Jane Welch
An interview with Katharine Mills
On major writing influences:
"J.R.R. Tolkien for the breadth of his world, extraordinary imagination and introducing me to runes. David Eddings for having such a great control of language. Shakespeare for his beautiful tragedies which so clearly illustrate the timeless nature of human motivation. Thomas Hardy for his exploration of human suffering and richness of characterisation."

A Conversation With Scott Westerfeld
An interview with Kevin Stone
On writing:
"I come from a big family in Texas, in which story telling was very valued. And I've always written, as far back as I can remember. But the career move came from being fired, in that 'here's some money, go away' way. I set myself the goal of living cheaply for a year, and getting published in that time frame. Of course, it wound up taking almost ten years."

A Conversation With Robert Freeman Wexler
An interview with Jeff VanderMeer
On the fantastic in the real world:
"There can be a dislocation between inner, creative life and the surrounding world, between being a writer and earning a living doing other things, between thinking creatively and listening to the surrounding clang of minutia. Dislocations of feeling like an outsider, of being an atheist Jew in an increasingly conservative Christian country. Transforming these dislocations into the literature of the fantastic is a way enabling myself to cope with the world."

A Conversation With Leslie What
An interview with Trent Walters
On ghosts:
"I think my fascination with ghosts stems from my desire to interact with the past. Ghosts are a metaphor for memory and remembrance and metaphorically connect our world to the world we cannot know about. So, in that sense, it seems that ghosts are the perfect literary device for looking at religion -- because for many of us, spirituality is somewhere outside of our day-to-day reality."

A Conversation With Rick Wilber
An interview with Trent Walters
On writing what you know:
"Different people go about writing in different ways. But, for me, some of the things I know through personal experience -- whether it's from running my summer school in Ireland or from playing basketball every Sunday with my boy or from recalling a lucky childhood sitting in the dugout in Fenway Park with Ted Williams and my dad -- seem worth sharing directly (through essays) or indirectly (through fiction) through the storytelling process."

A Conversation With Conrad Williams
An interview with Jeff VanderMeer
On a preference for writing short stories or novels:
"I prefer writing short stories, because I know how to do it. Novels are still frightening for me, despite having written six since I was 21. I don't think I'm the only writer who frets over books like that. I want to be a novelist and aim to write a novel every year, but I think it's one of those things that take time and practise to master. I'd like to think I'm producing good work now, but that I'll really hit my stride in another ten years or so."

A Conversation With Liz Williams
An interview with Nick Gevers
On beginning to read SF and fantasy:
"I've been reading fantasy for as long as I can remember, and there were some excellent books around when I was a child. As for the SF, my mother brought Jack Vance's Planet of Adventure series back from the library when I was 11, and that was that -- I was hooked. I read the unfortunately named Servants of the Wankh from cover to cover, then went straight back and read it again."

A Conversation With Sean Williams and Shane Dix
An interview with Lisa DuMond
On how books take shape:
"We prefer to come up with an outline together, then I go off to write the first pass, pretty much on my own. Then Shane gets the first draft to kick into shape. When that's done, I get one final pass over it to make sure the styles are consistent. Then it's done."

Who Said Size Matters?!: an interview with Tad Williams
conducted by Sandy Auden
"Books like mine are different from standard novels, but not because of size so much as because they are several consecutive volumes that comprise one story. That means that I'm forced to commit to things very early in the story that will actually be published (and thus darn hard to edit) long before I'm actually writing the ending."

A Conversation With Tad Williams
An interview with Victoria Strauss
On switching from fantasy to SF:
"I've always been a reader of science fiction and fantasy, and most of my favourite writers in the genre -- Theodore Sturgeon, Ray Bradbury, Ursula LeGuin, Fritz Leiber, Roger Zelazny, just to name a few -- have crossed back and forth over the boundary without even considering it particularly. I think it's only in these latter days of marketing-driven fiction that the distinction has begun to seem important to people. So I felt perfectly comfortable writing science fiction, especially focused on a subject I knew something about -- computers, multimedia, virtual reality. Basically, though, it was the story idea that grabbed me, and when I was thinking about how to put it all together, VR seemed like the obvious way to make it work."

A Conversation With Walter Jon Williams
An interview with Jayme Lynn Blaschke
On writing historical fiction:
"There's a certain amount of overlap between the skills necessary to write SF and historical fiction, which is the ability to convey a world that is not the world of the present. As I was also writing adventure novels that took place on ships, I was also able to hone the ability to convey the intricacies of an alien technology -- in this case, square-rigged sailing ships of war -- to the reader without overly burdening them with exposition."

A Conversation With Chet Williamson
An interview with Lisa DuMond
On competition:
Hundreds of companies (including publishers) have cannibalized each other in recent years, a practice that will only increase and intensify in its feeding frenzy.

A Conversation With Jack Williamson
An interview with Jayme Lynn Blaschke
On being remembered in 100 years:
"I'm not sure I'll be remembered at all. I pioneered some of the science fictional themes such as anti-matter. I invented the term 'terraforming,' which seems to have gotten into the language -- at least into the dictionary. I was the first person to use the term 'genetic engineering' so far as Webster's Collegiate Dictionary knows."

Waiting Out The New Millennium With F. Paul Wilson
An interview with Lisa DuMond
On vampires:
"I think they're more fun as nasty, obligate parasites with no redeeming qualities. I also like all the old-fashioned trappings of the vampire myth: repelled by garlic and crucifixes, scarred by holy water, killed by sunlight or beheading or a stake through the heart."

A Conversation With Gene Wolfe
An interview with Nick Gevers
On how his characters speak:
"I listen to people, what they actually say as well as what they mean, and how they say it. Both Patera Remora and Patera Incus speak as slight exaggerations of people I've met. Very few people really talk alike. Both my daughters were raised by my wife, so it would be reasonable to suppose that all three would speak pretty much alike. They don't. Their characteristic modes of expression are quite different."

In Search of Myths and Heroes -- A Conversation With Michael Wood
An interview with Sandy Auden
On the myth of Arthur:
"Look at King Arthur -- he first appears in the 9th Century as a Welsh freedom fighter, fighting against the Anglo-Saxons; and then by the 12th Century he's the Napoleon of the Middle Ages and marches on Rome and all this kind of stuff. Another 100 years go by and he's this chivalrous figure of romance with knights and round tables and spiritual quests. To the Tudors he's a political figure, and to the Victorians he becomes something else. The same character has the name Arthur but the story has changed out of all recognition."

A Conversation With John C. Wright
An interview with Nick Gevers
On his education:
"I went to St. John's College in Annapolis, which is the home of the "Great Books" program. There are no tests and no grades at that school, and no lecture classes. There is never a time when the student is not allowed to speak. There are no secondary texts; we do not read some blowhard second-guessing what the geniuses of history thought; we read the geniuses in the original."

A Conversation With Sean Wright
An interview with David Hebblethwaite
On mapping Jaarfindor:
"The stories that come from Jaarfindor can't be mapped out as a whole, perfect picture. Why? Because I'm in the process of discovering what lurks in the cities and countryside, in the deserts and oceans, meeting new characters in exciting and challenging situations. I'm an artist, and as such I'm obsessed to explore the weird space of my imagination, writing down what I find there, making numerous pen and ink sketches as aide-memoirs. I constantly surprise and worry myself. Every time I venture there I find myself asking a simple yet for me a profound question: are you certain you witnessed that? Much of what I write isn't easy to quantify or label."