The Instructors
Special Guest Instructors for 2009
Regular Workshop Instructors and Founders
Mike Brotherton teaches astronomy at all levels at the University of Wyoming and conducts research specializing in observational investigations of quasars. He uses a variety of ground and space-based telescopes including the Hubble Space Telescope, Keck Observatory, the Very Large Array, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, WIRO, the Wyoming Infrared Observatory, and Kitt Peak National Observatory (as pictured working with a spectrograph at their 4-meter telescope). He has sold a variety of short fiction to magazines and anthologies, and is a graduate of the Clarion West workshop. His first novel Star Dragon was published by Tor Books in 2003 to excellent reviews, made the Locus Recommended Reading List, and was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for best science fiction novel of the year. A second hard science fiction novel, Spider Star, will come out from Tor soon, probably in 2008. He lives in Laramie, Wyoming with his fierce cat, Sita.
Website: http://www.mikebrotherton.com/
Jim D. Verley has recently completed his PhD in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wyoming. He has years of experience teaching astronomy in a hands-on laboratory setting. Some of his current research focuses on effective teaching at the university/college level and cross-disciplinary teaching through science and literature. His eclectic career includes roughneck in the Wyoming oil patch, hospital Marketing Director, Secondary and Elementary Science and Math Methods faculty, Director of Cultural Outreach and perhaps most difficult, editing short stories for seventh and eight grade girls, many of whom had cats. Jim and his wife Patty have three children, Jason, Elise, and Eleanor, in addition to a beagle, Abbey, and a bichon, Coco. He does not have a cat.
Special Guest Instructor for 2008
Jerry Oltion
Jerry
is the author of fifteen science fiction novels, including ABANDON IN PLACE, THE GETAWAY SPECIAL, ANYWHERE BUT HERE, and PARADISE PASSED, plus several Star Trek books and over a hundred short stories in various magazines and anthologies. He is the most prolific contributor to Analog magazine in the last 25 years, and the third most prolific of all time. (Yes, he's shooting for #1.) His novella version of "Abandon in Place" won the Nebula Award in 1998. Jerry also writes under the name "Ryan Hughes." He is an amateur astronomer, which led him to spend most of a year designing and building a new type of telescope he calls the "trackball." He lives in Eugene, Oregon, with his wife, Kathy, and the obligatory writer's cat, Stormy. His website is http://sff.net/people/j.oltion