Happy birthday to the trailblazing World Fantasy Award winner Charles de Lint

Charles de Lint with MaryAnn Harris

Novelist, poet, songwriter, performer, and folklorist Charles de Lint helped to popularize the urban fantasy genre and is the best-selling author of more than seventy adult, YA, and children’s books. His best known and popular works take place around the mythical, modern city of Newford including Trader (1997), Someplace to be Flying (1998), Forests Of The Heart (2000), The Onion Girl (2001), MEDICINE ROAD (illustrated by Charles Vess; 2004), Widdershins (2006), PROMISES TO KEEP (2007), Seven-Wild Sisters (2014), The Wind in his Heart (2017), Juniper Wiles (2021), and Juniper Wiles and the Ghost Girls (2022). Among his other notable novels are Moonheart (1984), The Little Country (1991), Into the Green (1993), Memory and Dream (1994), EYES LIKE LEAVES (2009).

Cover by Charles Vess

de Lint’s numerous short stories have been collected in several volumes including Spiritwalk, Dreams Underfoot (1993), The Ivory and the Horn (1995), Moonlight and Vines (1999), Triskell Tales (2000), Woods and Waters Wild (2008), Muse and Reverie (2009), THE VERY BEST OF CHARLES DE LINT (2010), Newford Stories: Crow Girls (2015), and Newford Stories: The Blue Fiddle (2022). He’s written comics for Dark Horse, Marvel, Malibu, and Mojo Press. In 2011, de Lint issued his first album Old Blue Truck.

He garnered awards for many of his publications most notably 1984 William l. Crawford Award for Moonheart, 1988 Casper (later renamed the Aurora) for Jack the Giant-Killer (1987), and 2000 World Fantasy Award for Moonlight and Vines. The first (Under My Skin [2012]) and third (Out of this World [2014]) volumes of the Wildings won the 2013 and 2014 Aurora Award. de Lint was inducted into the Canadian SF & Fantasy Association Hall of Fame and the recipient of the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement.

de Lint currently writes a book review column for Fantasy & Science Fiction and has served as a judge for the Nebula, the World Fantasy, Theodore Sturgeon, and the Bram Stoker Awards.

All of us at Tachyon wish the extraordinary Charles a happy birthday. May your music forever fill the streets of Newford.