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Changing Perspectives: Five Women
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Top Row: Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler, N. K. Jemisin; Bottom Row: Ursula K. LeGuin, Mary Shelley, five representative novels
Biographical Sketches
Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin on August 30, 1797, in London, England. She was the daughter of philosopher and political writer William Godwin and famed feminist Mary Wollstonecraft — the author of The Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). Sadly for Shelley, she never really knew her mother who died shortly after her birth. Her father William Godwin was left to care for Shelley and her older half-sister Fanny Imlay. Imlay was Wollstonecraft's daughter from an affair she had with a soldier. The family dynamics soon changed with Godwin's marriage to Mary Jane Clairmont in 1801. Clairmont brought her own two children into the union, and she and Godwin later had a son together. Shelley never got along with her stepmother. Her stepmother decided that her stepsister Jane (later Claire) should be sent away to school, but she saw no need to educate Shelley. The Godwin household had a number of distinguished guests during Shelley's childhood, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. While she didn't have a formal education, she did make great use of her father's extensive library. Shelley could often be found reading, sometimes by her mother's grave. She also liked to daydream, escaping from her often challenging home life into her imagination. Shelley also found a creative outlet in writing. According to The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft, she once explained that "As a child, I scribbled; and my favourite pastime, during the hours given me for recreation, was to 'write stories.'" She published her first poem, "Mounseer Nongtongpaw," in 1807, through her father's company.Husband During the summer of 1812, Shelley went to Scotland to stay with an acquaintance of her father William Baxter and his family. There she experienced a type of domestic tranquility she had never known. Shelley returned to the Baxters' home the following year. In 1814, Mary began a relationship with poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Percy Shelley was a devoted student of her father, but he soon focused his attentions on Mary. He was still married to his first wife when he and the teenaged Mary fled England together that same year. The couple was accompanied by Mary's stepsister Jane. Mary's actions alienated her from her father who did not speak to her for some time. Mary and Percy traveled about Europe for a time. They struggled financially and faced the loss of their first child in 1815. Mary delivered a baby girl who only lived for a few days. The following summer, the Shelleys were in Switzerland with Jane Clairmont, Lord Byron and John Polidori. The group entertained themselves one rainy day by reading a book of ghost stories. Lord Byron suggested that they all should try their hand at writing their own horror story. It was at this time that Mary Shelley began work on what would become her most famous novel, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. Later that year, Mary suffered the loss of her half-sister Fanny who committed suicide. Another suicide, this time by Percy's wife, occurred a short time later. Mary and Percy Shelley were finally able to wed in December 1816. She published a travelogue of their escape to Europe, History of a Six Weeks' Tour (1817), while continuing to work on her soon-to-famous monster tale. In 1818, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus debuted as a new novel from an anonymous author. Many thought that Percy Bysshe Shelley had written it since he penned its introduction. The book proved to be a huge success. That same year, the Shelleys moved to Italy. While Mary seemed devoted to her husband, she did not have the easiest marriage. Their union was riddled with adultery and heartache, including the death of two more of their children. Born in 1819, their son, Percy Florence, was the only child to live to adulthood. Mary's life was rocked by another tragedy in 1822 when her husband drowned. He had been out sailing with a friend in the Gulf of Spezia.Later Years Made a widow at age 24, Shelley worked hard to support herself and her son. She wrote several more novels, including Valperga and the science fiction tale The Last Man (1826). She also devoted herself to promoting her husband's poetry and preserving his place in literary history. For several years, Shelley faced some opposition from her late husband's father who had always disapproved his son's bohemian lifestyle. Shelley died of brain cancer on February 1, 1851, at age 53, in London, England. She was buried at St. Peter's Church in Bournemouth, laid to rest with the cremated remains of her late husband's heart. After her death, her son Percy and daughter-in-law Jane had Mary Shelley’s parents exhumed from St. Pancras Cemetery in London (which had fallen into neglect over time) and had them reinterred beside Mary at the family’s tomb in St. Peter’s in Bournemouth.