Series Editor (also contributor to many volumes)

''Wild Cards I'' (1987) (Contents expanded in 2010 edition with three new authors/stories)

''Wild Cards II: Aces High'' (1987)

''Wild Cards III: Jokers Wild'' (1987)

''Wild Cards IV: Aces Abroad'' (1988)

''Wild Cards V: Down & Dirty'' (1988)

''Wild Cards VI: Ace in the Hole'' (1990)

''Wild Cards VII: Dead Man's Hand'' (1990)

''Wild Cards VIII: One-Eyed Jacks'' (1991)

''Wild Cards IX: Jokertown Shuffle'' (1991)

''Wild Cards X: Double Solitaire'' (1992)

''Wild Cards XI: Dealer's Choice'' (1992)

''Wild Cards XII: Turn of the Cards'' (1993)

''Wild Cards: Card Sharks'' (1993) (Book I of a New Cycle trilogy)

''Wild Cards: Marked Cards'' (1994) (Book II of a New Cycle trilogy)

''Wild Cards: Black Trump'' (1995) (Book III of a New Cycle trilogy)

''Wild Cards: Deuces Down'' (2002)

''Wild Cards: Death Draws Five'' (2006) (solo novel by John J. Miller)

''Wild Cards: Inside Straight'' (2008) (Book I of the Committee triad)

''Wild Cards: Busted Flush'' (2008) (Book II of the Committee triad)

''Wild Cards: Suicide Kings'' (2009) (Book III of the Committee triad)

''Wild Cards: Fort Freak'' (2011)

Cross-genre anthologies edited (with Gardner Dozois)

''Songs of the Dying Earth'' (2009) (A tribute anthology to Jack Vance´s seminal Dying Earth series, initially published by Subterranean Press)

''Warriors'' (2010) (A massive, cross-genre anthology featuring stories about war and warriors; winner of the 2011 Locus Poll Award for Best Anthology)

''Songs of Love and Death'' (2010) (A cross-genre anthology featuring stories of romance in fantasy and science-fiction settings, originally entitled ''Star Crossed Lovers'')

''Down These Strange Streets'' (2011) (A cross-genre anthology that blends classic private eye detective stories with fantasy and science fiction)

Awards

"A Song for Lya" 1975 Hugo Award for Best Novella

"Sandkings" 1980 Hugo Award for Best Novelette and Nebula Award for Best Novelette (the only one among Martin's stories to achieve that double)

"The Way of Cross and Dragon" 1980 Hugo Award for Best Short Story

"Portraits of His Children" 1986 Nebula Award for Best Novelette

"The Pear-Shaped Man" 1988 Bram Stoker Award for Long Fiction

"The Skin Trade" 1989 World Fantasy Award for Best Novella

"Blood of the Dragon" 1997 Hugo Award for Best Novella

"A Game of Thrones" 2003 Premio Ignotus for Best Foreign Novel

"A Clash of Kings" 2004 Premio Ignotus for Best Foreign Novel

''A Feast for Crows'' 2006 Quill Award and British Fantasy Award (nominated)

"A Storm of Swords" 2006 Premio Ignotus for Best Foreign Novel

''Warriors'' (co-edited with Gardner Dozois) 2011 Locus Poll Award for Best Anthology

Declared by Time Magazine "One of the Most Influential People of 2011"

A more complete list of Martin's awards and nominations can be found at The ''Locus'' Index to Science Fiction Awards.

References

External links

George R. R. Martin official site

Not A Blog: George R. R. Martin's Livejournal

George R. R. Martin's Podcast

George R. R. Martin Complete Bibliography

Brotherhood without Banners - official fan club

Category:1948 births Category:Living people Category:American fantasy writers Category:American science fiction writers Category:American short story writers Category:Hugo Award winning authors Category:Nebula Award winning authors Category:People from Bayonne, New Jersey Category:A Song of Ice and Fire Category:Worldcon Guests of Honor Category:Northwestern University alumni Category:Clarion Writers' Workshop

