Feminist science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction focused on such feminist themes as: gender inequality, sexuality, race, economics, reproduction, and environment. Feminist SF is political because of its tendency to critique the dominant culture. Some of the most notable feminist science fiction works have illustrated these themes using utopias to explore a society in which gender differences or gender power imbalances do not exist, or dystopias to explore worlds in which gender inequalities are intensified, thus asserting a need for feminist work to continue.
Science fiction and fantasy serve as important vehicles for feminist thought, particularly as bridges between theory and practice. No other genres so actively invite representations of the ultimate goals of feminism: worlds free of sexism, worlds in which women's contributions are recognized and valued, worlds that explore the diversity of women's desire and sexuality, and worlds that move beyond gender.
Ursula Kroeber Le Guin was an American author. She is best known for her works of speculative fiction, including science fiction works set in her Hainish universe, and the Earthsea fantasy series. Her work was first published in 1959, and her literary career spanned nearly sixty years, producing more than twenty novels and over a hundred short stories, in addition to poetry, literary criticism, translations, and children's books. Frequently described as an author of science fiction, Le Guin has also been called a "major voice in American Letters". Le Guin said she would prefer to be known as an "American novelist".
Octavia Estelle Butler was an American science fiction author and a multiple recipient of the Hugo and Nebula awards. In 1995, Butler became the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.
Carolyn Janice Cherry, better known by the pen name C. J. Cherryh, is an American writer of speculative fiction. She has written more than 80 books since the mid-1970s, including the Hugo Award–winning novels Downbelow Station (1981) and Cyteen (1988), both set in her Alliance–Union universe, and her Foreigner series. She is known for worldbuilding, depicting fictional realms with great realism supported by vast research in history, language, psychology, and archeology.
Ammonite is British-American author Nicola Griffith's debut novel, which was published in 1992. Styled as a meditation on queer ideologies, the novel explores themes of gender, illusion, and humanity. Griffith examines whether a world run by women would be a gentler or better one. American author Ursula Le Guin cited Ammonite as “a knock-out first novel, with strong, likeable characters, a compelling story, and a very interesting take on gender”.
Marianne de Pierres is an Australian science fiction author. Born in Western Australia, she finished her undergraduate studies at Curtin University in Perth and later studied a Postgraduate Certificate of Arts in Writing, Editing and Publishing at the University of Queensland. In 2019, she completed her PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Queensland.
Gemma Files is a Canadian horror writer, journalist, and film critic. Her short story, "The Emperor's Old Bones", won the International Horror Guild Award for Best Short Story of 1999. Five of her short stories were adapted for the television series The Hunger.
The Cherryh Odyssey is a 2004 collection of essays by various academics, critics and authors about American Hugo Award-winning science fiction and fantasy author, C. J. Cherryh. It was edited by author and academic, Edward Carmien, and was published by Borgo Press, an imprint of Wildside Press as part of its Author Study series. Locus Magazine put the book on its "2004 Recommended Reading List", and Carmien received a nomination for the 2005 Locus Award for Best Non-fiction book for The Cherryh Odyssey.
Charlie Jane Anders is an American writer. She has written several novels as well as shorter fiction, published magazines and websites, and hosted podcasts. In 2005, she received the Lambda Literary Award for work in the transgender category, and in 2009, the Emperor Norton Award. Her 2011 novelette Six Months, Three Days won the 2012 Hugo and was a finalist for the Nebula and Theodore Sturgeon Awards. Her 2016 novel All the Birds in the Sky was listed No. 5 on Time magazine's "Top 10 Novels" of 2016, won the 2017 Nebula Award for Best Novel, the 2017 Crawford Award, and the 2017 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel; it was also a finalist for the 2017 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
Halfway Human (1998) is a science fiction novel written by Carolyn Ives Gilman. It was nominated for the 1998 Tiptree Award and placed second on the Locus Readers Poll for Best First Novel in 1999.
M. K. Hobson is an American speculative fiction and fantasy writer. In 2003 she was a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her debut novel The Native Star was nominated for the 2010 Nebula Award. She lives in Oregon City, Oregon.
Diversicon is an annual speculative fiction convention held in July or August in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minnesota area. Diversicon provides programming and social opportunities to encourage the multicultural, multimedia exploration and celebration of SF by those within and outside of the traditional SF community. Diversicon includes both live and posthumous guests. It is sponsored by SF Minnesota.
Paul Gaetan Tremblay is an American author and editor of horror, dark fantasy, and science fiction. His most widely known novels include A Head Full of Ghosts, The Cabin at the End of the World, and Survivor Song. He has won multiple Bram Stoker Awards and is a juror for the Shirley Jackson Awards.
Nora Keita Jemisin is an American science fiction and fantasy writer. 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, as well as the first to win for all three novels in a trilogy. She won a fourth Hugo Award, for Best Novelette, in 2020 for Emergency Skin. Jemisin was a recipient of the MacArthur Fellows Program Genius Grant in 2020.
Ann Leckie is an American author of science fiction and fantasy. Her 2013 debut novel Ancillary Justice, which features artificial consciousness and gender-blindness, won the 2014 Hugo Award for "Best Novel", as well as the Nebula Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the BSFA Award. The sequels, Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy, each won the Locus Award and were nominated for the Nebula Award. Provenance, published in 2017, and Translation State, published in 2023, are also set in the Imperial Radch universe. Leckie's first fantasy novel, The Raven Tower, was published in February 2019.
Ancillary Justice is a science fiction novel by the American writer Ann Leckie, published in 2013. It is Leckie's debut novel and the first in her Imperial Radch space opera trilogy, followed by Ancillary Sword (2014) and Ancillary Mercy (2015). The novel follows Breq—who is both the sole survivor of a starship destroyed by treachery and the vessel of that ship's artificial consciousness—as she seeks revenge against the ruler of her civilization. The cover art is by John Harris.
Zen Cho is a Malaysian fantasy author based in Birmingham, United Kingdom. She is known for her Sorcerer to the Crown series. She was the joint winner of the Crawford Award in 2015 for her short story collection Spirits Abroad.
Fonda Lee is a Canadian-American author of speculative fiction. She is best known for writing The Green Bone Saga, the first of which, Jade City, won the 2018 World Fantasy Award and was named one of the 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time by Time magazine. The Green Bone Saga was also included on NPR's list, "50 Favorite Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books of the Past Decade".
Alix E. Harrow is an American science fiction and fantasy writer. Her short fiction work "A Witch's Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies" has been nominated for the Nebula Award, World Fantasy Award, and Locus Award, and in 2019 won a Hugo Award. Her debut novel, The Ten Thousand Doors of January (2019), was widely acclaimed by mainstream critics, lauded by general audiences during voting at Goodreads Choice Awards and Locus Awards, and nominated for multiple first novel literary awards and speculative fiction awards. She has also published under the name Alix Heintzman.
Sandra Kasturi, is a poet, editor and publisher.
