Tobias S. Buckell was born in
Grenada in the
Caribbean, an island country in the
West Indies and
Caribbean Sea, where he lived on his family’s boat. Throughout his childhood, he and his family moved to live throughout the Virgin Islands (British and American between 1989 and 1995) until
Hurricane Marilyn decimated his family’s boat house. He and his family moved to
Bluffton, Ohio when he was 16, where he eventually went on to attend and graduate from
Bluffton University in 2000, as well as
Clarion Workshop in 1999. About that same time, he sold his first short story, "Fish Merchant", to writer and editor
Scott Edelman of
Science Fiction Age, who assisted in its 2000 publication. In addition to this first publication, another of Buckell's stories, “In Orbite Medievali” won the
Writers and Illustrators of the Future Volume 16 quarterly contest that same year, hosted by Ron Collins. Since then, in addition to where he posts his works on his own website, his stories have appeared in various publications, including
Writers and Illustrators of the Future,
Nature, and
Clarkesworld. == Identity, personal life, and activism ==