Jessica Amanda Salmonson | |
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Born | Seattle, Washington, U.S. | January 6, 1950
Occupation | |
Nationality | American |
Genre | Fantasy, Horror |
Website | |
www.paghat.com |
Jessica Amanda Salmonson (born January 6, 1950 [1] [2] ) is an American author and editor of fantasy and horror fiction and poetry. She lives on Puget Sound with her partner, artist and editor Rhonda Boothe.
Salmonson is the author of the Tomoe Gozen trilogy, a fantasy version of the tale of the historical female samurai Tomoe Gozen. Her other novels are The Swordswoman, Ou Lu Khen and the Beautiful Madwoman, an Asian fantasy, and a modern horror novel, Anthony Shriek. [3]
Her short story collections include A Silver Thread of Madness; Mystic Women; John Collier and Fredric Brown Went Quarreling Through My Head; The Deep Museum: Ghost Stories of a Melancholic; and The Dark Tales. Poetry collections include Horn of Tara and The Ghost Garden. [3]
Her papers (1973-1993) are archived in the collection of the University of Oregon. [4]
Salmonson has written a number of nonfiction books. Notable is The Encyclopedia of Amazons, an exhaustive alphabetical reference book of worldwide history and legends about women warriors. [5] Other works of nonfiction include Wisewomen and Boggy-Boos: A Dictionary of Lesbian Fairy Lore (1992) (coedited with Jules Remedios Faye), and Miniature Vegetables (1994). [1]
In addition to the books noted, she contributed a number of essays, primarily concerning gender and feminism in science fiction, to fanzines in the 1970s.
Salmonson began her editorial career in 1973 editing the small-press magazine The Literary Magazine of Fantasy & Terror [1] (under the name Amos Salmonson). [6] [7] She continued as editor (under her name Jessica Amanda Salmonson) when magazine was revived under the shortened name Fantasy and Terror in 1984, and continued until the final issue in 1996. At the same time, she served as editor of Fantasy Macabre from 1985 to 1996. The magazine was subtitled "Beauty plus strangeness equals terror." [3]
Salmonson was the editor of the anthologies Amazons! and Amazons II ; Heroic Visions and Heroic Visions II ; Tales by Moonlight and Tales by Moonlight II; and What Did Miss Darrington See: An Anthology of Feminist Supernatural Stories. [3] [1]
She has also edited a series of single-author collections of ghost stories and weird tales, many of them of historical significance to genre literature, including volumes by Marjorie Bowen, Alice Brown, Thomas Burke, Olivia Howard Dunbar, Hildegarde Hawthorne, Julian Hawthorne, Augustus Jessopp, Sarah Orne Jewett, Anna Nicholas, Fitz-James O'Brien, Vincent O'Sullivan, Georgia Wood Pangborn, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Mary Heaton Vorse, Jerome K. Jerome.[ citation needed ]
Montague Rhodes James was an English author, medievalist scholar and provost of King's College, Cambridge (1905–1918), and of Eton College (1918–1936). He was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge (1913–1915).
Sword and sorcery (S&S) or heroic fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy characterized by sword-wielding heroes engaged in exciting and violent adventures. Elements of romance, magic, and the supernatural are also often present. Unlike works of high fantasy, the tales, though dramatic, focus on personal battles rather than world-endangering matters. Sword and sorcery commonly overlaps with heroic fantasy. The genre originated from the early-1930s works of Robert E. Howard. The term "sword and sorcery" was coined by Fritz Leiber in the May 1961 issue of the fantasy fanzine Amra, to describe Howard and the stories that were influenced by his works. In parallel with "sword and sorcery", the term "heroic fantasy" is used, although it is a more loosely defined genre.
Tomoe Gozen was an onna-musha from the late Heian period of Japanese history. She served samurai lord Minamoto no Yoshinaka during the Genpei War and was a part of the conflict that led to the first shogunate.
Margaret Gabrielle Vere Long, who used the pseudonyms Marjorie Bowen, George R. Preedy, Joseph Shearing, Robert Paye, John Winch, and Margaret Campbell or Mrs. Vere Campbell, was a British author who wrote historical romances and supernatural horror stories, as well as works of popular history and biography.
