Nicola Griffith

Nicola Griffith (born 30 September 1960) is a British-American novelist, essayist, and teacher. She has won the Washington State Book Award (twice), Nebula Award, James Tiptree, Jr. Award, World Fantasy Award, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and six Lambda Literary Awards.

Early life
Griffith was born 30 September 1960 in Leeds, to Margaret and Eric Griffith.

Griffith's earliest surviving literary efforts include an illustrated booklet she was encouraged to create to prevent her from making trouble among her fellow nursery school students. At age eleven she won a BBC student poetry prize and read aloud her winning work for radio broadcast.

Her early reading included the works of such novelists as Henry Treece and Rosemary Sutcliff; fantastic fiction including the works of E.E. Smith, Frank Herbert, and J.R.R. Tolkien; nonfiction and history — Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was a particular favorite.

By the late 1980s, Griffith had begun experiencing symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS), though her illness remained undiagnosed. She was diagnosed with MS in March 1993.

While studying at Michigan State University, Griffith met and fell in love with fellow writer Kelley Eskridge. On 4 September 1993, Griffith and Eskridge announced their commitment ceremony in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, perhaps the first same-sex commitment announcement the paper had published. Griffith and Eskridge were legally married 4 September 2013.

Griffith wanted citizenship so she could remain in the country with her wife, but because she was a lesbian, she couldn't receive citizenship through marriage, and all other pathways were closed. After much effort, Griffith received permission to live and work in the United States based on her "importance as a writer of lesbian/science fiction," making her the first out lesbian to receive a National Interest Waiver. Her immigration resulted in a new law, and she is now a dual US/UK citizen.

In 2017, after completing her thesis, entitled "Norming the Queer: Narrative Empathy via Focalized Heterotopia," Griffith received her PhD by publication from the University of East Anglia.

In late 1987 Griffith made her first professional fiction sale: "Mirrors and Burnstone" to Interzone. Her debut novel, Ammonite, received several offers from publishers, including St. Martin's Press, Avon Press, and Del Rey Books. Griffith has since published nine full-length novels, a memoir, and numerous short stories and novellas.

In 2015, Griffith "founded the Literary Prize Data working group whose purpose initially was to assemble data on literary prizes in order to get a picture of how gender bias operates within the trade publishing ecosystem."

In 2015 she began #CripLit, an online community for disabled writers."

Fiction

 * Ammonite, Del Rey, ISBN 0345452380 (1992)
 * Slow River, Ballantine Books, ISBN 0345395379 (1995)
 * So Lucky, MCD x FSG Originals, ISBN 9780374265922 (2018)
 * Spear, Tordotcom, ISBN 9781250819321 (2022)

Aud Torvingen series

 * The Blue Place, William Morrow, ISBN 0380974460 (1998)
 * Stay, Black Lizard, ISBN 140003230X (2002)
 * Always, Riverhead Books, ISBN 1594489351 (2007)

The Hild Sequence series

 * Hild, Picador, ISBN 9781250056092 (2013)
 * Menewood, MCD, ISBN 9780374208080 (2023)

Nonfiction

 * And Now We Are Going to Have a Party: Liner Notes to a Writer's Early Life, Payseur & Schmidt ISBN 9780978911416 (2007)

Anthologies

 * Bending the Landscape: Fantasy, Overlook Books, ISBN 1585675768 (1997, with Stephen Pagel)
 * Bending the Landscape: Science Fiction, Overlook Books, ISBN 0879517328 (1998, with Stephen Pagel)
 * Bending the Landscape: Horror, Overlook Books, ISBN 1585673722 (2001, with Stephen Pagel)

Short fiction

 * An Other Winter's Tale (1987)
 * Mirrors and Burnstone (1988)
 * The Other (1989)
 * We Have Met the Alien (1990)
 * The Voyage South (1990)
 * Down the Path of the Sun (1990)
 * Song of Bullfrogs, Cry of Geese (1991)
 * Wearing My Skin (1991)
 * Touching Fire (1993)
 * Yaguara (1994)
 * A Troll Story (2000)
 * With Her Body, Aqueduct Press (2004, a collection containing Touching Fire, Songs of Bullfrogs, Cry of Geese, and Yaguara)
 * It Takes Two (2009)
 * Cold Wind, Tor Books, ISBN 9781466871342 (2014)
 * Glimmer, Dia Art Foundation, ISBN 978-0944521885 (2018)

Critical studies and reviews of Griffith's work

 * Review of Hild.