Barry Hughart

Barry Hughart (1934-2019) was an American fantasy novelist born in Peoria, Illinois. He studied at Phillips Academy and Columbia University, then served in the U.S. Air Force near the Korean Demilitarized Zone before beginning his writing career in his fifties. He is remembered almost entirely for the Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox, a trilogy set in a fantastical version of ancient China that blends detective-story plotting, folklore, and comic invention: Bridge of Birds (1984), The Story of the Stone (1988), and Eight Skilled Gentlemen (1990). Bridge of Birds won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award. Publisher disputes cut short a planned longer series, and Hughart stopped writing fiction after 1990.