John Robert Colombo was born in Kitchener, Ontario, in 1936 and currently lives in Toronto with his wife Ruth. He has been an author, compiler and translator since 1957 and editor-at-large since 1963. He is best known as the Master Gatherer for his compilations of Canadiana, but long before he became interested in the lore and literature of this country, he developed a taste for the literature of the fantastic. He contributed the entries for Canada to The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and The Encyclopedia of Fantasy.

Critic Roger Schlobin once dubbed Colombo a "superfan" for his contributions to the field of Canadian fantastic literature. Judith Merril exclaimed, "Colombo is the real thing." Spider Robinson referred to him as "a national treasure" and as Ray Bradbury wrote to him, "We are twins..."

John is the editor of "Other Canadas", the world's first anthology of Canadian fantastic literature and the co-editor of "Not to Be Taken at Night", its first anthology of Canadian weird fiction. Other contributions to the field include the first collections in English of Maurice Level's Grand Guignol stories; the Canadian-inspired horror stories of Algernon Blackwood; and Stephen Leacock's Fantastic Tales and Sketches.

In September 2009 he delivered the keynote (academic) address at the Montreal Worldcon. Currently, he and Brett Alexander Savory are editing "Tesseracts 14".

For more information visit John's website www.colombo-plus.ca

Please note that Mr. Colombo will be appearing at Polaris 24 on Saturday only.