James Morrow, a Guest of Honor at Readercon 17, has been writing fiction ever since shortly after his seventh birthday, when he dictated "The Story of the Dog Family" to his mother, who dutifully typed it up and bound the pages with yarn. This three-page, six-chapter fantasy is still in the author's private archives. Upon reaching adulthood, Morrow channeled his storytelling drive in the direction of SF and fantasy, churning out nine novels, two novellas, and enough short stories to fill three collections. His oeuvre's conspicuous adequacy is attested to by two World Fantasy Awards, two Nebula Awards, the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire, the Prix Utopia, and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.

Morrow's recent efforts include The Philosopher's Apprentice (William Morrow/Perennial, 2007), which he describes as "Frankenstein meets Lolita on the Island of Dr. Moreau," and The Last Witchfinder (William Morrow/Perennial/QPBC/SFBC, 2006; Tiptree Award honor list, Locus Award finalist, John W. Campbell Memorial Award nominee, BSFA Award finalist, New York Times Editors Choice), a postmodern historical epic about the birth of the scientific worldview. As an anthologist, Jim has compiled three Nebula volumes (1992, 1993, and 1994) plus The SFWA European Hall of Fame (Tor, 2007, Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire finalist), an omnibus of sixteen Continental SF stories in English translation, which he edited in collaboration with his wife Kathy. An earlier Jim and Kathy project, a set of Tolkien Lesson Plans (2004) for secondary school teachers, appears on the Houghton Mifflin website.

Among his circumscribed and but devoted readership, Morrow is best known for the Godhead Trilogy, a sardonic meditation on the death of God, comprising Towing Jehovah (Harcourt Brace/Harvest/SFBC, 1994; World Fantasy Award, Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire, Hugo nominee, Nebula finalist), Blameless in Abaddon (Harcourt Brace/Harvest/SFBC, 1996; New York Times Notable Book), and The Eternal Footman (Harcourt Brace/Harvest, 1999; Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire finalist). His other novels include The Wine of Violence (Holt, Rinehart and Winston/Ace/SFBC, 1981), The Continent of Lies (Holt, Rinehart and Winston/Baen, 1984), This Is the Way the World Ends (Henry Holt/Ace/SFBC, 1986; Nebula finalist, John W. Campbell runner-up), and Only Begotten Daughter (Morrow/Ace/SFBC, 1990; World Fantasy Award, Nebula finalist, John W. Campbell runner-up).

In the sphere of short fiction, Morrow's work includes the Nebula Award-winning novella City of Truth (Legend (UK)/St. Martin's/Harvest/SFBC, 1991) and the Nebula Award-winning story "The Deluge" (Full Spectrum 1, Aronica and McCarthy, eds.). Other Morrow stories have appeared originally in Synergy 1 and 2 (Zebrowski, ed.), God: An Anthology of Fiction (Hayward and Lefanu, eds.), What Might Have Been 1, 2, 3, and 4 (Benford and Greenberg, eds.), There Won't Be War (McAllister and Harrison, eds.), Full Spectrum 3 (Aronica, Mitchell, and Stout, eds.), Embrace the Mutation (Schafer and Sheehan, eds.), Mars Probes (Crowther, ed.), Conqueror Fantastic (Sargent, ed.), Conjunctions 39: The New Wave Fabulists, (Straub, ed.), Conjunctions 50: Fifty Contemporary Writers (Morrow, ed.), Conjunctions 52: Betwixt the Between (Morrow and Evanson, eds.), Conjunctions 56: Terra Incognita (Morrow, ed.), Extraordinary Engines (Gevers, ed.), The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories (Watson and Whates, eds.), Is Anybody Out There? (Gevers and Helpern, eds.), and Ghosts by Gaslight (Gevers and Dann, eds.). His collections are Swatting at the Cosmos (Pulphouse, 1990), Bible Stories for Adults (Harcourt Brace/Harvest/SFBC, 1996; World Fantasy finalist), and The Cat's Pajamas and Other Stories (Tachyon, 2004).

A full-time fiction writer, the author makes his home in State College with his wife, his son, an enigmatic sheepdog named Molly, and a loopy beagle called Harley. In 2009 Tachyon Books published Jim's stand-alone historical novella, Shambling Towards Hiroshima (Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, Nebula finalist, Hugo nominee, Locus Award finalist). Set in 1945, this affectionate satire dramatizes the U.S. Navy's attempts to leverage a Japanese surrender via a biological weapon that strangely anticipates Godzilla. Jim recently burdened his agent with the manuscript of Galapagos Regained, a long novel about the coming of the Darwinian worldview.