___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Writer Octavia Estelle Butler was born in Pasadena, California, on June 22, 1947, later breaking new ground as a woman and an African American in the realm of science fiction. Butler thrived in a genre typically dominated by white males. She lost her father at a young age and was raised by her mother. To support the family, her mother worked as a maid. As a child, Butler was known for her shyness and her impressive height. She was dyslexic, but she didn't let this challenge deter her from developing a love of books. Butler started creating her own stories early on, and she decided to make writing her life's work around the age of 10. She later earned an associate degree from Pasadena City College. Butler also studied her craft with Harlan Ellison at the Clarion Fiction Writers Workshop. To make ends meet, Butler took all sorts of jobs while maintaining a strict writing schedule. She was known to work for several hours very early in the morning each day. In 1976, Butler published her first novel, Patternmaster. This book would ultimately become part of an ongoing storyline about a group of people with telepathic powers called Patternists. The other related titles are Mind of My Mind (1977), Wild Seed (1980) and Clay's Ark (1984). (Butler's publishing house would later group the works as the Patternist series, presenting them in a different reading order from when they were chronologically published.) In 1979, Butler had a career breakthrough with Kindred. The novel tells the story of an African American woman who travels back in time to save a white slave owner—her own ancestor. In part, Butler drew some inspiration from her mother's work. "I didn't like seeing her go through back doors," she once said, according to The New York Times. "If my mother hadn't put up with all those humiliations, I wouldn't have eaten very well or lived very comfortably. So I wanted to write a novel that would make others feel the history: the pain and fear that black people have had to live through in order to endure." For some writers, science fiction serves as means to delve into fantasy. But for Butler, it largely served as a vehicle to address issues facing humanity. It was this passionate interest in the human experience that imbued her work with a certain depth and complexity. In the mid-1980s, Butler began to receive critical recognition for her work. She won the 1984 Best Short Story Hugo Award for "Speech Sounds." That same year, the novelette "Bloodchild" won a Nebula Award and later a Hugo as well. In the late 1980s, Butler published her Xenogenesis trilogy — Dawn (1987), Adulthood Rites (1988) and Imago (1989). This series of books explores issues of genetics and race. To insure their mutual survival, humans reproduce with aliens known as the Oankali. Butler received much praise for this trilogy. She went on to write the two-installment Parable series — Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1998). In 1995, Butler received a "genius" grant from the MacArthur Foundation — becoming the first science-fiction writer to do so — which allowed her to buy a house for her mother and herself. In 1999, Butler abandoned her native California to move north to Seattle, Washington. She was a perfectionist with her work and spent several years grappling with writer's block. Her efforts were hampered by her ill health and the medications she took. After starting and discarding numerous projects, Butler wrote her last novel Fledgling (2005), which was an innovative take on the concept of vampires and family structures, the latter being one of her works' prevailing themes. On February 24, 2006, Butler died at her Seattle home. She was 58 years old. With her death, the literary world lost one of its great storytellers. She is remembered, as Gregory Hampton wrote in Callaloo, as writer of "stories that blurred the lines of distinction between reality and fantasy." And through her work, "she revealed universal truths."
