He began writing professionally in 1968 and has had more than a dozen books published, including Among the Dead (1973), Cinnabar (1976), Phoenix Without Ashes (with Harlan Ellison, 1975), Wyoming Sun (1980), Particle Theory (1981), Fetish (1991), Flirting With Death (1997), and The Baku (1999).
His short stories have appeared in such anthologies as Again, Dangerous Visions, Dark Forces, Orbit, Night Visions, Wild Cards, Dark Crimes, Blood is Not Enough, Modern Classics of Science Fiction, The Norton Book of Science Fiction, and a wide variety of others. Many hundreds of his articles and columns have appeared in such publications as Omni, National Lampoon, Bloomsbury Review, Writer's Digest, Rocky Mountain News, Penthouse, and Washington Post Book World. He is a regular book columnist for such magazines as Locus, Talebones, and Cemetery Dance.
On confusing readers, Ed says: "What I also see is that when my nonfiction (as in, mainly, book reviews) sometimes appear in high profile, readers' memories are damned brief. Suddenly a buncha folks think I'm only a reviewer, or a critic as a primary role. Go figure. Then to confuse things a lot of my nonfiction is deliberately structured to resemble fiction, or at least story-telling. I like my reviews, for example, to be entertaining as well as informative. That also muddies the waters."
Over the years, he's occasionally worked in film and television, beginning with a feature script collaboration for The Synar Calculation, a "blue-collar monster movie." He adapted his own stories for The Twilight Zone (CBS) and as a series pilot for Walt Disney Cable. His stories have also been adapted for The Hidden Room (Lifetime Cable) and for independent productions. He worked as an actor in the films The Laughing Dead (1988) and Ill Met by Moonlight (1994). In the latter, a contemporary gothic-punk version of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, he played the Bard's parody of himself -- as opportunist-writer Peter Quince. His most-anthologized suspense story, While She Was Out, is currently in development hell as a feature film.
Bryant has worked as a guest lecturer, speaker, or writer-in-residence at such institutions as the Colorado Language Arts Society, South Dakota Conference on the Humanities, Colorado Mountain College Summer Writers' Workshop, the Clarion Writers' Workshop, Pima College (Tucson, Arizona), Community College of Aurora, and scores of others. He's a past president of the Colorado Authors League and is presently on the board of directors of the Colorado Center for the Book. He frequently conducts classes and workshops.
In his life, he's won awards (twice a Nebula Award winner), joined a variety of professional organizations, travelled to a few exotic places, and, in 1984, finally made it onto the map -- literally -- when he was placed on the Wyoming Literary Map by the Wyoming Association of Teachers of English. He's also been a talk show host for both radio and internet (for www.eventhorizon.com on the latter, with guests ranging from Clive Barker to Peter Beagle to Kathe Koja), a substitute motel manager, and a stirrup buckle maker, among other jobs. And for really perverse kicks, he's been -- in different years -- the official toastmaster at the World Science Fiction Convention, the World Horror Convention, and the World Fantasy Convention (not to mention Death Equinox and nearly every other literary-related convention in existence).
These days he lives with two Feline-Americans in a century-old house in North Denver along with many, many, books. Presently he's been returning to fiction writing with a righteous vengeance, and is also periodically editing an industry news e-zine entitled Mathom.