Who
is this chick, anyway?
Hello, weary traveler of the
Web! Here you'll find a bit of
information about the person behind these pages (cause I know you're all
curious).
My name is Beth Anne Kinderman (bet
you already figured that out). I was
born on June 2, 1982 in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, USA, which makes me a Gemini and
an incredibly dull middle-class white girl from the Midwest. I lived in the same house on Eau Claire's
upper west side until the age of 18 with my wonderful mom and dad, my
5-years-younger sister Angie,
and a mean old (and now deceased) cat named Tiger. We were also surrounded by books, which probably had a lot to do
with me teaching myself to read at the age of 3 and thus learning to love the
written word.
Around that time it became clear to
everyone that I was smart, weird, and completely unwilling to conform. Because of that, I got kicked around a lot
in elementary school. I was pretty
miserable in third through eighth grades.
I didn't have many friends, but I had books—and it wasn't long before I
started wanting to write my own. In
fifth grade I wrote a poem called "To Them" about how everyone hated
me, and somehow my lovely piece of drivel got published in a national
magazine. From then on I knew I wanted
to be a writer. Following that, my
middle school years were devoted to pouring out volumes of dreadful poetry,
discovering science fiction via Star Wars and Star Trek and thus being inspired
to write two equally dreadful SF novels, learning to hate jocks and
cheerleaders, dating the class nerd, and thereby gratefully throwing off any
claim to normalcy I might have ever had.
I then moved on to North High School, where I
discovered that I was not alone in my weirdness and quite happily befriended every freak, geek, nerd, and goth on campus
and thus became the kind of person my parents always warned me about. I participated in every extracurricular
activity known to man, especially theatre (I was the lighting and sound guru),
Forensics (third place in oral interpretation at the 2000 state tournament,
baby!), and band (I played the trumpet).
I took an amazing trip to Mexico in summer 1998, earned the nickname
"SpaceGirl" because of my love for SF and my frequent mental absences
from this plane of existence, discovered roleplaying games,
gained a sick sense of humor and a penchant for speaking in pop culture
references, and became addicted to the movies. I got serious about my writing, won a
few contests, got published a few times, and co-edited a wildly popular school
literary review called Nothing Remotely Puritan. I also had all the good high school
experiences like getting my heart broken into a billion little tiny pieces, and
thus being inspired to learn guitar, write bitter and angry folk
songs about the experience, and perform them in smoky coffeehouses for
other jilted women. I'm still not sure
how I managed to squeeze any studying in around all that other stuff, but I
graduated (with a 4.0 GPA—I’m still trying to figure that one out) in 2000.
After spending my summer working as a housekeeper at Park Inn & Suites
in Eau Claire (a job to which I returned in summer 2001), in September 2000 I
made my way to St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, USA. My first semester there was a little rocky,
as I’m told this time period tends to be for most freshmen, but things improved
dramatically after that. I started out
as an English and chemistry double major but dropped the second half of that
after having my ass kicked by an introductory chem class. At the moment I’m an English and Spanish
double major, which is working a lot better for me. More importantly, I met a wonderful group of friends (some of
whom can be seen on my photos
page) who started out as just another roleplaying group but ended up meaning
the world to me. They’re the ones who
got me started on my two most recent addictions, anime and video games (long
live Snood and Super Smash Brothers!).
Shortly after settling in at St.
Olaf, I met another person who soon became a major part of my life. Eric Zawadzki originally emailed me in
response to some of my roleplaying-related essays after coming across a link to
my site on RPG Survey. Our conversations soon branched out far
beyond gaming as we discovered how much we had in common, and our relationship
eventually transformed itself from a friendship to a romance. Words cannot easily express what an amazing
man Eric is (at least, not as many as I’m allowing myself here), so just check
out his website to get to know him
a little better.
Right now, I’m in my sophomore year
at St. Olaf, and I’m feeling pretty good about my life. When I’m not in class or studying, I spend
my free time writing, reading, gaming, watching movies, working as a lighting
technician in the theatre department, participating in the Society for Creative
Anachronism, and messing around with this site. I have no idea what I’m going to do after college (though I’m
pretty sure it won’t be grad school, since I don’t want to end up one of those
incredibly overducated people who can’t survive outside of a university), but I
figure that’s okay too. Eventually I
want to support myself with my poetry and fiction writing, but short of a
miracle that’s not going to happen right out of college. My other long-term goals include traveling
to all six inhabited continents, improving as a singer/songwriter/guitarist,
writing something that will be remembered and have a lasting impact on the way
people think, and experiencing as much as I possibly can in my life.
Favorite Authors/Books: Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, The
Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell, Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott, A
Prayer For Owen Meaney by John Irving, Spider by Patrick McGrath,
the “Hyperion” series by Dan Simmons, the “Sword of Truth” series by Terry
Goodkind, the “Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter” series by Laurell K. Hamilton,
Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, Pablo Neruda, Shirley Jackson, Connie Willis
Favorite Movies: Edward Scissorhands, The Princess Bride,
American Beauty, The Fisher King, The Silence Of The Lambs
Favorite Bands/Musicians: Kate Bush, Oingo Boingo, Tori Amos, Eva
Cassidy, Suzanne Vega, Leonard Cohen, Ani DiFranco, Indigo Girls, Poe, Shakira,
Shawn Colvin, Travis
Favorite Anime: Trigun, Vision of Escaflowne, Cowboy Bebop,
Perfect Blue, Battle Athletes Victory
Favorite Role-Playing Games: Anything out of White Wolf’s World of
Darkness series (especially Mage: The Ascension and Changeling: The Dreaming)
Other Stuff I Love: Mexican food and culture, thunderstorms,
"Babylon 5," “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,” caffeine, arguing about
"deep subjects" like philosophy and religion, Russell Crowe, geek
culture, useless trivia, talking to interesting and intelligent people who can
make me laugh
Stuff I Hate: Waiting in line, hypodermic needles, being
bored, "Star Trek: Voyager," mushrooms, dressing up, bad vampire
poetry, Neon Genesis Evangelion, sports, James Cameron movies, pretentiousness,
boundless angst, top 40 radio, people without a sense of humor, censorship,
prejudice and hatred of any kind
My ICQ number: 83391668, nickname: SpaceGirl. I'll have to authorize you—mention this site
so I don't dismiss you as a random looney.