Garry Kilworth

Garry Douglas Kilworth (born 5 July 1941 in York, England) is a British science fiction, fantasy and historical novelist, and a former Royal Air Force cryptographer.

Early life Kilworth was raised partly in Aden, Yemen, the son of an airman. Having an itinerant father, he travelled widely, both in Britain and abroad, and attended more than 20 different schools before the age of 15. Kilworth is a graduate of King's College London.

Career Kilworth went to military school and served in the Royal Air Force for 18 years as a cryptographer.

After demobilisation he joined Cable & Wireless, an international telecommunications company, quitting them to become a full-time writer in 1981. His science fiction and fantasy does not have any regular formula, being more interested in the enigmatic and strange. He states that his great passion is short stories, at which he is most adept. However, as an eclectic writer he has produced novels of several genres including science fiction, fantasy, horror, historical, children's fiction, war and literary novels (his novel Witchwater Country was longlisted for the Booker Prize). He has also written several books of short stories and two volumes of poetry (the second with the novelist and short story writer, Robert Holdstock, with whom he shared a lifelong friendship and collaboration). Kilworth continues to produce novels and short stories, and released an autobiography, On My Way To Samarkand, detailing, among other things, his vast travelling experiences over the globe.

He has published one hundred and seventy-four short stories and more than eighty novels. His most recent books are Dragoons, a historical war novel set in South Africa, and Attica, a dark quest set in an attic the size of a continent which was purchased by Johnny Depp's movie company, Adfinitum Nihil. A new collection of stories was published with the title Blood Moon. His latest novel is The Wild Hunt, an Anglo-Saxon Saga.

Awards

Kilworth has been twice shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal for children's fiction and won the Lancashire Children's Book of the Year Award for his short novel The Electric Kid. Kilworth's novel Rogue Officer won the 2008 Charles Whiting Award for Historical War Literature. The Ragthorn, a novella co-authored with Robert Holdstock, won the World Fantasy Award in 1992, and the British Science Fiction Award Winner of Best Short Fiction in 1993.

Personal life In 1962, he married Annette Bailey, the daughter of an RAF Catalina aircraft pilot.