William Sanders

Who is William Sanders?

William Sanders is an American speculative fiction writer, primarily of short fiction, and was the senior editor of the now defunct online science fiction magazine Helix SF.

Sanders has written several novels, including Journey to Fusang, The Wild Blue and the Gray and The Ballad of Billy Badass & the Rose of Turkestan. The first two are alternate histories with a humorous bent while the last is a fantasy novel.

He has also written a number of mystery novels, including a series featuring Western writer Taggert Roper beginning with The Next Victim, as well as novels marketed by the publisher as Action/Adventure, beginning with Hardball.

Sanders, a former powwow dancer, is best known for his use of American Indian themes and his dry, often cynical sense of humor. His most-anthologized and perhaps best known work is "The Undiscovered", an alternate history in which Shakespeare is transported to Virginia and writes "Hamlet" for the Cherokee tribe. The story won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History in 1997. Sanders won a second Sidewise Award for his story Empire in 2002. Sanders has said that he considers his best story to be Dry Bones.