Timothy Zahn (edit name/settings)

Timothy Zahn was born in Chicago in 1951 and grew up in the western suburb of Lombard. He attended Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan, earning a B.S. degree in physics in 1973, and moved on to the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, for graduate work. He earned a M.S. degree there, also in physics, in 1975, and continued work toward a doctorate. Also in 1975, he began a new hobby: writing science fiction. At first a strictly spare-time avocation, over the next three years he gradually gave more time to it until he sold his first story in December 1978 (Ernie, Analog, September 1979). In 1980 he left grad school and began writing full time.
Since then he has published over eighty short stories and novelettes, thirty-four novels, and four short fiction collections. Along the way he has won a Hugo Award (for the novella Cascade Point, in 1984) and has been nominated twice more
He is best known for his eight Star Wars Expanded Universe novels, including five novels featuring Grand Admiral Thrawn: the Thrawn Trilogy and the Hand of Thrawn duology. The Thrawn trilogy marked a revival in the fortunes of the Star Wars franchise, bringing it widespread attention for the first time in years; all three Thrawn-trilogy novels made the New York Times best-seller lists, and set the stage and tone for most of the franchise's Expanded-Universe content. While many of Zahn's characters have been embraced by franchise writers and readers, some still appearing in novels written seventeen years later, Thrawn has been particularly influential. Other books include the Quadrail series, the Cobra series, and the young-adult Dragonback series.
His most recent books are Dragon and Liberator, the sixth Dragonback book, and The Third Lynx, the second of the Quadrail series.The third Quadrail book, Odd Girl Out, will be published in November 2008.
The Zahn family lives on the Oregon coast, where only a tsunami can ruin a perfect day.<br /><br />