From "About the Author" in The Fellowship of the Talisman

Clifford D. Simak is a newspaperman, only recently retired.  Over the years he has written more than 25 books and has some 200 short stories to his credit.  In 1977 he received the Nebula Grand Master award of the Science Fiction Writers of America and has won several other awards for his writing.  He was born and raised in southwestern Wisconsin, a land of wooded hills and deep ravines, and often uses this locale for his stories.  A number of critics have cited him as the pastoralist of science fiction.

Perhaps the best known of his work is City, which has become a science-fiction classic.

He and his wife Kay have been happily married for almost 50 years. They have two children - a daughter, Shelley Ellen, a magazine editor, and Richard Scott, a chemical engineer.