Introducing the Author – Zenna Henderson
Imagination – August 1953
(1953)
Zenna Henderson

	

	I was born in the foothills of the Santa Catalinas north of Tucson—which, of course, makes me a native Arizonan—about four notches rarer than a native Californian. Add to this that my father was a native Arizonan, too, and Mother missed it only by the fact that she was born in an American colony across the border in Old Mexico, and you have about all the distinction I am entitled to.

	I became a school teacher because the nearest—I live in Phoenix now—State College, at Tempe, turned out only teachers at that time. Since then, though, I've decided I'd rather earn my living teaching first grade than any number of other ways I've tried. That covers office   work (working my way through), doctor's receptionist (very briefly), distributor in a laundry, clerk in a general store in a mining town (handling everything from sheep dip to nylons), Service Rep for the telephone company and teaching all the other grades and subjects ranging from barefoot dancing to high school typing and a year teaching in a Japanese Relocation Camp during the war.

	Denver is as far East as I have been. Yellowstone National Park is my North boundary, Mexico—across the border for half an hour—my South, and two rapid glimpses of the Pacific, my West.

	I've been an avid reader of anything ever since I learned to read and it has always been a source of great sorrow to me that two and two must always be four, so when I discovered Oz and The Blue Bird and The Bastable Children, I really started breathing my native, air.

	I can't remember the first science fiction story I ever read, but I was a confirmed addict before I got out of grade school. It was about sixth grade that I discovered Edgar Rice Burroughs and Sir Rider Haggard.

	I wrote poetry and 'plays' from the fourth grade on up, but it wasn't until about four years ago that I really started writing fiction in earnest. I sold my first story, not counting a juvenile to a newspaper, about two years ago and have been   pleased with developments since.

	I've got so used to writing in the odd half hour before school before I go on duty of a morning and an occasional fifteen minutes before going home of an afternoon, that when I'm confronted by a whole hour or two in one stretch, I hardly know what to do with it.

	"Hah!" I can hear the echo, "All those summer months teachers have!"

	"Hah!" I say right back. "Ever hear of Summer Sessions, Certificate Renewal and working on a Master's Degree?"

	Wide open spaces, rain, clouds and falling snow—the last three rather scarce in The Valley of The Sun—feed my soul. I like grapes and music, knitting and occasional solitude. I'm crazy for flowers and can't grow them for sour apples.

	I dislike crowds, unless they're big enough to become anonymous, wind, violence, waiting for anything, going to practically any kind of meeting, big cities, and having my picture taken.

	I enjoy Bing Crosby, Pogo, Lil Abner, Rosemary Clooney and Les Paul and Mary Ford.

	I was married—once.

	Well, them are the conditions what prevail and as for the future, which is so often settled and unsettled in our favorite fiction, I suppose I am an incurable optimist. Anyway, no matter what happens—it'll be interesting!

—Zenna Henderson