Jean Rabe

Jean Rabe is an American journalist, editor, gamer and writer of fantasy and mystery. After a career as a newspaper reporter, she was employed by TSR, Inc. for several years as head of the Role Playing Game Association and editor of the Polyhedron magazine. Rabe began a career as a novelist for TSR and Wizards of the Coast, and over the last 30 years has produced over three dozen books and scores of short stories, at first in the genres of game-related fantasy and science fiction and later as an author of mystery novels. Rabe wrote game accessories and novels for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy worlds of Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance, and contributed to West End Games' Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game and FASA's BattleTech product lines. She served the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America as business manager and editor of the association's SFWA Bulletin until 2013. Rabe has become known for collaborations with Andre Norton and a series of short story anthologies frequently co-edited with Martin H. Greenberg. Rabe admits she has ghost written a few works, and has co-written fiction and non-fiction works with such diverse writers as Gene DeWeese, Stephen D. Sullivan, Don Bingle, and F. Lee Bailey. She wrote her first "Piper Blackwell mystery" novel in 2018 and has published five books in the series. Early life Jean Rabe was born in Ottawa, Illinois, and learned to play games at an early age — checkers, chess, and euchre by the age of 7, and board wargames in high school. In 1974 she enrolled in journalism at Northern Illinois University. In her junior year, while attending the inaugural Windycon games convention, she was introduced to the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, which had just been published by TSR earlier that year. She subsequently took up the game as a hobby and social activity. She graduated from Northern Illinois with a Bachelor of Science in Journalism.