World Fantasy 2006 is delighted to present this year's guests of honor:

Dave Duncan was born in Scotland in 1933 but has lived in Western Canada since 1955. He worked as a petroleum geologist for thirty years, ultimately running his own consulting business, specializing in computer analysis of subsurface stratigraphy. In 1986, he made a sudden and complete career change to full-time writing when Del Rey purchased A Rose-Red City. This year marked the twentieth anniversary of that first sale, and also saw publication of his thirty-seventh novel.

He has written science fiction, historical, and young adult, but his best-known works are fantasy series: The Seventh Sword, A Man of His Word, A Handful of Men, The Great Game, Tales of the King's Blades and Chronicles of the King's Blades. This year's Children of Chaos began a duology to be concluded by Mother of Lies in 2007. He enjoys devising new systems of magic and working out the effects they would have on human (or non-human) society.

He and his wife of forty-seven years, Janet, recently moved to Victoria, British Columbia. They have a son and two daughters, plus a spin-off series of four grandchildren.

Dave reports that he is currently working on two very different fantasy series for different publisher -- one storyline set in Venice around 1600 and the other set on no world at all. In what's left of his waking hours he reads a lot of history and science, and recently has been over-indulging in home renovations, until he has now run out of home to renovate.

Robin Hobb is the author of three well-received fantasy trilogies: The Farseer Trilogy (Assassin's Apprentice, Royal Assassin, and Assassin's Quest), The Liveship Traders Trilogy (Ship of Magic, Mad Ship and Ship of Destiny) and the Tawny Man Trilogy (Fool's Errand, Golden Fool, and Fool's Fate). By 2008, she hopes to make that four. The first book of her Soldier Son trilogy, ShamanÕs Crossing, was published by Harper Collins in 2005. Book two, Forest Mage, appears this year, and the concluding volume, Renegade's Magic is scheduled for 2007.

Robin Hobb lives and works in Tacoma, Washington, and has been a professional writer for over 30 years. Her home on the Internet can be found at www.robinhobb.com. In addition to writing, her interests include gardening, mushrooming, and beachcombing. She and her husband Fred have three grown children and one teenager, and three grand-children. She also writes as Megan Lindholm, and works under that name have been finalists for the Hugo award, the Nebula Award, and the Endeavor award. She has twice won an Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Readers' Award. For more information about Megan Lindholm and her work, please visit www.meganlindholm.com

Bradley Denton was born in Wichita, Kansas, in 1958. He earned a B.A. in Astronomy and English from the University of Kansas in 1980 and an M.A. in English from KU in 1984. Also in 1984, his first professional story appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. This story, "The Music of the Spheres," was part of a creative-writing Master's thesis written under the direction of noted science fiction and fantasy author (and KU professor) James Gunn.

Brad's novels include Wrack & Roll (1986), Buddy Holly Is Alive and Well on Ganymede (1991), Blackburn (1993), Lunatics (1996), and Laughin' Boy (2005). His short fiction has been collected in One Day Closer to Death (1998) and in the 1995 World Fantasy Award-winning volumes A Conflagration Artist and The Calvin Coolidge Home for Dead Comedians. More recently, his 2004 F&SF novella Sergeant Chip was both a Hugo Award nominee and a Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award winner.

Brad lives with his wife, Barbara, on a semi-rural acre in Manchaca, Texas with three dogs, a cat, several dozen hummingbirds, countless squirrels, and an ever-growing collection of drums and guitars.

Artist and illustrator, John Jude Palencar, is known throughout the world for his distinctive, ethereal style and unique conceptualization. For more than 25 years he has received honors for his contributions to the field of illustration including Gold and Silver Medals from the Society of Illustrators, two Gold Book Awards from Spectrum, and Best Hardcover and two best Paperback Awards from the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists for three consecutive years.

His work has appeared on hundreds of book covers in over thirty countries. Renowned authors, H.P. Lovecraft, Ursula LeGuin, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Octavia Butler, Stephen King, Charles deLint and Christopher Paolini are but a few. TIME Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, National Geographic Magazine and Television, and the Philadelphia Opera have employed his artistic talents for their publications and productions. Most recently, his cover paintings for Eragon and Eldest, by Christopher Paolini, has appeared on the New York Times Childrens Best Seller List for the past year. An influence on the young prolific author, Christopher Paolini named Eragon's birthplace; "Palancar Valley" after John Jude (see chapter three - Eragon).

He has been a featured artist in IDEA Magazine in Japan and enjoys an on-going artist-in-residence program in County Kerry, Ireland. There, his paintings were included in a special exhibition entitled, "Images of Ireland", held at the National Museum in Dublin. He also donated his work to raise funds for the Cill Rialaig Art Project, an international artistÕs retreat at the 6th Annual Ambassador's Golf Classic held in Waterville, County Kerry, Ireland.

Besides being an active artist and illustrator, he has served on the juries of several international art competitions.

His work was also featured in an exhibition entitled, "As Seen From Ohio: Nine Illustrators", at the Centro Cultural Recoleta in Argentina, The Spectrum Retrospective Exhibition held at The Society of Illustrators Museum of American Illustration in New York city and a recent solo exhibit at the Laguna College of Art & Design in Laguna Beach, CA.. John Jude also has participated in dozens of group exhibitions at colleges and universities throughout the country.

His paintings are in numerous corporate and private collections in the United States and abroad.

For more information on the artist please visit: www.johnjudepalencar.com A 2007 calendar of John's work will be available exclusively from Barnes & Noble as a well as a book titled: Origins - The Art of John Jude Palencar published by Underwood Books (available late 2006).

Gary Gianni (b. 1954) was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. He was an illustrator whose work has appeared in numerous books, comics, and newspapers. He was received the Eisner Award and the Spectrum Award for his work, and six years of his career were devoted to illustrating the stories of Robert E. Howard, featuring Conan, Solomon Kane, and Bran Mak Morn for publisher Wandering Star. Aside from writing and drawing his own comic strip titled Corpus Monstrum, he has worked on other comics, such as The Shadow, Batman, Indiana Jones, and Tom Strong.

Gianni has produced artwork for a number of books - Another Chance to Get It Right by Andrew Vachss, The Lost Adventure by Joe R. Landsdale and Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Slab by Harlan Ellison, Moby Dick by Herman Melville, Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne, The Last Pin by Donald Wandrei, Gateway of the Monster by William Hope Hodgson, and The Stories by O. Henry. He has also illustrated "Thurnley Abbey" by Perceval Landon for The Dark Horse Book of Hauntings, "Mother of Toads" by Clark Aston Smith for The Dark Horse Book of Witchcraft, and "Old Garfield's Heart" by Robert E. Howard for The Dark Horse Book of the Dead. In 2004, Gianni took over drawing the syndicated newspaper adventure strip "Prince Valiant" from John Cullen Murphy.