bg:Джордж Р. Р. Мартин ca:George R.R. Martin cs:George R. R. Martin de:George R. R. Martin et:George R. R. Martin es:George R. R. Martin eo:George R. R. Martin ext:George R.R. Martin fa:جورج آر. آر. مارتین fr:George R. R. Martin gl:George R. R. Martin hr:George R. R. Martin it:George R. R. Martin he:ג'ורג' ר. ר. מרטין hu:George R. R. Martin nl:George R.R. Martin ja:ジョージ・R・R・マーティン no:George R.R. Martin pl:George R. R. Martin pt:George R. R. Martin ro:George R. R. Martin ru:Мартин, Джордж Рэймонд Ричард simple:George R. R. Martin sk:George Raymond Richard Martin sl:George R. R. Martin sr:Џорџ Р. Р. Мартин fi:George R. R. Martin sv:George R.R. Martin ta:ஜார்ஜ் ஆர். ஆர். மார்ட்டின் th:จอร์จ อาร์. อาร์. มาร์ติน uk:Джордж Мартін (письменник) zh:喬治·R·R·馬丁

name	Gary Shteyngart
birth date	1972
birth place	Leningrad, USSR
occupation	Novelist
nationality	United States
website	}}

Gary Shteyngart (born Igor Shteyngart in 1972) is an American writer born in Leningrad, USSR. Much of his work is satirical and relies on the invention of elaborately fictitious yet somehow familiar places and times.

Life

Shteyngart spent the first seven years of his childhood living in a square dominated by a huge statue of Vladimir Lenin in what is now St. Petersburg, Russia; (he alternately calls it "St. Leningrad" or "St. Leninsburg"). He comes from a Jewish family and describes his family as typically Soviet. His father worked as an engineer in a LOMO camera factory; his mother was a pianist. Shteyngart emigrated to the United States in 1979 and was brought up with no television in the apartment in which he lived, where English was not the household language. He did not shed his thick Russian accent until the age of 14.

Shteyngart took a trip to Prague, and this experience helped spawn his first novel, set in the fictitious European city of Prava. He is a graduate of Stuyvesant High School in New York City, Oberlin College in Ohio, where he earned a degree in politics, and Hunter College of the City University of New York, where he earned an MFA in Creative Writing.

Shteyngart now lives in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He has taught writing at Hunter College, and currently teaches writing at Columbia University and Princeton University.

Gary Shteyngart was a Citigroup Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, Germany, for Fall 2007.

Awards

Shteyngart's work has received numerous awards. ''Absurdistan'' was chosen as one of the ten best books of the year by ''The New York Times Book Review'' and ''Time'' magazine, as well as a book of the year by the ''Washington Post'', ''Chicago Tribune'', ''San Francisco Chronicle'' and many other publications. ''The Russian Debutante's Handbook'' won the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction, the Book-of-the-Month Club First Fiction Award and the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. It was named a ''New York Times'' Notable Book and one of the best debuts of the year by ''The Guardian''. In 2002, he was named one of the five best new writers by ''Shout NY'' Magazine. In June 2010, Shteyngart was named as one of ''The New Yorker'' magazine's "20 under 40" luminary fiction writers.

Work

Shteyngart's novels include ''The Russian Debutante's Handbook'' (2002), ''Absurdistan'' (2006), and ''Super Sad True Love Story'' (2010). His other writing has appeared in ''The New Yorker'', ''Slate'', ''Granta'', ''Travel and Leisure'', and ''The New York Times''.

Bibliography

''The Russian Debutante's Handbook'' (2002)

''Absurdistan'' (2006)

''Super Sad True Love Story'' (2010)

References

External links

Biography at barnesandnoble.com

"Gary Shteyngart Becomes American" from Jewcy Magazine

Interview with Georgetown's Program for Jewish Civilization

Interview: 'On Meat over Meat: Dinner with Gary Shteyngart,' published in ''Gigantic''

Interview in the ''Forward''

Interview at ''Web del Sol.''

'' Interview'' from Modern Drunkard Magazine titled '10 Drinks with Gary Shteyngart'

''"Absurdistan", by Gary Shteyngart – Russian Unorthodox'', review by Walter Kirn, New York Times, April 30, 2006

With Zadie Smith at McNally Robinson

Interview with Gary Shteyngart about Absurdistan, English and Italian version. BOOKSWEB TV

''Over There'' by Gary Shteyngart from Granta 84

Interview with Gary Shteyngart: On Travel Writing

http://therumpus.net/2009/10/james-francos-face/?full=yes

Interview with Gary Shteyngart: On Stuyvesant High School

Radio interview with Gary Shteyngart on CBC Radio One's ''Writers and Company''

