Literary biography
Born Teresa Ann Waller in Van Nuys, California, in 1949, she lived in the Los Angeles area until the age of 14, when her family moved to northern California. In high school, she spent her lunch hours in the school library, devouring one historical novel after another. At about that same time she discovered fantasy writers T. H. White, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, and science fiction writer Andre Norton, whose combined influence would inspire her to begin creating imaginary worlds of her own. She met her husband, John Edgerton, in 1971, when she was working as a Tarot reader at a local Renaissance faire, and he was part of a Society for Creative Anachronism troupe putting on demonstrations of medieval tourney combat. They have four children. She and her husband live in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Her interest in medieval society, alchemy, magic, and Celtic mythology led her to begin writing the Green Lion Trilogy. The first book of the series, Child of Saturn, was a finalist for the Compton Crook Award. It is set in Celydonn, a fictional Celtic realm.
After completing this trilogy, her interest turned from epic fantasy to the pseudo-sciences of the 18th century, which resulted in the steampunkish fantasy of manners Goblin Moon. Other books and short stories followed.
However, publication of The Queen's Necklace didn't produce enough sales to satisfy her publishers, and for a time she was unable to renew her publishing contract. In 2004 she was offered the chance to relaunch under the pseudonym Madeline Howard, and has since started a new trilogy, Rune of the Unmaking, with the first novel, The Hidden Stars.
Leigh Douglass Brackett was an American science fiction writer known as "the Queen of Space Opera." She was also a screenwriter, known for The Big Sleep (1946), Rio Bravo (1959), and The Long Goodbye (1973). She worked on an early draft of The Empire Strikes Back (1980), elements of which remained in the film; she died before it went into production. In 1956, her book The Long Tomorrow made her the first woman ever shortlisted for the Hugo Award for Best Novel, and, along with C. L. Moore, one of the first two women ever nominated for a Hugo Award. In 2020, she posthumously won a Retro Hugo for her novel The Nemesis From Terra, originally published as Shadow Over Mars.
Marion Eleanor Zimmer Bradley was an American author of fantasy, historical fantasy, science fiction, and science fantasy novels, and is best known for the Arthurian fiction novel The Mists of Avalon and the Darkover series. Noted for the feminist perspective in her writing, her reputation has been posthumously marred by her daughter Moira Greyland's accusations of child sexual abuse, and for allegedly assisting her second husband, convicted child abuser Walter Breen, in sexually abusing multiple unrelated children.
Rhiannon is a major figure in Welsh mythology, appearing in the First Branch of the Mabinogi, and again in the Third Branch. Ronald Hutton called her "one of the great female personalities in World literature", adding that "there is in fact, nobody quite like her in previous human literature". In the Mabinogi, Rhiannon is a strong-minded Otherworld woman, who chooses Pwyll, prince of Dyfed, as her consort, in preference to another man to whom she has already been betrothed. She is intelligent, politically strategic, beautiful, and famed for her wealth and generosity. With Pwyll she has a son, the hero Pryderi, who later inherits the lordship of Dyfed. She endures tragedy when her newborn child is abducted, and she is accused of infanticide. As a widow she marries Manawydan of the British royal family, and has further adventures involving enchantments.
Pauline Gedge is a Canadian novelist best known for her historical fiction novels, including the best-selling Child of the Morning, The Eagle and the Raven, her fantasy novel Stargate, and her Egyptian trilogies, Lords of the Two Lands and The King's Man. She also writes science fiction, fantasy and horror. Her 13 novels have sold more than six million copies in 18 languages.
Phyllis Ayame Whitney was an American mystery writer of more than 70 novels.
Kate Elliott is the pen name of American fantasy and science fiction writer Alis A. Rasmussen.
Emma Bull is an American science fiction and fantasy author. Her novels include the Hugo- and Nebula-nominated Bone Dance and the urban fantasy War for the Oaks. She is also known for a series of anthologies set in Liavek, a shared universe that she created with her husband, Will Shetterly. As a singer, songwriter, and guitarist, she has been a member of the Minneapolis-based folk/rock bands Cats Laughing and The Flash Girls.
Historical fantasy is a category of fantasy and genre of historical fiction that incorporates fantastic elements into a more "realistic" narrative. There is much crossover with other subgenres of fantasy; those classed as Arthurian, Celtic, or Dark Ages could just as easily be placed in historical fantasy. Stories fitting this classification generally take place prior to the 20th century.
Anne Bishop is an American fantasy writer. Her most noted work is the Black Jewels series. She won the Crawford Award in 2000 for the first three Black Jewels books, sometimes called the Black Jewels trilogy: Daughter of the Blood, Heir to the Shadows, and Queen of the Darkness.
Janet Inglis "Janny" Wurts is an American fantasy novelist and illustrator. She has written several standalone novels and series, including the Wars of Light and Shadow, The Cycle of Fire trilogy and the internationally best-selling Empire trilogy that she co-authored with Raymond E. Feist. Her short story collection That Way Lies Camelot was nominated for the British Fantasy Award in 1995. She often illustrates her own books, and has won Chesley Awards for her artwork.
Freda Warrington is a British author, known for her epic fantasy, vampire and supernatural novels. Four of her novels have been nominated for the British Fantasy Society's Best Novel award. Dracula the Undead won the Dracula Society's 1997 Children of the Night Award. Her novel, Elfland, won the Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Award in the Fantasy Novel category for 2009. Warrington has also seen numerous short stories published in anthologies and magazines.
Jane M. Lindskold is an American writer of fantasy and science fiction short stories and novels.
Saturn has made appearances in fiction since the 1752 novel Micromégas by Voltaire. In the earliest depictions, it was portrayed as having a solid surface rather than its actual gaseous composition. In many of these works, the planet is inhabited by aliens that are usually portrayed as being more advanced than humans. In modern science fiction, the Saturnian atmosphere sometimes hosts floating settlements. The planet is occasionally visited by humans and its rings are sometimes mined for resources.
Theresa Tomlinson is an English writer for children, mainly of historical fiction. She advocates giving children "the opportunity to consider many different role models and ways of life, so that they can make up their own minds about what is right for them."
Louise Cooper was a British fantasy writer who lived in Cornwall with her husband, Cas Sandall.
Melanie Tem was an American horror and dark fantasy author.
The Birthgrave is a 1975 science fantasy novel by British author Tanith Lee. The novel was Lee's first published novel for adults, and also the first novel in The Birthgrave Trilogy. Inspired by Lee's own personal dreams from her early twenties, the story follows a nameless protagonist through various towns on a journey to discover who she really is and what she is capable of. The Birthgrave received mostly positive reviews and was nominated for the 1975 Nebula Award for best novel.
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.
Maureen Peters was a historical novelist, under her own name and pseudonyms such as Veronica Black, Catherine Darby, Belinda Gray, Levanah Lloyd, Judith Rothman, Elizabeth Law and Sharon Whitby.
Moon Witch, Spider King is a 2022 fantasy novel by Jamaican writer Marlon James. It is the second book of a planned trilogy, after Black Leopard, Red Wolf. The novel tells a story parallel to, and intersecting with, the first novel. The novel draws on African history and mythology, blended into the landscape of the North Kingdom and the South Kingdom, and the political tensions between these two warring states, as well as various city-states and tribes in the surrounding landscape. The rights to produce a film adaptation were purchased by Michael B. Jordan in February 2019 before the release of the first book.
