Robert Runté, Ph.D. (Developmental Editor / Writing Coach specializing in Science Fiction & Fantasy)

Robert started as an SF reviewer, critic, and zine editor in the 1970s, worked as a Test Development Specialist (developmental editor/writer) with Alberta Education in the 1980s, professor at the University of Lethbridge 1990-2013, and was Senior Editor with Five Rivers Publishing 2009-2018. He founded SFeditor.ca in July, 2010, and EssentialEdits.ca in 2016. He has edited over 40 successful books, 37 of which were traditionally published. The late Dave Duncan called him "the best editor I've ever worked with" and willed his incomplete manuscripts to Robert to finish. He is currently on the advisory boards of Donovan Street Press (Riverview, NB) and Shadowpaw Press (Regina).

During Dr. Runté's career as an academic, he has coedited Tesseracts5 (Canadian SF&F anthology) and a popular university textbook; had 15 book chapters, 14 journal articles, 7 encyclopedia entries published, written 3 commissioned government reports, and 1 curriculum resource (90,000 visitors); presented 67 conference papers, 37 faculty, university, and community presentations; and self-published ten open-source resources (see the links page for those relevant to writers). He has four Aurora Awards for his literary criticism. As an experienced thesis supervisor and committee member, he has helped students write award- and scholarship-winning theses, and two of the theses he supervised were subsequently published as books.

In terms of his own writing, his short fiction has been published over 130 times, several of his stories have been reprinted in "yearŐs best" collections (most recently, The Best of Mettastellar, Year 5) and one was shortlisted for an Aurora Award.

You can see Dr. Runté in this one-minute video excerpt on teaching and research at the UofL; or in this two-minute video about acquiring and developing books for Five Rivers Publishing, presented at launch of Joe Mahoney's A Time and a Place; or listen to his thirty-minute speech on English teachers, fan fiction, and the future of publishing" as Editor Guest at When Words Collide (2016).You can read some of his research on ResearchGate.

Books co-edited by Dr. Runté

Books with Chapters by Dr. Runté

Some titles from Five Rivers edited by Dr. Runté