Category:1972 births Category:Living people Category:American people of Russian-Jewish descent Category:Soviet emigrants to the United States Category:Oberlin College alumni Category:Hunter College alumni Category:People from Saint Petersburg Category:Stuyvesant High School alumni Category:Hunter College faculty Category:Columbia University faculty Category:Princeton University faculty Category:American satirists Category:Jewish American novelists

de:Gary Shteyngart es:Gary Shteyngart fr:Gary Shteyngart it:Gary Shteyngart no:Gary Shteyngart ru:Штейнгарт, Гари sl:Gary Shteyngart

Robert (Bob) A. Fletcher; illustrator, artist, and recognized leader; brings a heightened awareness to the American veteran through his military paintings. While he is best known for his military artwork, his scenes of Warwick, New York and lower Hudson Valley of New York have been widely praised.

Career

After serving in the Korean War, Fletcher became a general partner in the advertising agency Fletcher-Walker-Gessell. For twenty five years he worked with a variety of prestigious clients to create corporate themes, promotion themes, promotion concepts, corporate/client programs, corporate presentations, government proposals, and illustrations. His illustrations appeared in countless magazines throughout the years and his technical drawings have been featured in Aviation Week, Flight Magazine, and Jane’s Armament Books.

Exhibitions

In commemoration of National Veteran’s Week 2000 Fletcher was invited to exhibit twenty one military paintings at the Cannon Office Building rotunda, Washington D.C. The event was sponsored by Congressman Ben Gilman.

To commemorate National Veteran’s Week 2002 Fletcher was again invited to exhibit twenty one military paintings at the Russell Senate Office Building rotunda, Washington D.C. The event was sponsored by Senator John Warner of Virginia. This occasion also marked the introduction of the book Remembrance: A Tribute to America’s Veterans.

Work

Known for his unusual approach to a subject, Robert Fletcher evokes powerful emotions surrounding the theme of his paintings. The viewer becomes a witness to the event while it is taking place. Light and shadows as well as subtle colors with brilliant counterparts combine to capture the essence of the subject.

Much of Fletcher's work features historic Warwick, New York, the Warwick Valley, the Hudson Valley, and areas of New England such as Newport, Rhode Island.

His military funeral paintings portray a balance of hope, love, and caring. Military funerals have always been meaningful in America. Burials are somber, serious, and final. The book Remembrance: A Tribute to America's Veterans was a collaboration between Robert A. Fletcher and his son Robert B. Fletcher, author/writer. This classic volume, richly illustrated, delves into the history of America’s wars from the Revolutionary War to Afghanistan.

Honors

In 1999 he was honored as American Legion Citizen of the year in Orange County, New York. He was recently nominated Outstanding Senior of New York Sate.

In 2005 he illustrated a children’s book- I Grew Up On A Farm- by Alan Lewis. He served as guest illustrator of 2006 for the White House Commission on Remembrance.

External links

http://www.veterantribute.com/

Iron Mountain Press

Category:Living people Category:Year of birth missing (living people)

{{infobox scientist |name

Steven Arthur Pinker |image Steven_Pinker_Göttingen_10102010c_crop.JPG |image_size |caption Steven Pinker (''Göttingen, 2010'') |birth_date September 18, 1954 |birth_place Montréal, Québec, Canada |residence United States of America |citizenship Canadian-American |ethnicity Jewish Canadian-American |field evolutionary psychology, experimental psychology, cognitive science, linguistics |work_institution |alma_mater Dawson College, McGill University, Harvard University |doctoral_advisor |doctoral_students |known_for How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate |prizes Troland Award (2003, National Academy of Sciences), Henry Dale Prize (2004, Royal Institution), Walter P. Kistler Book Award (2005), Humanist of the Year award (2006, issued by the AHA), George Miller Prize (2010, Cognitive Neuroscience Society) }}

Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author. He is a Harvard College Professor and the Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University and is known for his advocacy of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.

Pinker’s academic specializations are visual cognition and psycholinguistics. His academic pursuits include experiments on mental imagery, shape recognition, visual attention, children's language development, regular and irregular phenomena in language, the neural bases of words and grammar, and the psychology of innuendo and euphemism. He published two technical books which proposed a general theory of language acquisition and applied it to children's learning of verbs. In his less academic books, he argued that language is an "instinct" or biological adaptation shaped by natural selection. On this point, he opposes Noam Chomsky and others who regard the human capacity for language to be the by-product of other adaptations. He is the author of five books for a general audience, which include ''The Language Instinct'' (1994), ''How the Mind Works'' (1997), ''Words and Rules'' (2000), ''The Blank Slate'' (2002), and ''The Stuff of Thought'' (2007).

