Warrior Women

by Paula Guran

  Tanith Lee was born in the UK in 1947. After school, she worked at a number of jobs, and at age twenty-five had one year at art college. Then DAW Books published her novel The Birthgrave. Thereafter, she was a professional full-time writer. Publications total approximately ninety novels and collections and well over three hundred short stories. She also wrote for television and radio. Lee was honored with several awards: in 2009 she was made a Grand Master of Horror and honored with the World Fantasy Convention Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013. Tanith Lee passed away after a long illness on 24 May 2015.

  Sharon Lee’s most recent solo novel is Carousel Seas, the concluding novel in Archers Beach contemporary fantasy trilogy. Lee and her husband, Steve Miller, are creators of the star-spanning Liaden Universe® series. Dragon in Exile is the eighteenth novel-length entry in the series; the nineteenth—Alliance of Equals—will be published in 2016. Numerous novellas and short stories are also set in the universe. Before becoming fiction writers, both worked in various newspaper jobs, which they credit with teaching them the finer points of collaboration. They live in Maine.

  Yoon Ha Lee’s debut short fiction collection Conservation of Shadows was published in 2013. His first novel, Ninefox Gambit—the first of a space opera trilogy—will be published in June 2016. He lives in Louisiana with his family and an extremely lazy cat. Neither the cat nor any family members have yet been eaten by gators.

  Ken Liu (kenliu.name) is an author and translator of speculative fiction, as well as a lawyer and programmer. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards. Liu’s debut novel, The Grace of Kings, the first in a silkpunk epic fantasy series, was published earlier this year. His first collection of short stories, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, will be published in 2016. The translator of numerous literary and genre works from Chinese to English, his translation of The Three-Body Problem, by Liu Cixin, won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2015, the first translated novel to ever receive that honor. Liu lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.

  Seanan McGuire is the author of the October Daye urban fantasies, the InCryptid urban fantasies, and several other works (both stand-alone and in trilogies or duologies). Under the pseudonym “Mira Grant” she’s authored two trilogies. Between the two names, she’s published around fifty short stories and novellas in the last six years. McGuire was the winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and her novel Feed (as Mira Grant) was named as one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2010. In 2013 she became the first person ever to appear five times on the same Hugo ballot. McGuire lives in a creaky old farmhouse in Northern California, which she shares with her cats, a vast collection of creepy dolls and horror movies, and sufficient books to qualify her as a fire hazard.

  Currently the most famous fantasy author in the world, George R. R. Martin sold his first story in 1970 and has been writing professionally ever since. He spent ten years in Hollywood as a writer-producer, working on The Twilight Zone, Beauty and the Beast, and various feature films and television pilots that were never made. In the mid-1990s he began work on his epic fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire. The first novel, A Game of Thrones, was published in 1996. The fourth volume, 2005’s A Feast for Crows, was a New York Times #1 bestseller, as was the fifth, A Dance with Dragons, in 2011. In April 2011 HBO premiered its first episode of the adaptation of A Game of Thrones series and he was named as one of Time’s most influential people of the year. Game has gone on to be ratings-breaker and winner of a record number of Emmys—including Outstanding Drama Series—in 2015. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his wife Parris.

  Elizabeth Moon, a Texas native, is a Marine Corps veteran with degrees in history and biology. She began writing stories in her childhood, but did not make her first fiction sale until age forty. She has published twenty-three novels, including Nebula Award-winner The Speed of Dark, three short-fiction collections including Moon Flights, and over thirty short-fiction pieces. Her most recent novel is Crown of Renewal, the tenth novel to be set in her Paksenarrion Universe.

  An (pronounce it “on”) Owomoyela is a neutrois author with a background in web development, linguistics, and weaving chain maille out of stainless steel fencing wire, whose fiction has appeared in a number of venues including Clarkesworld, Asimov’s, Lightspeed, and a handful of “Year’s Best” anthologies. Owomoyela’s interests range from pulsars and Cepheid variables to gender studies and nonstandard pronouns, with a plethora of stops in-between. Se can be found online at an.owomoyela.net.

  Robert Reed is the author of a dozen novels, and over two hundred shorter works. He’s had stories appear in at least one of the annual “Year’s Best” anthologies every year since 1992 and is a perennial favorite in science fiction readers polls. The winner of the Hugo Award and the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire, Reed has also received nominations for the Nebula, World Fantasy, Sturgeon, Tiptree, and Campbell Awards among others. His novel Beyond the Veil of Stars was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His most recent novel is The Memory of Sky. Reed lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, with his wife, Leslie, and daughter, Jessie. An ardent long-distance runner, he can frequently be seen jogging through the parks and hiking trails of Lincoln.

  Jessica Reisman’s stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Her first novel, The Z Radiant, published by Five-Star Speculative Fiction, is “thinking reader’s sci-fi.” She was a Michener Fellow in Fiction in graduate school. See storyrain.com for more.

