Jessica Amanda Salmonson

Last updated
Jessica Amanda Salmonson
Born (1950-01-06) January 6, 1950 (age 74)
Seattle, Washington, U.S.
Occupation
NationalityAmerican
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.

Contents

Writing career

Fiction

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]

Nonfiction

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.

Editor

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 ]

Awards

Selected bibliography

Novels

Tomoe Gozen trilogy

  • Tomoe Gozen (Ace Books, 1981); revised as The Disfavored Hero (Pacific Warriors 1999; Open Road Media e-book, 2015)
  • The Golden Naginata (Ace Books, 1982; Open Road Media e-book, 2015)
  • Thousand Shrine Warrior (Ace Books, 1984; Open Road Media e-book, 2015)

Other novels

  • The Swordswoman (Ace Books 1982)
  • Ou Lu Khen and the Beautiful Madwoman (Ace Books, 1985)
  • Anthony Shriek, His Doleful Adventures; or, Lovers of Another Realm (Dell Abyss, 1992; hardcover from Centipede Press, 2017)
  • Namer of Beasts, Maker of Souls: The Gnostic/Cabbalistic Biography of Merlin (Duck's-foot Tree Productions e-book, 2011)

Collections

Poetry

Non-fiction

Anthologies edited by

Collections edited by

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 John Clute and John Grant, "Salmonson, Jessica Amanda", in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy , pp. 832–833, Orbit, London / St Martin’s Press, New York (1997). Retrieved 5 July 2023.
  2. Brian Stableford, The A to Z of Fantasy Literature, pp. 356–367, The A to Z Guide Series, Scarecrow Press (2009), ISBN   978-0-8108-6829-8
  3. 1 2 3 4 Jessica Amanda Salmonson at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
  4. Jessica Salmonson papers, Collection 472. University of Oregon Libraries. Retrieved 4 July 2023.
  5. Salmonson, Jessica Amanda, The Encyclopedia of Amazons: Women Warriors from Antiquity to the Modern Era, (1991), Universal Sales & Marketing; First Edition: ISBN   1557784205 Paperback: ISBN   0385423667
  6. The literary magazine of Fantasy & Terror, Volume 1, No. 2, 1973. Retrieved 4 July 2023.
  7. Series: The Literary Magazine of Fantasy and Terror, ISFDB. Retrieved 4 July 2023.
  8. G. W. Thomas, An Interview with Jessica Amanda Salmonson, January 20, 2018 Archived 2013-02-26 at the Wayback Machine (2003)
  9. "2nd Annual Lambda Literary Awards". Lambda Literary. July 13, 1990. Retrieved December 21, 2019.