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Ursula K. Le Guin was born Ursula Kroeber on October 21, 1929, in Berkeley, California, the youngest child and only girl among four siblings. Her mother, Theodora, was a writer who chronicled the life of the last Yahi tribe member, Ishi, while her father, Alfred, was a celebrated anthropologist. Le Guin was raised in a household in which the exploration of art, ideas and cultures was encouraged, with members of the Native-American community becoming well known to the family. A lover of mythology, Le Guin went on to attend Radcliffe College, and later graduated with an MA from Columbia University. She wed historian and fellow Fulbright scholar Charles Le Guin in December 1953 some months after the two met on a maritime voyage to France. Le Guin would later recount that she faced years of rejection from mainstream publishers while plying her trade as a writer. She eventually turned to the genres of science fiction and fantasy and found acceptance. In 1966, Le Guin published the novel Rocannon’s World, which places the planet Hain as the birthplace of humanity and thus became the first of several books that are part of the “Hainish Cycle.” Among the later titles in the cycle are The Word for World Is Forest (a 1972 outing that invited later comparison by critics to the James Cameron film Avatar), The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974) and The Telling (2000). (The author stated the later novels in the cycle don’t have to be read in a particular order.) The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), the fourth book of the Hainish Cycle after Planet of Exile (1966) and City of Illusions (1967), became one of Le Guin’s most acclaimed and trailblazing works. A ponderous narrative, Darkness profiles the Gethenians, an alien race who have no fixed gender characteristics until the time of monthly mating, with the novel also contrasting the social mores of two nations in conflict. The book was eventually lauded as a visionary classic and won both Nebula and Hugo awards. After a request from a publisher, Le Guin turned to the world of young adult audiences and released A Wizard of Earthsea in 1968, following the travails of student wizard Sparrowhawk in a tempestuous archipelago locale. With visceral descriptions of magic and physical terrain (and a quieter precursor to the commercial juggernaut of J.K. Rowling’s Hogwarts), Earthsea became a renowned series as seen with the follow-up works The Tombs of Atuan (1970), The Farthest Shore (1972) and Tehanu (1990), as well as Tales From Earthsea (2001) and The Other Wind (2001), the final novel in the series. The Earthsea books have reportedly sold millions of copies worldwide. Though the series is geared towards teen audiences, adult readers have taken to them as well, as the works are noted for their emotional maturity and depth. Le Guin published additional books for children, such as her Catwings Series, along with short story collections, poetry, essays and adult speculative fiction. She became one of the most decorated writers in publishing, winning multiple Nebula and Hugo awards as well as a National Book Award and the Kafka Prize, among many other honors. In later years, Le Guin retired from teaching and writing outside of poetry. She also courted controversy, staunchly critiquing online entities like Amazon and Google for their influence on how books are sold and consumed in the new millennium. Le Guin was concerned with nurturing up-and-coming writers, as seen with advice given via the online blog Book View Café. She penned the 1998 nonfiction book Steering the Craft: A 21-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story. In September 2016, the Library of America published from Le Guin The Complete Orsinia: Malafrena, Stories and Songs, focusing on a novel unbeknownst to the general public.Personal Life The Le Guins had three children and settled in Portland, Oregon, where they lived for decades. Though brought up in a non-religious household, Le Guin took to the Eastern spiritual traditions of Taoism and Buddhism. Of her personal spirituality, she said, "Taoism gave me a handle on how to look at life and how to lead it when I was an adolescent hunting for ways to make sense of the world without going off into the God business."Death Le Guin died at her Portland home on January 22, 2018, at age 88. No cause was immediately named, though one of her sons said she had been in poor health for months. The tributes came pouring in, with other writers paying respects to one of the most influential figures in the literary world from the past 50 years. Tweeted Stephen King: "Ursula K. LeGuin, one of the greats, has passed. Not just a science fiction writer; a literary icon. Godspeed into the galaxy." ___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Margaret Atwood was born on November 18, 1939, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada to a nutritionist mother and entomologist father who fostered a love of nature. Also growing up in Quebec and showing a passion for writing at an early age, Atwood eventually pursued her undergraduate studies at Victoria College at the University of Toronto, graduating in 1961. She then earned her master’s at Radcliffe the following year. Over the course of her career, Atwood went on to teach at a variety