Laeta Kalogridis is a screenwriter and producer of television and feature films. She is a graduate of Davidson College in North Carolina; University of Texas at Austin’s Michener Center for Writers; and the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television’s MFA program.
She has been a working writer for over 20 years now, and has watched the industry evolve from a place where she was considered an interesting oddity for writing genre (the phrase “you write like a man” was used with surprising and somewhat depressing regularity) to a field where women, people of color and other marginalized voices are starting to be recognized for the depth and breadth of their talent in all areas of filmed entertainment.
She looks forward to seeing, and helping galvanize, even more change in the industry going forward. Change is good.
Her writing credits include ALEXANDER (directed by Oliver Stone), SHUTTER ISLAND (directed by Martin Scorsese), uncredited rewrites on the first X-MEN and the first TOMB RAIDER, as well as the creation of the Netflix television show ALTERED CARBON. She also created the tv shows BIRDS OF PREY and BIONIC WOMAN.
Her producing credits include the films WHITE HOUSE DOWN (directed by Roland Emmerich), THE HOUSE WITH A CLOCK IN ITS WALLS (directed by Eli Roth) and AVATAR (directed by James Cameron).
She lives in Los Angeles with her spouse, kids and a surprising number of pets, all of whom are very helpful in the writing process.
Bruce Sterling is a science fiction writer, net critic, and internationally recognized cyberspace theorist who was born in Texas. However, as a child he also spent a lot of time in India, which partly explains why Sterling is still fond of Bollywood movies. Sterling graduated with a degree in journalism from the University of Texas, Austin, in 1976. A year later, his first book, Involution Ocean, was published. However, he first started becoming famous by organizing an annual Christmas party in Austin where he would present digital art. In the 1980s, Sterling published Cheap Truth, a series of fanzines, which are magazines for fans of a particular performer, group, or form of entertainment. He did so under the surprising but revealing pen name of Vincent Omniaveritas. In Latin, “vincit omnia veritas” means “truth conquers all things.” Sterling’s writings have been very influential in the cyberpunk movement in literature, specifically the novels Heavy Weather (1994), Islands in the Net (1988), Schismatrix (1985), and The Artificial Kid(1980).
In 2003, Bruce Sterling became a professor of internet studies and science fiction at The European Graduate School / EGS where he teaches intensive Summer seminars. In 2005, he became “visionary in residence” at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. His list of accolades include the Campbell Award in 1989 for his novel Islands in the Net; the Hugo Award in 1997 and 1999 for his novelettes Bicycle Repairman and Taklamakan, respectively; the Hayakawa Award in 1999 also for Taklamakan; and the Clarke Award in 2000 for his novel Distraction.
As well as being a leading science fiction writer, Bruce Sterling has been involved with numerous projects and written several books of futurist theory. He was the founder of the Dead Media Project, an on-line reliquary, or archive, to forgotten, or dead, media technologies.
Bruce Sterling founded the Viridian Design Movement, an environmental aesthetic movement founded on the ideas of global citizenship, environmental design, and techno-progressiveness; has written and blogged extensively; and has released a number of anthologies, including Visionary in Residence: Stories (2006), A Good Old-Fashioned Future (1999), Globalhead (1992), Crystal Express (1989), and Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology (1986).
Bio adapted from The European Graduate School
