Skip to the bottom if you’re looking for a handy bio.
Representation
I’m represented by John Berlyne of Zeno Literary Agency. Television and film inquiries should go to Michael Prevett of Circle of Confusion. You can find a press kit here (…once I get around to it).
Contact
Contact me here: <my firstname> AT <firstnamelastname> DOT com
Please put “Missive:” in the subject line. This will increase the chances that my Rube Goldberg-esque stack of email filters will pachinko-machine your note into the correct folder, where I’ll actually see it.
I’m not a fan of social media in general, and I no longer use my Twitter account.
I am on Mastodon: @ITregillis@mastodon.social
and Bluesky: @itregillis.bsky.social
and even Counter Social: @ITregillis@counter.social
(Theoretically, anyway. I’ve staked out my username in these places, but I’m not active yet and might never be.)
I disappeared from the writing scene for a number of years. This post explains why.
I started my writing journey, cutting my teeth on the basics of craft, at the Online Writing Workshop. (It’s no exaggeration to say joining the OWW changed my life.) A few years later, I attended the six-week, residential Clarion Workshop in 2005. In Michigan, I met Walter Jon Williams, who welcomed me into the writing community sometimes known affectionately (or not so affectionately) as the New Mexico Mafia. From there, up-and-coming writer George R. R. Martin drafted me into the rag-tag fugitive fleet known as the Wild Cards Consortium. It was via Wild Cards that I met my first literary agent, the late, great Kay McCauley, thanks to whom I became I published novelist.
I’ve been a Writer Guest of Honor at the Williamson Lectureship (2010), a Science Guest of Honor at Legendary Confusion (2014), and I’ve had the privilege of serving as Toastmaster for both Bubonicon (in 2011) and MileHiCon (in 2013). I’ve been an invited guest at conventions in Leipzig, Germany (Elstercon) and Istanbul, Turkey (the Black Week Literary Festival, though only virtually, thanks to COVID-19).
In 2014, and to my great delight, my novel Something More Than Night was a shortlisted nominee for the Gaylactic Spectrum Award, which honors “outstanding works of science fiction, fantasy and horror which include significant positive explorations of LGBTQIA+ characters, themes, or issues.”
In 2018, I was an invited guest at the New Zealand Festival of the Arts, the prestigious biannual national arts festival. This was one of the greatest honors of my author-life.
In 2019, I was awarded the Galaxy Award for Best Foreign Writer in China.
In another life, before I became a writer, I earned a doctorate in physics studying cosmic ray acceleration within radio galaxies. Today, when I’m not writing, I pay the bills as a theoretical physicist… though probably not the type you’re envisioning. (It’s a broader category than pop culture might have us believe.) My employer has been highly and publicly supportive of my second career as a novelist but, needless to say, acknowledgment does not imply endorsement. Absolutely nothing in my fiction writing should be construed as representing the views of my employer, its personnel, or its parent organizations.
People sometimes wonder if I reverse-engineer UFOs for a living. I don’t. But how I wish I did.
Please join me in raising a glass of Prosecco in honor of the late, lamented, and legendary Kay McCauley, the Queen of Agents. God damn it, we miss you, Kay.
Yes, there’s a privacy policy for this site. Because apparently that’s a thing now, no matter how trivial the website.
Bios:
5 words
Ian Tregillis is a mammal.
13 words
Ian Tregillis is a writer, a scientist, and a thoroughly disappointing flesh muppet.
30 Words
Ian Tregillis is the author of seven novels and numerous short stories. A physicist who lives in New Mexico, he swears his day job does not involve reverse-engineering UFOs.
100 (99) words
Ian Tregillis is the author of seven critically acclaimed novels including the Milkweed Triptych (Bitter Seeds, The Coldest War, and Necessary Evil), Something More Than Night, and the Alchemy Wars Trilogy (The Mechanical, The Rising, and The Liberation). His short fiction has appeared in venues including Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Tor.com, and been reprinted in half a dozen year’s best anthologies including The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year and Best New Horror. A physicist who lives in New Mexico, he swears his day job does not involve reverse-engineering UFOs.
250 (237) words
Ian Tregillis is the son of a bearded mountebank and a disgraced tarot card reader. (The full story, he’s told, involves a leaky tramp steamer and a stolen horse.) A scientist by day and writer — sometimes — by night, he is the author of seven critically acclaimed novels including the Milkweed Triptych (Bitter Seeds, The Coldest War, and Necessary Evil), Something More Than Night, and the Alchemy Wars Trilogy (The Mechanical, The Rising, and The Liberation). His short fiction has appeared in venues including Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Tor.com, and been reprinted in half a dozen year’s best anthologies including The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, The Year’s Top Hard Science Fiction Stories, and Best New Horror. He has contributed to five novels in George R. R. Martin’s long-running Wild Cards shared-world superhero anthology series, and was a staff writer on both seasons of Serial Box Publishing’s (now Realm’s) occult spy-fi thriller, The Witch Who Came in From the Cold. He is a graduate of the Clarion Workshop, and also holds a Ph.D. in physics for research on cosmic-ray acceleration in radio galaxies. In 2018, he was an invited guest at New Zealand’s prestigious biennial national arts festival; in 2019, he received the Galaxy Award for Best Foreign Writer in China. A thoroughly disappointing flesh muppet, Ian lives in New Mexico with his playwright wife, Sara.