Orson Scott Card

Orson Scott Card, a prolific and best-selling author, is best known today for his seminal science fiction novel, Ender's Game, which he proclaims was "the launching pad of my career". Card is a descendant of Charles Ora Card, a son-in-law of Brigham Young, and the founder of Cardston, Alberta, which became the first Mormon pioneer settlement in Canada; he was born on August 24, 1951, in Richland, Washington, but was raised in Santa Clara, California, as well as Mesa, Arizona, and Orem, Utah. He served as an LDS mission in Brazil. After graduating from Brigham Young University, he spent a year in a PH.D. program at the University of Notre Dame. He currently resides in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Though Card has worked in numerous genres, it was through science fiction novels such as Hot Sleep and Capitol that he received his launch into the publishing industry. Both Ender's Game and its sequel, Speaker for the Dead, were awarded the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award, making Card the only author (as of 2006) to receive both of science fiction's top prizes in consecutive years. Card continued the Ender series with Xenocide, Children of the Mind, Ender's Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets, and Shadow of the Giant, released in 2005. Card has also announced several new projects, including a "Christmas in Battle School" book, a book that would connect the Shadow series and the Speaker series together, and a novel that takes place after Shadow of the Giant and before Card's short story Investment Counselor. Furthermore, Card has recently announced that Ender's Game will soon be made into a feature-length film.

He has also branched out into contemporary fiction, such as Lost Boys, Treasure Box, and Enchantment. His other works include the novelization of the James Cameron film The Abyss, the alternate histories The Tales of Alvin Maker and Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus, the comic book Ultimate Iron Man for Marvel Comics' Ultimate Marvel Universe series, and Robota, a collaboration with Star Wars artist Doug Chiang. In addition to his novels and short stories, Card has had an active career as a nonfiction writer. He helped create the scripts for the Dramatized Church History series radio play productions re-telling the story of the LDS church from its inception to the mid 1980s.

Card's writing is dominated chiefly by detailed characterization and moral issues such as nobility, deceny, happiness, and goodness, issues that he believes "matter in the real world, but which can only be addressed, in their purity, in fiction." Some of his novels feature stories explicitly drawn from scripture or Mormon church history. For example, Stone Tables is about the life of the Biblical prophet Moses, while his Women of Genesis novels address the lives of Old Testament women such as Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Leah. His The Folk Of The Fringe stories and Saints are about Latter-day Saint pioneers. In some of his other writings the influence of his Mormon beliefs is less obvious. For example, parallels can be drawn between Card's Homecoming and Alvin Maker sagas and the story line in the Book of Mormon and the life of LDS founder Joseph Smith, Jr.

He and his wife Kristine are the parents of five children: Geoffrey (a game designer at Amaze Entertainment as well as a published author in his own right), Emily (an actress, audiobook reader and producer, and writer, who adapted his short story A Sepulchre of Songs for the stage in Posing as People), Charlie Ben (deceased; his cerebral palsy shows up in some of Card's fiction, most notably the Homecoming series and Folk of the Fringe), Zina Margaret, and Erin Louisa (deceased). The children are named for the authors Chaucer, Brontë and Dickinson, Dickens, Mitchell, and Alcott.