Nobody had ever won the Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel two years in a row, until Orson Scott Card received them for Ender’s Game and its sequel, Speaker for the Dead, in 1986 and 1987. The third novel in the series, Xenocide, was published in 1991, and the fourth and seemingly final volume, Children of the Mind, was published in August 1996. However, the Ender cycle now includes the new parallel series that began with Ender’s Shadow in 1999, followed by Shadow of the Hegemon in 2001, and continued with Shadow Puppets in 2002. Warner Brothers also recently announced that it has made a deal for director Wolfgang Petersen to bring Ender’s Game to the big screen. A dozen of Card’s plays have been produced in regional theatre, including the musical Barefoot to Zion (written in collaboration with his composer brother, Arlen L. Card), which played to sold-out houses in Utah as part of the Mormon Church’s celebration of the sesquicentennial of the entry of the pioneers into Salt Lake Valley. His historical novel, Saints, has been an underground hit for several years, and Card has written hundreds of audio plays and a dozen scripts for animated video plays for the family market. Born in Richland, Washington, Card grew up in California, Arizona, and Utah. He lived in Brazil for two years as an unpaid missionary for the Mormon Church. He received degrees from Brigham Young University (1975) and the University of Utah (1981). He currently lives in Greensboro, North Carolina. He and his wife, Kristine, are the parents of five children: Geoffrey, Emily, Charles, Zina Margaret, and Erin Louisa (named for Chaucer, Bronte and Dickinson, Dickens, Mitchell, and Alcott, respectively)
EDITOR’S NOTE: Scott was a great and early influence on me. We wrote one musical together, but we produced and performed in many works together back in the Seventies — our time at University, and a little bit beyond.
For background and current information on Scott, please visit his site:
MUSICAL AUTHORED
Other shows (Not currently available)
- Of Gideon (Play)
- The Apostate (Play)
- Across Five Summers (Play)
- Fresh Courage Take (Play
- Stone Tables (Musical)
- Father, Mother, Mother and Mom (Musical)
- Barefoot To Zion (Musical)
- Elders and Sisters (Musical)
- Lost Boys (Play)