Emily Short

Emily Short is an Interactive Fiction Writer best known for her seminal work Galatea, renowned for its advancement in realism in NPC characters. Including Galatea, her works have won her high praise and many awards, including Numerous XYZZY awards (Galatea, Savoir-Faire, City of Secrets) and finalists at the Interactive Fiction Competition (Metamorphoses and her most recent work, Floatpoint).

Her website--along with presenting information about her works--houses her blog, which offers news and insight into the evolving world of interactive fiction.

She explains her introduction into interactive media in an interview with L’avventura è l’avventuraas:

My parents got our first computer when I was a kid, in 1982. It was an Osborne 1, and most of the things it could do didn't interest me very much, though I did use its word-processing abilities to write papers for class. (I think I was the only third-grader who showed up with typed reports.) But it did play Deadline. I can't say I really understood what it was for or what was going on, but I observed my parents and tried to play it myself.

Some time later, we got our first Macintosh. I was more computer-savvy by that time and also generally more capable of following the storylines of Infocom games, and we had a number of them: the Zork trilogy, Enchanter, Infidel (though I don't recall that I every played it), another copy of Deadline. I tinkered with them all but never solved any until Wishbringer and Plundered Hearts, both of which have a special place in my affections for just that reason.