Internationally bestselling fantasy author/displaced Dublin Viking DAVE RUDDEN began his arts career as a storyteller in Dublin at nights like The Monday Echo and Milk & Cookies, before realising it might be a good idea to try writing some stuff down. Regularly compared to Terry Pratchett, he has been called a "shooting star" (Eoin Colfer, Artemis Fowl) and "an author to watch" (Guardian) with "the eye and ear of an artist" (Irish Times). His "shimmering... magical" (The Guardian) trilogy, Knights of the Borrowed Dark, about a secret war between a race of misery-eating, waistcoat-wearing monsters and the warriors sworn to stop them, has been called "atmospheric, action packed, and powerfully imagined" by the Sunday Times and "brilliant... numinous... archetypal and timeless" by The LA Review of Books. He is the author of three Christmastime Doctor Who anthologies, 12 Angels Weeping, The Wintertime Paradox. His hotly anticipated Irish fantasy opus, Sister Wake, is forthcoming. He teaches creative writing at UCD (University College Dublin) and is the Artist in Residence at DCU (Dublin City University). Find out more about him here.
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ALEX DAWSON is full time faculty at Rutgers University, where he teaches creative writing (with a focus on folklore, fantasy, and horror), hosts Inside the Writers House, a video chat with acclaimed authors from all over world, and leads fable-fueled Study Abroad programs to some of the planet's most mythical places. He is the owner/creator (w. Julian Lance) of the the Rac-On-Tour, a mobile bookstore/cabinet of wonder built on the back of a flatbed farm truck, and he curates/hosts R.O.T. Fest, a bi-monthly vaudevillian variety show that puts writers onstage alongside musicians, puppeteers, and sideshow performers. His forthcoming novel, Welcome to White Hart (Little Island), has been called "magical and masterful" (Lev Grossman, The Magicians) and "a work of wizardry" (Idra Novey, Those Who Knew). Samantha Hunt (Mr. Splitfoot) called it a "wonder" and said it was "impossible not to be amazed. He is currently touring with The Devil and Daisy Dirt, an original bluegrass musical about the Jersey Devil, which features an 8' wearable puppet. Find out more about it here.
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| Dawson (w. Lance). Arthur's Seat summit, Edinburgh. |
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Julian Lance and Nikki Weaver are veterans of Winter Is Here! Workshop/Retreat, with Lance, a former student of Dawson's, functioning as retreat "deputy" from Findhorn on. Nikki enrolled as a participant for Iceland, then Oxford/Bath, before joining the team as a much valued second "deputy." Both are Rutgers graduates, currently living in Dublin, earning their MA in Creative Writing from DCU (Dublin City University).
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| Julian and Nikki at The Raven pub in Bath. |