The lost world is a subgenre of the fantasy or science fiction genres that involves the discovery of an unknown Earth civilization. It began as a subgenre of the late-Victorian adventure romance and remains popular into the 21st century.
Herbert Russell Wakefield was an English short-story writer, novelist, publisher, and civil servant chiefly remembered today for his ghost stories.
The Ealdwood Stories, also known as the Arafel Stories, are a collection of fantasy works by American writer C. J. Cherryh. The books are works of high fantasy based in part on Celtic mythology. Arafel, a main character, is a Daoine Sidhe, the highest of the Sidhe faery-folk. She dwells in the magical small forest of Ealdwood, from which the tales take their name.
Ash-Tree Press is a Canadian company that publishes supernatural and horror literature.
Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire, was a writer of weird fiction and horror fiction based in Seattle, Washington. His works typically were published as W. H. Pugmire and his fiction often paid homage to the lore of Lovecraftian horror. Lovecraft scholar and biographer S. T. Joshi described Pugmire as "the prose-poet of the horror/fantasy field; he may be the best prose-poet we have" and as one of the genre's leading Lovecraftian authors.
Bruce Coville's Shapeshifters is a work of juvenile fiction. It is an anthology of short stories compiled and edited by Bruce Coville for Avon Camelot Books. It was first printed October 1999. Steve Roman is credited in the book as assisting in its creation. Bruce Coville's Alien Visitors and Bruce Coville's Strange Worlds are in the same series. These books are similar to Coville's anthologies for Scholastic Publishing, starting with Bruce Coville's Book of Monsters. Both series include stories by award-winning fantasy and science-fiction authors such as Jane Yolen and Ray Bradbury, as well as other supernatural and extraterrestrial stories from a broad range of other writers.
Tomoe Gozen is a novel by Jessica Amanda Salmonson, published in 1981. Set in an alternate universe resembling feudal Japan, the book combines the tale of historical female samurai Tomoe Gozen with the legends and creatures of Japanese mythology to create an action-adventure fantasy. It is the first part of the Tomoe Gozen Trilogy which met with some success in the 1980s fantasy novel market. The series is notable for its unusual, highly researched samurai background and feminist story slant.
Amazons! is an anthology of fantasy stories, edited by Jessica Amanda Salmonson, with a cover and frontispiece by Michael Whelan. It was first published in paperback by DAW Books in December 1979, and was the first significant fantasy anthology of works featuring female protagonists by (mostly) female authors. It received the 1980 World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology.
Janet Kaye Fox was an American fantasy and horror writer, poet, teacher, and founder-editor-publisher of the now-defunct Scavenger's Newsletter. She lived in Osage City, Kansas.
Heroic Visions is an anthology of fantasy stories, edited by Jessica Amanda Salmonson. It was first published in paperback by Ace Books in March 1983.
Hildegarde Hawthorne was an American writer of supernatural and ghost stories, a poet and biographer.
Olivia Howard Dunbar (1873–1953) was an American short story writer, journalist and biographer, best known today for her ghost fiction.
Jules Remedios Faye is an American author, editor, letterpress printmaker, bookbinder, teacher, and creator of artists’ books. With husband Christopher Stern she established Stern & Faye Printers, a letterpress print shop & hand bookbindery located in Mt Vernon, WA. Faye teaches, curates and participates in bookarts exhibits and events throughout the Skagit Valley and Puget Sound area.
Georgia Wood Pangborn (1872–1955) was an American writer of novels and short stories. She is known as a writer of horror and the macabre. She was the mother of Edgar Pangborn and Mary Pangborn.
Lynda Rucker is an author of horror and fantasy short stories.
The Windsingers is the debut fantasy series of American author Robin Hobb under her pen name Megan Lindholm, published between 1983 and 1989. It follows a woman named Ki as she recovers from the death of her family and forms a companionship with a man called Vandien. Over the course of four books, the duo face fictional creatures including harpies, who can grant visions of the dead, and Windsingers, beings who can control the weather through music. The characters Ki and Vandien first appeared in a short story in Amazons!, an anthology focused on female heroes in fantasy. The anthology won a World Fantasy Award in 1980, and Lindholm's story drew the interest of an editor at Ace Books, leading to the development of the series.