Charles de Lint

De Lint built most of what later got called urban fantasy, decades before there was a shelf for it: ordinary Canadian cities with the older stories still running underneath, among buskers, runaways and people living in squats. Newford, the city he invented, now holds dozens of novels and collections. He is a working musician in Celtic and folk traditions and the books are full of playing. His use of Indigenous North American material has been questioned, and he has answered that he works from published sources and consultation rather than claiming any authority of his own. He lives in Ottawa and has published something past seventy books.