of colleges and universities in both Canada and the United States. Atwood’s first published work was the pamphlet of poetry Double Persephone (1961), published via Hawkshead Press. More poetry followed during the decade as seen with the books Talismans for Children (1965) and The Animals in That Country (1968). She then published her first novel, The Edible Woman, in 1969, a metaphoric, witty work about the social status of a woman about to wed. A tenacious spirit, Atwood would later describe taking Greyhound buses to read at gymnasiums and sell books. Atwood continued to publish poetry as well as the novels Surfacing (1973), Lady Oracle (1976) and Life Before Man (1980). Several more books followed, yet it was 1985’s The Handmaid’s Tale that garnered Atwood a massive wave of acclaim and popularity. A prescient warning over what could be, the book chronicles a puritanical, theocratic dystopia in which a select group of fertile women — a condition which has become a rarity — are made to bear children for corporate male overlords. The Handmaid’s Tale, also performed as an opera, was turned into a 1990 film starring Natasha Richardson as the title character Offred, along with Aidan Quinn, Elizabeth McGovern, Faye Dunaway and Robert Duvall. Decades later, Handmaid’s Tale was adapted into a spring 2017 TV miniseries, starring Elisabeth Moss as Offred, along with Samira Wiley, Alexis Bledel and Joseph Fiennes. It later won multiple Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Drama Series. In addition, Atwood’s novel Alias Grace, a murder tale set in the mid-19th century in upper Canada, released as a miniseries in the fall of 2017. Atwood is a prolific writer who has penned additional novels that include Cat’s Eye (1989) and The Blind Assassin, which won the Booker Prize. Continuing her output of speculative fiction with real-world parallels, the new millennium saw Atwood releasing the environment focused MaddAddam trilogy, consisting of Oryx and Crake (2003), The Year of the Flood (2009) and MaddAddam (2013). In addition to The Penelopiad (2005) and The Tent (2006), she also released the book of essays In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination, looking at the nuances of sci-fi/fantasy genre writing. In 2016, Atwood published the graphic novel Angel Catbird, an undertaking done with fellow Canadian artist Johnnie Christmas which profiles the super-heroic adventures of a genetic engineer who becomes part feline, part owl. The work is slated to be followed up by the February 2017 release, Angel Catbird: To Castle Catula. Atwood lived in Toronto with her partner Graeme Gibson until his death in September 2019. The couple has one daughter. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Nora Keita Jemisin (born September 19, 1972) is an American science fiction and fantasy writer, better known as N. K. Jemisin. She has also worked as a counseling psychologist. Her fiction includes a wide range of themes, notably cultural conflict and oppression. Her debut novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and the subsequent books in her Inheritance Trilogy received critical acclaim. She has won several awards for her work, including the Locus Award. The three books of her Broken Earth series made her the first author to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel in three consecutive years or for all three novels in a trilogy. Jemisin was a recipient of the MacArthur Fellows Program Genius Grant in 2020. Jemisin was born in Iowa City, Iowa, and grew up in New York City and Mobile, Alabama. She lived in Massachusetts for ten years and then moved to New York City. Jemisin attended Tulane University from 1990 to 1994, where she received a B.S. in psychology. She went on to study counseling and earn her Master of Education from the University of Maryland.Career A graduate of the 2002 Viable Paradise writing workshop, Jemisin has published short stories and novels. She was a member of the Boston-area writing group BRAWLers, and is a member of Altered Fluid, a speculative fiction critique group. In 2009 and 2010, Jemisin's short story "Non-Zero Probabilities" was a finalist for the Nebula and Hugo Best Short Story Awards. Jemisin's debut novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, the first volume in her Inheritance Trilogy, was published in 2010. It was nominated for the 2010 Nebula Award and short-listed for the James Tiptree Jr. Award. In 2011, it was nominated for the Hugo Award, World Fantasy Award,[12] and Locus Award, winning the 2011 Locus Award for Best First Novel.