Lewis Shiner

Lewis Shiner (born December 30, 1950) is an American writer.

Shiner began his career as a science fiction writer, but then identified with cyberpunk, and later wrote more mainstream novels, albeit often with magical realism and fantasy elements. He was formerly a resident of Texas (and a member of the Turkey City Writer's Workshop), and now lives in North Carolina.

Shiner graduated from Southern Methodist University in 1973.

Several of his novels have rock music as a theme or main focus, especially the musicians of the late 1960s; for example, Shiner's 1993 novel Glimpses considers the great never-recorded albums of The Doors, Brian Wilson, The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix. Say Goodbye: The Laurie Moss Story (1999) focuses on a fictional up and coming female musician and her subsequent fall back down. Slam (1990) is immersed in skate punk and anarchist culture. Perhaps because novels with music as a major theme are not generally considered mainstream genre material, his work has frequently been overlooked.

In July 2007 Shiner created the web site Fiction Liberation Front (FLF) as a venue for his short stories. The stories are released under the Creative Commons license and are available in HTML and PDF formats. He has written a small manifesto explaining why he did this.

On July 22, 2007, The News & Observer began publishing a weekly column by Shiner, titled "Graphic Scenes", about comics.