John 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 two solo novels, Good News From Outer Space (1989) and Corrupting Dr. Nice (1997) and one novel, Freedom Beach (1985) in collaboration with his friend James Patrick Kelly. He was born in Buffalo, New York.
Kessel won a Nebula Award in 1982 for his novella "Another Orphan," in which the protagonist finds himself living inside the novel Moby-Dick, and a second for his 2008 novelette "Pride and Prometheus," a story melding the tales of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. This novelette also won a 2009 Shirley Jackson Award. The intervening 26 years was the longest gap between competitive awards in Nebula history. His short story "Buffalo" won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award and the Locus poll in 1992.
His novella "Stories for Men" shared the 2002 James Tiptree, Jr. Award for science fiction dealing with gender issues with M. John Harrison's novel Light. He has been nominated three times for a World Fantasy Award: 1993 for the Meeting in Infinity collection, 1999 for the short fiction "Every Angel is Terrifying," and 2009 for the short story "Pride and Prometheus."
He also is a widely published science fiction and fantasy critic; his most notable work of criticism is probably his 2004 essay on Orson Scott Card's novel Ender's Game, "Creating the Innocent Killer: Ender's Game, Intention, and Morality." With Mark L. Van Name, Kessel created the Sycamore Hill Writer's Workshop. Kessel has also edited, with Kelly, three collections of contemporary sf short stories, Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology, Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology, and The Secret History of Science Fiction.
Having obtained a Ph.D. in English from the University of Kansas in 1981, where he studied under science fiction writer and scholar James Gunn, Kessel has taught classes in American literature, science fiction, fantasy, and fiction writing at North Carolina State University since 1982. He helped organize the MFA Creative Writing program at NCSU and served as its first director.
In 1994, his play Faustfeathers received the Paul Green Playwrights' Prize. In 2007, his story "A Clean Escape" (previously adapted by Kessel as a one-act play in 1986) was adapted by Sam Egan for ABC's science fiction anthology series Masters of Science Fiction.
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“Show me a man who feels bitterly toward John Brown, and let me hear what noble verse he can repeat. He’ll be as dumb as if his lips were stone.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)