[13] The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms also won the Sense of Gender Awards in 2011. It was followed by two further novels in the same trilogy – The Broken Kingdoms in 2010 and The Kingdom of Gods in 2011. During her delivery of the Guest of Honour speech at the 2013 Continuum in Australia, Jemisin pointed out that 10% of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) membership voted for alt-right writer Theodore Beale in his bid for the SFWA presidential position, stating that silence about Beale's views was the same as enabling them. Beale's response to Jemisin was condemned as "an appallingly racist screed.” A link to his comments was tweeted on the SFWA Authors Twitter feed, and Beale was subsequently expelled from the organization after a unanimous vote by the SFWA Board. Jemisin was a co-Guest of Honor of the 2014 WisCon science fiction convention in Madison, Wisconsin. At that time, GQ described her as having "a day job as a counseling psychologist." She was the Author Guest of Honor at Arisia 2015 in Boston, Massachusetts. In January 2016, Jemisin started writing "Otherworldly", a bimonthly column for The New York Times. In May 2016, Jemisin mounted a Patreon campaign which raised sufficient funding to allow her to quit her job as a counseling psychologist and focus full-time on her writing. Jemisin's novel The Fifth Season won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2016, making her the first African-American writer to win a Hugo award in that category. Its sequels, The Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky, won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2017 and 2018, respectively. In the following year, Bustle called Jemisin "the sci-fi writer every woman needs to be reading". In October 2020, Jemisin was announced as a recipient of the MacArthur Fellows Program Genius Grant. Jemisin lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. (c) Biography.com and Wikipedia.com
Ursula K. Le Guin was born Ursula Kroeber on October 21, 1929, in Berkeley, California, the youngest child and only girl among four siblings. Her mother, Theodora, was a writer who chronicled the life of the last Yahi tribe member, Ishi, while her father, Alfred, was a celebrated anthropologist. Le Guin was raised in a household in which the exploration of art, ideas and cultures was encouraged, with members of the Native-American community becoming well known to the family. A lover of mythology, Le Guin went on to attend Radcliffe College, and later graduated with an MA from Columbia University. She wed historian and fellow Fulbright scholar Charles Le Guin in December 1953 some months after the two met on a maritime voyage to France. Le Guin would later recount that she faced years of rejection from mainstream publishers while plying her trade as a writer. She eventually turned to the genres of science fiction and fantasy and found acceptance. In 1966, Le Guin published the novel Rocannon’s World, which places the planet Hain as the birthplace of humanity and thus became the first of several books that are part of the “Hainish Cycle.” Among the later titles in the cycle are The Word for World Is Forest (a 1972 outing that invited later comparison by critics to the James Cameron film Avatar), The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974) and The Telling (2000). (The author stated the later novels in the cycle don’t have to be read in a particular order.) The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), the fourth book of the Hainish Cycle after Planet of Exile (1966) and City of Illusions (1967), became one of Le Guin’s most acclaimed and trailblazing works. A ponderous narrative, Darkness profiles the Gethenians, an alien race who have no fixed gender characteristics until the time of monthly mating, with the novel also contrasting the social mores of two nations in conflict. The book was eventually lauded as a visionary classic and won both Nebula and Hugo awards. After a request from a publisher, Le Guin turned to the world of young adult audiences and released A Wizard of Earthsea in 1968, following the travails of student wizard Sparrowhawk in a tempestuous archipelago locale. With visceral descriptions of magic and physical terrain (and a quieter precursor to the commercial juggernaut of J.K. Rowling’s Hogwarts), Earthsea became a renowned series as seen with the follow-up works The Tombs of Atuan (1970), The Farthest Shore (1972) and Tehanu (1990), as well as Tales From Earthsea (2001) and The Other Wind (2001), the final novel in the series. The Earthsea books have reportedly sold millions of copies worldwide. Though the series is geared towards teen audiences, adult readers have taken to them as well, as the works are noted for their emotional maturity and depth. Le Guin published additional books for children, such as her Catwings Series, along with short story collections, poetry, essays and adult speculative fiction. She became one of the most decorated writers in publishing, winning multiple Nebula and Hugo awards as well as a National Book Award and the Kafka Prize, among many other honors. In later years, Le Guin retired from teaching and writing outside of poetry. She also courted controversy, staunchly critiquing online entities like Amazon and Google for their influence on how books are sold and consumed in the new millennium. Le Guin was concerned with nurturing up-and-coming writers, as seen with advice given via the online blog Book View Café. She penned the 1998 nonfiction book Steering the Craft: A 21-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story. In September 2016, the Library of America published from Le Guin The Complete Orsinia: Malafrena, Stories and Songs, focusing on a novel unbeknownst to the general public.Personal Life The Le Guins had three children and settled in Portland, Oregon, where they lived for decades. Though brought up in a non-religious household, Le Guin took to the Eastern spiritual traditions of Taoism and Buddhism. Of her personal spirituality, she said, "Taoism gave me a handle on how to look at life and how