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 forty-five novels, over a hundred short stories and novelettes, and four collections of short fiction. Best known for his ten Star Wars novels, he is also the author of the Quadrail series, the Cobra series, the Conquerors Trilogy, and the young-adult Dragonback series. His latest books are Cobra Slave, the first book of the Cobra Rebellion Trilogy, and Star Wars: Scoundrels.

Upcoming books include Cobra Outlaw, the second Cobra Rebellion novel, Soulminder, and A Call to Duty, the first of the Manticore Ascendant collaborations with David Weber set in the Honor Harrington universe.

You can contact him at Facebook.com/TimothyZahn.