Elizabeth Kerner
Elizabeth Kerner (1958–) is a fantasy writer. She is the author of Song in the Silence, The Lesser Kindred, and Redeeming the Lost, the initial trilogy of a series based upon humans re-establishing contact with dragons, who fled mortal lands thousands of years ago for reasons unknown.
An American by birth, she moved to Scotland in 1976 to attend the University of St. Andrews. She obtained an MA (Hons) in English Language and Literature in 1981. She has since lived in New Orleans, East Sussex, Edinburgh, Hilo (Hawai'i), Forest Grove (Oregon) and Edinburgh again. Her day jobs have included being apprenticed to a variety of folk (mostly in Hilo) — a gold-smith, a book binder, and a short career as an assistant furniture and artwork restorer. In 1995 she moved back to her beloved Edinburgh, since which time she has spent 6 years, on and off, as a copy-editor on Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a cutting-edge astronomy journal. In 2002 she married Dr Steven Beard, continuing the astronomy connection. They presently live with two cats in a small town on the Firth of Forth.
She is currently working on the next three books in the Kolmar series, the first due out from Tor Books in 2011
“What good I thought I could do, all alone, against thousands of years of mistrust and the power of a Demonlord, I cannot now imagine: but such are the dreams of youth, too gloriously stupid to realise what cannot be done. And without those dreams, how should we ever accomplish the impossible?”
“The Song of the Winged Ones is a song of celebration, written as though the singer were standing on the Dragon Isle watching the dragons flying in the sun. The words are full of wonder at the beauty of the creatures; and there is a curious pause in the middle of one of the stanzas near the end, where the singer waits a full four measures in silence for those who listen to hear the music of distant dragon wings. It seldom fails to bring echoes of something beyond the silence, and is almost never performed because many bards fear it.I love it.”