Jack Dann

Jack Dann (born February 15, 1945) is an American writer best known for his science fiction, as well as an editor and a writing teacher, who has lived in Australia since 1994.

He has published over seventy books, the majority being as editor or co-editor of story anthologies in the science fiction, fantasy and horror genres.

He has published nine novels, numerous shorter works of fiction, essays, and poetry, and his books have been translated into thirteen languages.

His work, which includes fiction in the science fiction, fantasy, horror, magical realism, and historical and alternative history genres, has been compared to Jorge Luis Borges, Roald Dahl, Lewis Carroll, J. G. Ballard, and Philip K. Dick.

Jack Dann was born to a Jewish family in New York State in 1945 and grew up in Johnson City, New York.

His father was an attorney and a judge.

Dann describes himself as having been "a troublesome child in a very small town", and in his teens associated with a local gang.

Following an incident during which gang members let off fireworks, which led to injuries, his parents enrolled him in a military academy, which he chose against the alternative option of a reform school, and where he remained for two years.

Subsequently, he commenced theater studies at Hofstra University in New York City.

In the late 1960s, he encountered a number of now well-known writers and editors in the science fiction and fantasy field, including George Zebrowski, Pamela Sargent, Gardner Dozois, Jack Haldeman and Joe Haldeman, two of whom, Zebrowski and Sargent, also lived in Binghamton and were students with Dann at Binghamton University (then known as SUNY Binghamton).

However, in 1965 he contracted peritonitis after a poorly performed operation for appendicitis.

He was considered unlikely to survive by his doctors, and spent four months recovering in hospital, at one stage sharing a ward with members of the Mafia who had been injured in a gun battle.

He attributes a major change in outlook to his survival, and began a search for a fulfilling and meaningful vocation, which eventually led to him taking up writing.

Following discharge from hospital, he moved to Binghamton, New York where he continued his studies.

He was awarded a BA in social and political science in 1968 from Binghamton University and later undertook postgraduate studies in law at St John's Law School from 1969 to 1971.

He lived in Binghamton for much of the next 30 years.

Dann was soon collaborating with Zebrowski, "sitting on opposite sides of a table in his dining room and writing on an old manual typewriter" and in 1970 sold two of these collaborations, "Dark, Dark the Dead Star" and "Traps," to the magazine Worlds of If, with 'Traps' being Dann's first published work when it appeared in March 1970.

Dann had previously sold a story to Damon Knight for Orbit, but this took almost two years to be published.

Zebrowski also introduced Dann to the world of science fiction conventions and fandom, a culture he has been involved in ever since.

Initially he combined continued sales of his stories with work as a door-to-door salesman, which began after a commission for his first novel, Starhiker, was not finalized by his prospective publisher and he had become indebted, expecting payment for the piece.

While continuing his writing, he moved on from sales to commence a business career, starting companies in the advertising, cable and insurance industries, among others and later working as a business consultant.

He was editor of the SFWA Bulletin from 1970 to 1975.

He was assistant editor 1970–1972, and managing editor 1973–1975.

It was one of the most acclaimed American anthologies of the 1970s, and was later followed by More Wandering Stars: Outstanding Stories of Jewish Fantasy and Science Fiction (1981).

He also taught writing at Cornell University in 1973.

He published his first book as editor, Wandering Stars: An Anthology of Jewish Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1974, and his first novel, Starhiker, in 1977.

His first published anthology was Wandering Stars: An Anthology of Jewish Fantasy and Science Fiction (1974), collecting stories by Jewish Authors and/or relating to Jewish themes.

The volume celebrated a strong Jewish tradition of fantasy in literature and also brought attention to Jewish writers in the field, some of whom had not been previously widely recognised for their contributions to its genesis.

His long term loyalty to the town which persisted until his move to Australia in 1994 earned him the description of 'the hermit of Binghamton' among his friends.

He was introduced to genre fiction, and in particular science fiction, from an early age, as his father had a collection of science fiction books which lined the walls of Dann's bedroom and he recalls "gazing at the colorful covers before I could read."

In 1994 he moved to Melbourne to join Janeen Webb, a Melbourne science fiction critic, academic, and writer, whom he met at a conference in San Francisco and married in 1995.

It was the second marriage for each of them.

He has since collaborated with Webb on several writing and editing projects and the couple are well known in Australian speculative fiction culture.

He currently lives on a farm overlooking the sea near Foster, in the Gippsland region of Victoria, but also typically spends some period of each year in Los Angeles and New York.

He has been a consulting editor for Tor Books since 1994.

Of the more than 70 books he has published, most have been themed fiction anthologies in the fantasy, science fiction, and horror genres, of which he has been editor, or co-editor.

His anthologies tend to be prefaced by his essays on the theme of the anthology and the writers represented therein.

Dann also co-edited, with Grania Davidson Davis, Everybody Has Somebody in Heaven: Essential Jewish Tales of the Spirit, a collection of short fiction by Avram Davidson, a Hugo and multi World Fantasy Award-winning Jewish American writer of science fiction, fantasy and crime, which was published in October 2000.

In 2016 he received a Ph.D. from the University of Queensland, School of Communication and Arts.

His dissertation was titled "Shadows in the Stone and a Study of Historical Divergence".