James Van Pelt is a writer who also serves as an English teacher in the language arts department at the Fruita Monument High School in Fruita, Colorado. A prolific short-story writer, his stories have been finalists for the Nebula Award and the Theodore Sturgeon Award, and he himself has been a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. His stories have been gathered in four collections, Strangers and Beggars, The Last of the O-Forms and Other Stories, The Radio Magician and Other Stories, and Flying in the Heart of the Lafayette Escadrille, and he has also published a novel, Summer of the Apocalypse. Coming up is a new novel, Pandora's Gun. Van Pelt lives in Grand Junction, Colorado.