  International bestseller Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes under a variety of pen names, but as Rusch, she’s best known for her science fiction. As a writer, Rusch has won Hugo, Endeavour, and two Sidewise awards. She edited The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction for six years, winning a Hugo Award as Best Professional Editor. Rusch is married to fellow writer Dean Wesley Smith; they have collaborated on several works and operated Pulphouse Publishing (for which they won a World Fantasy Award). This year, she released the remaining six books in her eight-book Anniversary Day Saga, a mini-series inside the larger Retrieval Artist series. Rusch is series editor for a bimonthly anthology magazine, Fiction River, and is editing anthology Women of Futures Past: Classic Stories for release next year. In addition, she’s co-editing a series of reprint anthologies with John Helfers, focused on the history of the science fiction field.

  Carrie Vaughn is the author of the New York Times bestselling series of novels about a werewolf named Kitty, the fourteenth installment of which is Kitty Saves the World. She’s written several other contemporary fantasy and young adult novels, as well as upwards of eighty short stories. She’s a contributor to the Wild Cards series of shared world superhero books edited by George R. R. Martin and a graduate of the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop. An Air Force brat, she survived her nomadic childhood and managed to put down roots in Boulder, Colorado. Visit her at carrievaughn.com.

  Jane Yolen, author of over over 335 books, is often called the Hans Christian Andersen of America—though she wonders (not entirely idly) whether she should really be called the “Hans Jewish Andersen of America.” She has been named both Grand Master of the World Fantasy Convention and Grand Master of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. She has won two Nebulas for her short stories, and a bunch of other awards, including six honorary doctorates. One of her awards, the Skylark, given by the New England Science Fiction Association, set her good coat on fire, a warning about faunching after shiny things that she has not forgotten.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  “They Tell Me There Will Be No Pain” © 2014 Rachael Acks. First publication: Lightspeed’s Women Destroy Science Fiction! Special Issue, June 2014.

  “Love Among the Talus” © 2006 Elizabeth Bear. First publication: Strange Horizons, 11 December 2006.

  “The Days of the War, as Red as Blood, as Dark as Bile” © 2014 Aliette de Bodard. First publication: Subterranean, Spring 2014.

  “England Under the White Witch” © 2012 Theodora Goss. First publication: Clarkesworld,
October 2012.

  “Soul Case” © 2007 Nalo Hopkinson. First publication: Foundation #100, Summer 2007.

  “Not That Kind of War” © 2005 Tanya Huff. First publication: Women of War, eds. Tanya Huff & Alexander Potter (DAW Books).

  “Wonder Maul Doll” © 2007 Kameron Hurley. First publication: From the Trenches: An Anthology of Speculative War Stories, eds. Joseph Paul Haines & Samantha Henderson (Carnifex Press).

  “Joenna’s Axe” © 2010 Elaine Isaak. First publication: Demons: A Clash of Steel Anthology, ed. Jason W. Waltz (Rogue Blades Entertainment).

  “The Sea Troll’s Daughter” © 2010 Caitlín R. Kiernan. First publication: Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery, eds. Jonathan Strahan & Lou Anders (Eos/Harper Collins).

  “Eaters” © 2014 Nancy Kress. First publication: The Book of Silverberg: Stories in Honor of Robert Silverberg, eds. Gardner Dozois & William Schafer (Subterranean Press).

  “Northern Chess” © 1979 Tanith Lee. First publication: Amazons!, ed. Jessica Amanda Salmonson (DAW Books).

  “Naratha’s Shadow” © 2000 Sharon Lee & Steve Miller. First publication: Such a Pretty Face, ed. Lee Martindale (Meisha Merlin).

  “The Knight of Chains, The Deuce of Stars” © 2013 Yoon Ha Lee. First publication: Lightspeed, August 2013.

  “In the Loop” © 2014 Ken Liu. First publication: War Stories: New Military Science Fiction, eds. Jaym Gates & Andrew Liptak (Apex Book Company).

  “The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr” © 1976 George R. R. Martin. First publication: Fantastic Stories, May 1976.

  “Dying with Her Cheer Pants On” © 2010 Seanan McGuire. First publication: Apex Magazine, April 2010.

  “Hand to Hand” © 1995 Elizabeth Moon. First publication: Women at War, eds. Lois

  McMaster Bujold & Roand J. Green (Tor).

  “And Wash Out by Tides of War” © 2014 An Owomoyela. First publication: Clarkesworld, February 2014.

  “Prayer” © 2012 Robert Reed. First publication: Clarkesworld, May 2012.

  “Boy Twelve” © 2005 Jessica Reisman. First publication: Interzone #201, November/December 2005.

  “The Application of Hope” © 2013 Kristine Kathryn Rusch. First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, August 2013.

  “The Girls from Avenger” © 2010 Carrie Vaughn LLC. First publication: Warriors, eds. Gardner Dozois & George R. R. Martin (Tor).

  “Become a Warrior” © 1998 Jane Yolen. First publication: Warrior Princesses, eds. Elizabeth Ann Scarborough & Martin H. Greenberg (DAW Books).