to lead it when I was an adolescent hunting for ways to make sense of the world without going off into the God business."Death Le Guin died at her Portland home on January 22, 2018, at age 88. No cause was immediately named, though one of her sons said she had been in poor health for months. The tributes came pouring in, with other writers paying respects to one of the most influential figures in the literary world from the past 50 years. Tweeted Stephen King: "Ursula K. LeGuin, one of the greats, has passed. Not just a science fiction writer; a literary icon. Godspeed into the galaxy." ___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Margaret Atwood was born on November 18, 1939, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada to a nutritionist mother and entomologist father who fostered a love of nature. Also growing up in Quebec and showing a passion for writing at an early age, Atwood eventually pursued her undergraduate studies at Victoria College at the University of Toronto, graduating in 1961. She then earned her master’s at Radcliffe the following year. Over the course of her career, Atwood went on to teach at a variety of colleges and universities in both Canada and the United States. Atwood’s first published work was the pamphlet of poetry Double Persephone (1961), published via Hawkshead Press. More poetry followed during the decade as seen with the books Talismans for Children (1965) and The Animals in That Country (1968). She then published her first novel, The Edible Woman, in 1969, a metaphoric, witty work about the social status of a woman about to wed. A tenacious spirit, Atwood would later describe taking Greyhound buses to read at gymnasiums and sell books. Atwood continued to publish poetry as well as the novels Surfacing (1973), Lady Oracle (1976) and Life Before Man (1980). Several more books followed, yet it was 1985’s The Handmaid’s Tale that garnered Atwood a massive wave of acclaim and popularity. A prescient warning over what could be, the book chronicles a puritanical, theocratic dystopia in which a select group of fertile women — a condition which has become a rarity — are made to bear children for corporate male overlords. The Handmaid’s Tale, also performed as an opera, was turned into a 1990 film starring Natasha Richardson as the title character Offred, along with Aidan Quinn, Elizabeth McGovern, Faye Dunaway and Robert Duvall. Decades later, Handmaid’s Tale was adapted into a spring 2017 TV miniseries, starring Elisabeth Moss as Offred, along with Samira Wiley, Alexis Bledel and Joseph Fiennes. It later won multiple Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Drama Series. In addition, Atwood’s novel Alias Grace, a murder tale set in the mid-19th century in upper Canada, released as a miniseries in the fall of 2017. Atwood is a prolific writer who has penned additional novels that include Cat’s Eye (1989) and The Blind Assassin, which won the Booker Prize. Continuing her output of speculative fiction with real-world parallels, the new millennium saw Atwood releasing the environment focused MaddAddam trilogy, consisting of Oryx and Crake (2003), The Year of the Flood (2009) and MaddAddam (2013). In addition to The Penelopiad (2005) and The Tent (2006), she also released the book of essays In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination, looking at the nuances of sci-fi/fantasy genre writing. In 2016, Atwood published the graphic novel Angel Catbird, an undertaking done with fellow Canadian artist Johnnie Christmas which profiles the super-heroic adventures of a genetic engineer who becomes part feline, part owl. The work is slated to be followed up by the February 2017 release, Angel Catbird: To Castle Catula. Atwood lived in Toronto with her partner Graeme Gibson until his death in September 2019. The couple has one daughter. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Nora Keita Jemisin (born September 19, 1972) is an American science fiction and fantasy writer, better known as N. K. Jemisin. She has also worked as a counseling psychologist. Her fiction includes a wide range of themes, notably cultural conflict and oppression. Her debut novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and the subsequent books in her Inheritance Trilogy received critical acclaim. She has won several awards for her work, including the Locus Award. The three books of her Broken Earth series made her the first author to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel in three consecutive years or for all three novels in a trilogy. Jemisin was a recipient of the MacArthur Fellows Program Genius Grant in 2020. Jemisin was born in Iowa City, Iowa, and grew up in New York City and Mobile, Alabama. She lived in Massachusetts for ten years and then moved to New York City. Jemisin attended Tulane University from 1990 to 1994, where she received a B.S. in psychology. She went on to study counseling and earn her Master of Education from the University of Maryland.Career A graduate of the 2002 Viable Paradise writing workshop, Jemisin has published short stories and novels. She was a member of the Boston-area writing group BRAWLers, and is a member of Altered Fluid, a speculative fiction critique group. In 2009 and 2010, Jemisin's short story "Non-Zero Probabilities" was a finalist for the Nebula and Hugo Best Short Story Awards. Jemisin's debut novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, the first volume in her Inheritance Trilogy, was published in 2010. It was nominated for the 2010 Nebula Award and short-listed for the James Tiptree Jr. Award. In 2011, it was nominated for the Hugo Award, World Fantasy Award,[12] and Locus Award, winning the 2011 Locus Award for Best First Novel.