Happy Birthday, Michael Dirda!

Today is the birthday of editor, author, critic, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and friend of the Gateway, Michael Dirda. In a literary establishment too often eager to denigrate genre fiction, Michael Dirda stands out as a beacon of fair-mindedness and erudition. A long-time Book World editor for the Washington Post, for whom he now writes a weekly column, his introduction graces our recent Fantasy Masterworks edition of Ray Bradbury‘s Something Wicked This Way Comes.

But that’s not all, we’re also delighted to have his words of wisdom in our Masterworks editions of Poul Anderson‘s The Broken Sword and Randall Garrett‘s Lord Darcy and, coming in 2016 (which isn’t as far away as you’d think!) of Charles G. Finney‘s The Circus of Dr Lao and Swastika Night by Katharine Burdekin, writing as Murray Constantine.

Happy Birthday, Michael – and thanks for your tireless championing of SF & Fantasy!