Lewis Shiner (
December 30, 1950, Eugene, Oregon) is an
American writer.
Shiner began his career as a
science fiction writer, identified early on 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.
Several of his novels have
rock music as a theme or main focus, especially the musicians of the late
1960s; for example, and the great never-recorded albums of
The Doors, Brian Wilson, The Beatles and
Jimi Hendrix in Shiner's 1993 novel
Glimpses.
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, and is a rocket ride tale of a guy that just cannot win. Perhaps because novels with music as a major theme are not generally considered mainstream genre material, his work has frequently been overlooked. Shiner is currently (Spring 2007) working on a new novel.
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. 
