George Raymond Richard Martin was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, Sept 20 1948. He began writing monster stories as a child, and by high school was contributing fiction to comic fanzines. His first professional sale, short story ‘The Hero’, written while he was in college, appeared in Galaxy February 1971.

Martin graduated from Northwestern University (BS Journalism 1971, MS 1972). A conscientious objector, he worked for VISTA at Chicago’s Cook Country Legal Assistance 1972-4. From 1976-8 he taught journalism at Clarke College, Dubuque, Iowa, and spent another year there as writer-in-residence 1978-9. He has been a full-time writer ever since.

He was story editor for CBS’s The Twilight Zone series in 1986, and worked as writer, executive story consultant, producer, co-supervising producer, and executive producer on Beauty and the Beast from 1987-90. He currently resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Martin won his first Hugo for the novella ‘A Song for Lya’ (1974). In 1980 he won the Nebula and Hugo Awards for novelette ‘Sandkings’, and a Hugo Award for short story ‘The Way of Cross and Dragon’. Martin won a second Nebula in 1986 for ‘Portraits of His Children’, a 1988 Bram Stoker Award for ‘The Pear-Shaped Man’, a 1989 World Fantasy Award for novella ‘The Skin Trade’, a 1997 Hugo for novella ‘Blood of the Dragon’, and is a 10-time Locus Award winner.

His novels include Dying of the Light (1977), Windhave (with Lisa Tuttle, 1981), Fevre Dream (1982), The Armageddon Rag (1983), Wild Cards VII: Dead Man’s Hand (with John J. Miller, 1990), and three novels in A Song of Ice and Fire sequence: ‘A Game of Thrones’ (1996), ‘A Clash of Kings’ (1998) and ‘A Storm of Swords’ (2000). He has several short story collections, notably A Song for Lya and Other Stories (1976), Songs of Stars and Shadows (1977), Sandkings(1981) and Portraits of His Children (1987), and has edited a number of anthologies, including volumes for the New Voices in Science Fiction and the Hugo-nominated Wild Cards series.