The Woman and the War Baby

Now Available from Blue Begonia Press
Reading: Richard Hugo House
1634 11th Avenue
Seattle, WA 98122
206-322-7030
Sunday, October 26th, 2008, 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM

War Baby

Poetry by Bill Ransom
Cello by Steve Cifka

Two poems, "Nebaj" and "Nicaragua, 1987," from War Baby, are available in MP3 format at Oregon Literary Review.

To Order War Baby

Short Stories Online

"Trillium"
"Smoking Proverbs"

Now available online at Oregon Literary Review.

Bill Ransom was born in Puyallup, Washington, in 1945, and he began full-time employment at the age of eleven as an agricultural worker. He attended Washington State University on track and boxing scholarships, and the University of Puget Sound on a track scholarship. He received his BA in Sociology and English Education from the University of Washington in 1970.

From 1965 to 1970 Ransom worked as an expeditor on a Quick Engine Change team, building and repairing military and commercial jet engines. He studied American Minority Literature and Old and Middle English on an NDEA Title IV fellowship at the University of Nevada, Reno, then began a pilot project with the Poetry in the Schools program in Washington state. He received his MA in English from Utah State University. He founded and directed the popular Port Townsend Writers Conference for Centrum and appeared in two feature films: An Officer and a Gentleman and The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (CBS).

He was a firefighter, firefighting basic training instructor, and CPR instructor for six years; and an Advanced Life Support Emergency Medical Technician for ten years in Jefferson County, Washington. He volunteers with humanitarian groups in Central America.

Ransom has published six novels, six poetry collections, numerous short stories and articles. Learning the Ropes (Utah State University Press), a collection of poetry, short fiction and essays, was billed as "a creative autobiography." Three of his short stories from this collection have been selections of the PEN/NEA Syndicated Fiction Project, often called "The Pulitzer Prize of the Short Story": "Uncle Hungry," "What Elena Said" and "Learning the Ropes." These appeared in the Sunday magazine editions of major newspapers around the country.

His poetry has been nominated for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

His most recent novel is Burn (Ace, 1995), a sequel to ViraVax (Ace, 1993). Recent poetry is in Puerto del Sol, Spillway and Petroglyph. Jaguar, a 1990 Ace paperback, came out on the internet via Alexandria Digital Literature in 1999, and was the first novel to outstrip short stories for the bestseller slot. Jaguar remained on the bestseller list from January through June, 2000, and is now available at fictionwise.com; Wildside Press re-released it as a physical book in 2001. With Richard Landerman, he wrote screenplays of his novels Jaguar, ViraVax and Burn.

Bill juried the 2007 Artists Trust Gap Grants and the Richard Hugo House short story contest, "Voices in Wartime."

Bill Ransom is married with an adult daughter, stepdaughter and three grandchildren. He writes and splits his home between western Washington and southern Utah, where his wife teaches. He is currently Academic Dean of Curriculum at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.

Contact:

Bill Ransom
1001 Cooper Point Rd. SW
#140-129
Olympia, WA 98502
360-267-0299
Fax: 360-705-2735

Email: wordman_production_co@yahoo.com

Or: Ralph Vicinanza, Ltd.

Early Pictures

Schedule

Blue Begonia Press
Reading: Richard Hugo House
1634 11th Avenue
Seattle, WA 98122
206-322-7030
Sunday, October 26th, 2008, 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM

Previous Appearances

Novels:

Burn (1995)

"...a delightful romp with comic-book attitudes and plenty of flair ... Readers looking for spectacle will find that this novel delivers more 'bang for the buck than most."

— Publishers Weekly

"Chilling, thought provoking, and very real, Burn is an unforgettable near-future nightmare that moves Bill Ransom to the front ranks of master storytellers who mold scientific fact into brilliant speculative fiction."

Excerpt

Viravax (1993)

"A classy, imaginative thriller and a roaring freight train of a read ... Bill Ransom enters the select company of Tom Clancy, Ken Follett, and Martin Cruz Smith."

— Lucius Shepard;

"ViraVax is a technothriller with strong echoes of both Michael Crichton and Tom Clancy."

— Chicago Tribune;

ViraVax dispenses plenty of action and thrills in a suitably frightening cautionary tale."

— The San Francisco Chronicle.

Excerpt

Jaguar

Now available on-line at fictionwise.com.

Jaguar was Alexandria Digital Literature's bestseller for March and April 2000.

Jaguar is also available in trade paperback for $16.00 (S&H included).

In waking life, he is a combat vet with a mysterious sleep disorder, confined to a V.A. hospital bed. When he sleeps, he roams the plains of another world, invading the minds of the people as they dream and forcing them to do his will. They call him.... Jaguar.

In both worlds, there are those who know the Jaguar's secret. They are learning to link their minds across the void between worlds, following the dreampaths the Jaguar created — all the way back to where his body lies helpless... an easy target for their justice.

"An intense and intriguing tale that will keep you riveted."

— Rave Reviews

"A helluva good book."

— Science Fiction Review

The Pandora Series

Bill Ransom co-authored three Ace Science Fiction novels with Frank Herbert, following up on Herbert's Destination: Void. The Pandora series included: "Songs of a Sentient Flute" in the anthology Medea; The Jesus Incident (1978), The Lazarus Effect (1983) and The Ascension Factor (1988) from the Putnam/Berkley Publishing Group.

The Jesus Incident (1978)

Frank Herbert, author of the world-famous Dune, was one of today's leading futurist thinkers. Bill Ransom is a poet, a Pulitzer and National Book Award nominee. Together, in a bold and unprecedented collaboration, they crafted a book that combines the outward sweep of SF at its farseeing best with the intense inward laser of the poet's eye. As demanding and spectacular as the vision it serves, The Jesus Incident is as much a voyage as a novel: a breakthrough work of speculative fiction that leaps to the end of evolution, to the surface of a poisoned planet as profoundly realized as Dune's Arrakis...to witness mankind and its creations trading places in a ceremony that illuminates the shimmering connections between free will and destiny that will determine the ultimate course of our future.

Excerpts

The Lazarus Effect (1983)

In The Jesus Incident, Herbert and Ransom introduced Ship, an artificial intelligence that believed it was God, abandoning its unworthy human cargo on the all-sea world of Pandora. Now centuries have passed. The descendants of humanity, split into Mermen and Islanders, must reunite... because Pandora's original owner is returning to life!

Excerpts

The Ascension Factor (1988)

The sea-world of Pandora, so unlike waterless Dune, is similar in one fateful way--its struggle for survival. An awesome conflict, one that will either transform or destroy the planet, has divided the people of Pandora: its dictator, the sadistic Raja Flattery... its resistance, the anarchistic Shadows (who may or may not exist)...and its promised savior, the beautiful near-human Crista Galli, who was raised undersea. Now the remnants of humanity, having mastered the Void and transformed new worlds, depart once more for the waiting stars. But this time, Man does not go alone.

Excerpt

Learning the Ropes: A Creative Autobiography (1995)

Poetry, essays, and short stories
Utah State University Press
Logan, Utah.

"Bill Ransom's Learning the Ropes is to autobiographies what Gulliver's Travels is to travel manuals. The genre cannot hold it.... In this innovative collage, Ransom is among the writers who forge into new territory, who twist our expectation and 'make it new'."

— Jim Heynen

"With mind-language as rapier and heart-language as salve, Bill Ransom duels the Beast — and soothes its noisy wounds."

— Tom Robbins

"...this writer's imagination parallels the life he lives among humankind: and it is a life as a quest. The quest is for knowledge, for understanding of mans inhumanity to man, and for transcendence beyond the insistent limitations of human possibility."

— Jim Heynen.

Excerpt

To order

Food Chain

"Nebaj" and "Nicaragua, 1987" from War Baby
MP3 format at Oregon Literary Review.

Semaphore (1993)

The Single Man Looks at Winter

Last Call

Last Rites

Waving Arms at the Blind

Finding True North & Critter (1974)

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Updated Thursday September 25 2008

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