Kathy Tyers

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Kathy Tyers (born July 21, 1952) is an American author and musician currently living in Bozeman, Montana.

She was born in Long Beach, California and grew up in the Hollywood area. She received a degree in microbiology from Montana State University, where she met her late husband Mark. After their marriage, she returned to school and became certified to teach grades K-12. When their church opened a private school, she took over teaching the lower grades. In 1979, she retired from teaching to start a family; her son Matthew was born in 1981 and she began writing in earnest two years later.

Tyers sold her first novel Firebird to Bantam Spectra in 1986. She subsequently sold Fusion Fire (1988; a sequel to Firebird), Crystal Witness (1989) and Shivering World (1991). During this period she also authored a nonfiction travel book and, with her husband, released two CDs of folk music, Leave Her, Johnny and The Very Best Dreams. In 1991, while working on another speculative fiction novel, she was approached with an opportunity to write a novel in the Star Wars extended universe. She accepted without hesitation and her novel The Truce at Bakura (1993) went on to reach the New York Times bestseller list.

Despite her success, after the sale of her novel One Mind's Eye, Tyers suffered a crisis of conscience and took a complete sabbatical from writing from 1994 to 1997. Her web site notes, "[s]he was being pulled in opposing directions by what she perceived as her professional needs, including keeping current on all of the major science fiction being written, and her faith and family."^[1] She returned to writing after this period, specifically targeting the Christian Booksellers Association in an attempt to sell Christian science fiction, but met with no success until she connected with Bethany House Publishers which published rewritten versions of Firebird and Fusion Fire.

The rewritten versions, published in 1999 and 2000 along with a third novel, Crown of Fire, were much more spiritual in nature and, in most markets, were marketed as Christian fiction instead of science fiction. They were published as a single volume edition in 2004. During the same period, Tyers was approached for the Star Wars market again and authored another novel, Balance Point, in addition to short stories for four Star Wars anthologies.

A rewritten and overtly Christian version of Shivering World was released in early 2004. Tyers' husband Mark passed away from illness around the same time and since then she has again taken a sabbatical from fiction writing. She worked with guitarist Christopher Parkening on his autobiography Grace Like a River, and remains active in the Evangelical Free Church.

[edit] Bibliography

• Firebird (1987, revised 1999)
• Fusion Fire (1988, revised 2000)
• Crystal Witness (1989)
• Exploring the Northern Rockies (1991, travel)
• Shivering World (1991, revised 2004)
• The Truce at Bakura (1993)
• "We Don't Do Weddings," Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina (1995)
• "A Time to Dance, A Time to Mourn: Oola's Tale," Tales from Jabba's Palace (1996)
• "The Prize Pelt: Bossk's Tale," Tales of the Bounty Hunters (1996)
• One Mind's Eye (1996)
• "Tinian on Trial," Tales from the Empire (1997)
• Balance Point (2000)
• Crown of Fire (2000)
• Firebird: A Trilogy (2004)
• "Their New Masters," Eat My Martian Dust (2005)
• Grace Like a River (2006, biography)

[edit] Discography

• Leave Her, Johnny (1986)
• The Very Best Dreams (1988)

[edit] External links

• Kathy Tyers's web site
• Kathy Tyers at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

Persondata
NAME	Tyers, Kathy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Moore, Kathy (maiden name)
SHORT DESCRIPTION	writer
DATE OF BIRTH	July 21, 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH	Long Beach, California
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH