© Steven Utley.

Steve Utley first broke into print in the seventh grade with a poem about Hannibal (the Carthaginian general, not Samuel L. Clemens's hometown), but it wasn't until his freshman year of high school, when he discovered Mars -- the Mars of science fiction's two great romantics, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Ray Bradbury -- that he somehow understood that he, too, must grow up to be A Writer, or at least a rich and famous person.

This desire eventually led him to Texas (from Tennessee of all places), where he fell in with other young writers, including Lisa Tuttle, Howard Waldrop, and Bruce Sterling. Although his heart remains in Austin, family matters have brought him back to the environs of Nashville, smack on the buckle of the Bible Belt. He leads a quiet life, surrounded by his books, his cats and his dangerously inbred neighbors.

His work as a Writer (not quite so rich or famous) has been collected in three collections This Impatient Ape, Career Moves of The Gods (both from Anamnesis Press) and Ghost Seas (Ticonderoga Publications).

Illustrations are © Jaxon Renick.