Sam Weller familiarized himself with the words of Ray Bradbury even before he was born. During the infamous Chicago blizzard of January 1967, as drifting blankets of snow created white-out conditions in the Windy City, William Weller, Sam’s father, read Bradbury’s seminal classic, The Illustrated Man, aloud to his pregnant wife, Barbara. The baby, nine months in utero, turned and listened with keen interest…

Sam Weller is the authorized biographer of one of the most influential authors of the 20th Century — Ray Bradbury, the poet laureate of the Dark Fantastic; the gatekeeper to October Country; the man who immortalized Green Town, Illinois, the planet Mars, and a dark dystopia where books are banished forever. The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury is the first-ever biography of Ray Bradbury, a creator and visionary who, more than any other author, altered the fabric of popular culture.

Sam Weller is the former Midwest Correspondent for Publishers Weekly. He is a regular feature writer for the Chicago Tribune Magazine, as well as the Chicago Public Radio program 848. He is a frequent literary critic for the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. He writes about punk rock for Punk Planet magazine and his essays have appeared on the National Public Radio program, All Things Considered. He is a contributor to Playboy.com and a former staff writer for the alt. weekly, Newcity, where he was given the Peter Lisagor Award — the highest honor in Chicago journalism. His short fiction has been published in Spec-Lit, an anthology of science fiction edited by the noted SF author, Phyllis Eisenstein. Sam is a frequent lecturer on the life and works of Ray Bradbury, as well as on the writing process and getting published. In February 2004, he was the special guest of the Commonwealth Club in San Jose, California.

Sam Weller is a professor in the Fiction and English Departments at Columbia College Chicago. He lives in Chicago with his wife, baby daughter, and two dogs. He is currently at work on a graphic novel about truck drivers who save the universe, as well as a fictional suspense novel about the real-life Chinese magician, Ching Ling Foo.