George Guthridge

George Guthridge (born 1948) is an American author and educator. He has published over 70 short stories and five novels and has been acclaimed for his successes teaching writing and critical/creative thinking. In 1997 he and coauthor Janet Berliner won the Bram Stoker Award for the Year's Best Horror Novel.

In the mid-1970s, Guthridge was teaching English at Loras College. A colleague in the department had received a grant to attend a science fiction convention in Milwaukee, but was unable to attend, so Guthridge went instead, although he confesses that at that time he despised science fiction and fantasy. At the convention, Guthridge met George R. R. Martin, who persuaded him to give speculative fiction a second look, and to write in the field himself. "George changed my life, he really did," Guthridge says. "Not just because he opened doors for me, but he opened this whole vista of sci-fi and fantasy and horror that I never would've gotten into." In turn, Guthridge later helped Martin find a job at Clarke College. (Martin had been operating chess tournaments to supplement his writing income, but "wasn't making enough money to stay alive," says Guthridge.) Guthridge has been a finalist for the Hugo Award and twice for the Nebula Award for science fiction and fantasy. In 1998 he and coauthor, Janet Berliner, won the Bram Stoker Award for the year's best horror novel.

Guthridge is also known for having coached ten students from the Siberian Yupik Eskimo village of Gambell, Alaska, on blizzard-swept St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea, to national championships in academics. They became the only Native American team ever to do that—and they did it twice. Guthridge is the author of The Kids from Nowhere: The Story Behind the Arctic Educational Miracle, published by Alaska Northwest Books in 2006.

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