Piers Anthony

Piers Anthony Dillingham Jacob (born August 6, 1934) is an American author in the science fiction and fantasy genres, publishing under the name Piers Anthony. He is best known for his long-running Xanth novel series, set in the fictional realm of Xanth.

Many of Piers Anthony's books have appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list. He considers one of his greatest achievements to have been publishing a book beginning with every letter of the alphabet, from A (Anthonology) to Z (Zombie Lover).

Early life Anthony's parents, Alfred and Norma Jacob, were Quaker pacifists studying at Oxford University who interrupted their studies in 1936 to undertake relief work on behalf of the Quakers during the Spanish Civil War, establishing a food kitchen for children in Barcelona. Piers and his sister were left in England in the care of their maternal grandparents and a nanny. Alfred Jacob, although a British citizen, had been born in America near Philadelphia, and in 1940, after being forced out of Spain and with the situation in Britain deteriorating, the family sailed to the United States. In 1941 the family settled in a rustic "back to the land" utopian community near Winhall, Vermont, where a young Piers made the acquaintance of radical author Scott Nearing, a neighbor. Both parents resumed their academic studies, and Alfred eventually became a professor of Romance languages, teaching at a number of colleges in the Philadelphia area.

Piers was moved around to a number of schools, eventually enrolling in Goddard College in Vermont where he graduated in 1956. On This American Life on July 27, 2012, Anthony revealed that his parents had divorced, he was bullied, and he had poor grades in school. Anthony referred to his high school as a "very fancy private school", and refuses to donate money to it. He recalls being part of "the lower crust", and that no one paid attention to, or cared about him. He said, "I didn't like being a member of the underclass, of the peons like that".

Marriage and early career Anthony met his future wife, Carol Marble, while both were attending college. They were married in 1956, the same year he graduated from Goddard College, and he subsequently worked as a handyman. In 1957, Anthony decided to join the United States Army, as his wife was pregnant and they needed both medical coverage and a steady source of income. During his two-year enlistment, he became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1958 and was editor and cartoonist for his battalion's newspaper.

After completing military service, he briefly taught at Admiral Farragut Academy in St. Petersburg, Florida before deciding to try to become a full-time writer.

Anthony and his wife made a deal: if he could sell a piece of writing within one year, she would continue to work to support him. But if he could not sell anything in that year, then he would forever give up his dream of being a writer. At the end of the year, he managed to get a short story published. He credits his wife as the person who made his writing career possible, and he advises aspiring writers that they need to have a source of income other than their writing in order to get through the early years of a writing career.

Writing On multiple occasions Anthony has moved from one publisher to another, taking a popular series with him, when he says he felt the editors were unduly tampering with his work. Anthony maintains an Internet Publishers Survey in the interest of helping aspiring writers. For this service, he won the 2003 "Friend of EPIC" award for service to the electronic publishing community. His website won the Special Recognition for Service to Writers award from Preditors and Editors, an author's guide to publishers and writing services.

His popular novel series Xanth inspired the MS-DOS video game Companions of Xanth, by Legend Entertainment. The same series also spawned the board game Xanth by Mayfair Games.

Anthony's novels usually end with a chapter-long Author's Note, in which he talks about himself, his life, and his experiences as they related to the process of writing the novel. He often discusses correspondence with readers and any real-world issues that influenced the novel.

Since about 2000, Anthony has written his novels in a Linux environment.

Anthony's Xanth series was ranked No. 99 in a 2011 NPR readers' poll of best science fiction and fantasy books.

In other media Act One of episode 470 of the radio program This American Life is an account of boyhood obsessions with Piers Anthony. The act is written and narrated by writer Logan Hill who, as a 12-year-old, was consumed with reading Anthony's novels. For a decade he felt he must have been Anthony's number one fan, until, when he was 22, he met "Andy" at a wedding and discovered their mutual interest in the writer. Andy is interviewed for the story and explains that, as a teenager, he had used escapist novels in order to cope with his alienating school and home life in Buffalo, New York. In 1987, at age 15, he decided to run away to Florida in order to try to live with Piers Anthony. The story includes Anthony's reflections on these events.

Criticism Some critics have called Anthony's portrayal of female characters stereotypical and misogynistic, particularly in the early parts of the Xanth series, and taken issue with themes of pedophilia and eroticism in his work. Anthony has said in interviews that these critiques do not reflect his work accurately and that he receives more fan mail from women than from men.

Personal life He and his first wife, Carol Ann Marble Jacob, had two daughters, Penelope "Penny" Carolyn and Cheryl. Penny had one child, and died in 2009 of complications from skin cancer. Carol Ann died at home on October 3, 2019, from what is believed to have been heart-related complications related to a 15-year-long battle with chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP).

On April 22, 2020, he married MaryLee Boyance. Anthony lived on a tree farm in Florida until March 2023, when he sold the farm and moved to California. MaryLee died on January 8, 2026.

Anthony is a vegetarian.

Religious beliefs Regarding his religious beliefs, Anthony wrote in the October 2004 entry of his personal website, "I'm agnostic, which means I regard the case as unproven, but I'm much closer to the atheist position than to the theist one." In 2017 he stated, "I am more certain about God and the Afterlife: they don't exist."