Wendy Vidlak is a former professor, options trader, and taxation specialist who decided to break free from rules and numbers to explore other worlds as a speculative fiction writer. As a peer moderator of the Speculative Fiction and Planet Fiction groups at the Loft Plus program, where she builds community with other writers. https://loft-lit.circle.so/
She has a Master of Arts in Organizational Management from Concordia University in St. Paul, MN. Her Thesis entitled: “The Effect of the Sarbanes/Oxley Act on Innovation in American Corporations,” was a desperate attempt to combine her interests in creativity, politics, and business. Along with a BSBA with an emphasis in Finance, a second major in Political Science, and an English minor from Valparaiso University in Valparaiso, IN.
Currently living in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area of Minnesota with her husband. She has recently won the John F Kennedy Profile in Courage Award along with thousands of her neighbors. She loves visiting her son to play lots of board games and instill age old wisdom to his embarrassment and annoyance.
I think, like most writers, we get our start young. I have a selection of wallpaper-covered mimeographed books from when I was young. They range from poetry to fantasy pirate adventures. I loved playing pretend as a child and writing new worlds into existence. More than that, I loved diving into reading literature of all types. Some of my favorite days were spent outside, escaping into a new world through a book.
My current interest resides in the creation of new and unique worlds and the characters that inhabit them. Condensing the storytelling into short story, flash, and sometimes even drabble forms, I work to create vivid worlds and characters that stay with you long after the story has completed.
Many of my works have an underlying theme of current issues such as the risks of robotic AI, the cultural segregation of people, interpersonal relationship issues, and sometimes I just go for a fun romp in another beautiful world for a cozy fantasy.
It is sometimes easier to see and recognize the prejudice of others that don’t look like us in faraway places than to face it head-on in the real world by confronting our beliefs or those of the crazy, loud relative at the holiday table. My work looks at that dichotomy. Let’s take an unknown world with prejudice; I feel if we can see it in a fantasy world, we are more willing to listen and then react in our own lives in more positive ways as we process the information in a safe way, rather than be confronted with the bare raw truth all at once over pie.