Biography

Career

Pinker was born in Montréal, Québec, Canada in 1954, and graduated from Dawson College in 1971. He received a BA degree in psychology at McGill University in 1976, and then went on to earn his PhD degree in experimental psychology at Harvard University in 1979. He did research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for a year, after which he became an assistant professor at Harvard and then Stanford University. From 1982 until 2003, Pinker taught at the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, and eventually became the director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, taking a one-year sabbatical at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1995-6. As of 2008, he is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard. In June 2011 it was announced he would join the professoriate of New College of the Humanities, a private college in London.

Pinker was named one of ''Time Magazine's'' 100 most influential scientists and thinkers in the world in 2004 and one of ''Prospect'' and ''Foreign Policy'''s 100 top public intellectuals in 2005. His research in cognitive psychology has won the Early Career Award (1984) and Boyd McCandless Award (1986) from the American Psychological Association, the Troland Research Award (1993) from the National Academy of Sciences, the Henry Dale Prize (2004) from the Royal Institution of Great Britain, and the George Miller Prize (2010) from the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. He has also received honorary doctorates from the universities of Newcastle, Surrey, Tel Aviv, McGill, and the University of Tromsø, Norway. He was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, in 1998 and in 2003. In 2010, he was named by ''Foreign Policy'' magazine to its list of top global thinkers.

In January 2005, Pinker defended Lawrence Summers, President of Harvard University, whose comments about a gender gap in mathematics and science angered much of the faculty. Pinker noted that Summers' remarks, properly understood, could form the basis of a testable hypothesis. The remarks, Pinker said, claimed not that men are consistently smarter, but that there are "more idiots, [and] more geniuses" of the male gender.

On May 13, 2006, Pinker received the American Humanist Association's Humanist of the Year award for his contributions to public understanding of human evolution.

In 2009, Pinker wrote a highly critical review of Malcolm Gladwell's analytic methods in the ''New York Times''. Gladwell published a rebuttal in the ''Times'' regarding Pinker's comments about the importance of IQ on teaching performance and by analogy, the effect, if any, of draft order on quarterback performance in the National Football League. Pinker then responded to Gladwell's rebuttal. The exchange prompted Advanced NFL Stats to step in and address the issue statistically, siding with Pinker in that draft order is indeed correlated with quarterback performance.

Pinker also serves on the Advisory Board of Secular Coalition for America and offers advice to Executive Director Sean Faircloth and the entire coalition on the acceptance and inclusion of nontheism in American life.

The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry lists Pinker as one of their fellows.

In February 2010 he was named to the Freedom From Religion Foundation's Honorary Board of distinguished achievers.

Personal

His father, a lawyer, first worked as a manufacturer's representative, while his mother was first a home-maker then a guidance counselor and high-school vice-principal. He has two younger siblings. His brother is a policy analyst for the Canadian government. His sister, Susan Pinker, is a psychologist and writer, author of ''The Sexual Paradox''. Pinker married Nancy Etcoff in 1980 and they divorced 1992; he married Ilavenil Subbiah in 1995 and they too divorced. His current wife is the novelist and philosopher Rebecca Goldstein. He has two stepdaughters: the novelist Yael Goldstein Love and the poet Danielle Blau.

He has said, ''I was never religious in the theological sense... I never outgrew my conversion to atheism at 13, but at various times was a serious cultural Jew.'' As a teenager, he says he considered himself an anarchist until he witnessed civil unrest following a police strike in 1969. He has reported the result of a test of his political orientation that characterized him as ''neither leftist nor rightist, more libertarian than authoritarian''. Pinker confesses to having "experienced a primitive tribal stirring" after his genes were shown to trace back to the Middle East.

Theories of language and mind

Pinker is known within psychology for his theory of language acquisition, his research on the syntax, morphology, and meaning of verbs, and his criticism of connectionist (neural network) models of language. In ''The Language Instinct'' (1994) he popularized Noam Chomsky's work on language as an innate faculty of mind, with the twist that this faculty evolved by natural selection as a Darwinian adaptation for communication, although both ideas remain controversial (see below). He also defends the idea of a complex human nature which comprises many mental faculties that are adaptive (and is an ally of Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins in many evolutionary disputes). Another major theme in Pinker's theories is that human cognition works, in part, by combinatorial symbol-manipulation, not just associations among sensory features, as in many connectionist models.

