Photo: Jjvtkessel / CC BY-SA 4.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
Kessel is the kind of writer I admire most: quietly excellent over the long haul. Winning Nebula Awards twenty-six years apart says everything about a craft that never chased trends. What draws me in, though, is the Otherwise (Tiptree) Award, which signals a willingness to wrestle with gender and the harder edges of being human rather than coasting on spectacle. I picture a kid in snowy Buffalo buried in books, and it fits the career that followed. He never seems to have wanted to be a star, just to write things worth rereading. That ambition, modest and serious at once, is exactly the kind I respect.
Overview
John Joseph Vincent Kessel (born September 24, 1950) is an American author of science fiction and fantasy. He is a prolific short story writer, and the author of four solo novels, Good News From Outer Space (1989), Corrupting Dr. Nice (1997), The Moon and the Other (2017), and Pride and Prometheus (2018), and one novel, Freedom Beach (1985) in collaboration with his friend James Patrick Kelly.
Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- John Kessel
- Name (Japanese)
- ジョン・ケッセル
- Reading
- じょん・けっせる
- Born
- September 24, 1950 (age 75)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Libra / Tiger
- Origin
- Buffalo, New York, United States
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- novelist / poet / science fiction writer
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- High school
- Private
- University
- Private
Awards & achievements
- 1983 Nebula Award for Best Novella
- 1992 Theodore Sturgeon Award
- 1992 Locus Award for Best Short Story
- 2002 Otherwise Award
- 2009 Nebula Award for Best Novelette
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
5. Works & records
| Category | Title | Role | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Notable work | Corrupting Dr. Nice | — |
6. Links
Novelist — see all → · Poet — see all → · More people from United States →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-02
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.