[13] The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms also won the Sense of Gender Awards in 2011. It was followed by two further novels in the same trilogy – The Broken Kingdoms in 2010 and The Kingdom of Gods in 2011. During her delivery of the Guest of Honour speech at the 2013 Continuum in Australia, Jemisin pointed out that 10% of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) membership voted for alt-right writer Theodore Beale in his bid for the SFWA presidential position, stating that silence about Beale's views was the same as enabling them. Beale's response to Jemisin was condemned as "an appallingly racist screed.” A link to his comments was tweeted on the SFWA Authors Twitter feed, and Beale was subsequently expelled from the organization after a unanimous vote by the SFWA Board. Jemisin was a co-Guest of Honor of the 2014 WisCon science fiction convention in Madison, Wisconsin. At that time, GQ described her as having "a day job as a counseling psychologist." She was the Author Guest of Honor at Arisia 2015 in Boston, Massachusetts. In January 2016, Jemisin started writing "Otherworldly", a bimonthly column for The New York Times. In May 2016, Jemisin mounted a Patreon campaign which raised sufficient funding to allow her to quit her job as a counseling psychologist and focus full-time on her writing. Jemisin's novel The Fifth Season won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2016, making her the first African-American writer to win a Hugo award in that category. Its sequels, The Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky, won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2017 and 2018, respectively. In the following year, Bustle called Jemisin "the sci-fi writer every woman needs to be reading". In October 2020, Jemisin was announced as a recipient of the MacArthur Fellows Program Genius Grant. Jemisin lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. (c) Biography.com and Wikipedia.com
Print Web Resources
- MARGARET ATWOOD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Atwood
- MARGARET ATWOOD: https://www.thoughtco.com/biography-of-margaret-atwood-canadian-writer-4781945
- ORYX AND CRAKE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oryx_and_Crake
- OCTAVIA BUTLER: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octavia_E._Butler
- OCTAVIA BUTLER: https://www.thoughtco.com/biography-of-octavia-e-butler-4776509
- KINDRED: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindred_(novel)
- N.K. JEMISIN: https://nkjemisin.com/
- N. K. JEMISIN: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N._K._Jemisin
- HOW LONG TIL BLACK FUTURE MONTH: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Long_%27til_Black_Future_Month%3F
- URSULA LE GUIN: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin
- URSULA LE GUIN: https://www.biography.com/writer/ursula-k-le-guin
- LATHE OF HEAVEN: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lathe_of_Heaven
- MARY SHELLEY: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Shelley
- MARY SHELLEY: https://www.biography.com/writer/mary-shelley
- FRANKENSTEIN: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein
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Author Video Resources
MARGARET ATWOOD INTERVIEW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPPxR3PcXkQOCTAVIA BUTLER INTERVIEW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV6vRGQQ45IOCTAVIA BUTLER OVERVIEW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2J5-m1F3kE&t=91sOCTAVIA BUTLER BIOGRAPHY: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2J5-m1F3kEOCTAVIA BUTLER OVERVIEW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqrmSeEkOMcN.K. JEMISIN INTERVIEW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P8wKqf9JvIN.K. JEMISIN INTERVIEW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsZetjOH150N.K.JEMISON INTERVIEW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7psO6ZTxZPsURSULA LEGUIN INTERVIEW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kelbmtxaRYgURSULA LEGUIN INTERVIEW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UVq3BqKiUMMARY SHELLEY OVERVIEW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4p96vqI3zA
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Book Video Resources
ORYX AND CRAKE SUMMARY: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJducF--vmEKINDRED SUMMARY: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIIoxlioIJ0&list=PLz_ZtyOWL9BTI5VogsjGOUPgq_AsAnp40HOW LONG TIL BLACK FUTURE MONTH? OVERVIEW-REVIEW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Rm-L-mT6to&t=76sTHE LATHE OF HEAVEN (1980 PBS FILM VERSION, 1 hr 50 mins): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8VRbaVNvSATHE LATHE OF HEAVEN REVIEW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUPP5JvFKS4FRANKENSTEIN SUMMARY: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zoa6mOc163wFRANKENSTEIN SUMMARY: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo3Ci6_5NHs