Written work

Pinker's books, ''The Language Instinct'', ''How the Mind Works'', ''Words and Rules'', ''The Blank Slate'', and ''The Stuff of Thought'' combine cognitive science with behavioral genetics and evolutionary psychology. ''The Language Instinct'' has been criticized by Geoffrey Sampson in his book, ''The 'Language Instinct' Debate''. The assumptions underlying the nativist view have also been subject to sustained criticism in Jeffrey Elman's ''Rethinking Innateness: A Connectionist Perspective on Development (Neural Networks and Connectionist Modeling)'', which defends the connectionist approach that Pinker has criticized.

Bibliography

Books

''Language Learnability and Language Development'' (1984)

''Visual Cognition'' (1985)

''Connections and Symbols'' (1988)

''Learnability and Cognition: The Acquisition of Argument Structure'' (1989)

''Lexical and Conceptual Semantics'' (1992)

''The Language Instinct'' (1994)

''How the Mind Works'' (1997)

''Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language'' (1999)

''The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature'' (2002)

''The Best American Science and Nature Writing'' (editor and introduction author, 2004)

''Hotheads'' (an extract from ''How the Mind Works'', 2005)

''The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature'' (2007)

''The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence in History and Its Causes'' (2011)

Articles and essays

Pinker, S. (2003) "Language as an adaptation to the cognitive niche" In M. Christiansen & S. Kirby (Eds.), ''Language evolution: States of the Art'' New York: Oxford University Press.

S. Pinker (2007), "In Defense of Dangerous Ideas" ''Chicago Sun-Times'', July 15, 2007

A number of Pinker's articles at Harvard

References

External links

C-SPAN BookTV In Depth video interview with Steven Pinker, 3 hrs.

Language Instinct ?: Gradualistic Natural Selection is not a good enough explanation

Steven Pinker: The stuff of thought TED, July, 2005

Steven Pinker: A brief history of violence TED, March, 2007

Steven Pinker discusses the "Games People Play: Indirect Speech as a Window into Social Relationships"

Steven Pinker discusses the evolutionary psychology of morality in "The Moral Instinct" ''The New York Times'', January 13, 2008

Steven Pinker on The Hour

Steven Pinker 2003 TEDTalk: Chalking it up to the blank slate

;Debates

The Two Steves Debate with Steven Rose

The Science of Gender and Science Debate with Elizabeth Spelke

Radio interview on ''Philosophy Talk''

;Vitae

Steven Pinker's Website

Time magazine page on Pinker

Gen Kuroki's Website about Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker Multimedia. Extensive lists of audio and video files

"Steven Pinker: the mind reader," ''The Guardian'' Profile, November 6, 1999

Live interview with Steven Pinker on ''The Blank Slate''

Online video interview with Pinker

"Basic Instincts" - ''The Guardian'' profile by Oliver Burkeman, September 22, 2007.

Advisory board biography for the Secular Coalition for America

;Reviews

Article on The Language Instinct by Theodore Dalrymple

Louis Menand's critique of The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker, originally published in ''The New Yorker'' magazine

"Meet the Flintstones" by Simon Blackburn, a critique of The Blank Slate.

Biology vs. the Blank Slate ''Reason'' magazine interview with Pinker

Evolutionary Psychology of Religion

"The Blind Programmer", a review of ''How the Mind Works'' by Edward Oakes.

Steven Pinker to speak at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. on September 17, 2007

Category:1954 births Category:Living people Category:American atheists Category:American linguists Category:American psychologists Category:American science writers Category:Canadian atheists Category:Canadian skeptics Category:Canadian expatriate academics in the United States Category:Jewish Canadian writers Category:McGill University alumni Category:American people of Canadian-Jewish descent Category:Cognitive scientists Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Evolutionary psychologists Category:Harvard University faculty Category:Stanford University faculty Category:Jewish atheists Category:People from Montreal Category:Anglophone Quebec people Category:American humanists Category:Dawson College alumni Category:Canadian linguists Category:Canadian psychologists Category:Canadian science writers

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