Marion Zimmer was born in the Great Depression on a farm in New York, and started selling her fiction in the 1950's. She married twice, the second ending in some scandal; she got her first college degree when was in her mid-thirties, down in Texas; in addition to science fiction she wrote gay and lesbion novels, and published under at least 4 ( Read more... )

Thanks to all for making Diana Comet's media debut a success! Last night we passed 500 views on the YouTube video, which means 500 people (or 50 people who watched it 10 times each, or 10 people who watched it 50 times each . . . er, hmmm) helped celebrate the great women writers in our field ( Read more... )

Welcome to the world, Diana Comet! Today is your official debut. Thank you to Small Beer Press for selling you at Wiscon, and thanks to all my friends and strangers who bought copies ( Read more... )

Zenna Henderson was a strange duck - a nice little Mormon girl growing up the Southwest during the Depression, her nose buried in books and science fiction magazines. As a young teacher she taught in a tuberculosis hospital for children in Connecticut and then a Japanese internment camp in Arizona. Like many dutiful young women she got married. ( Read more... )

Alyx was born around 1967. She's smart, tough, and brave; she knows what she wants and goes after it. She is not beautiful. She doesn't angst, and she's not the secret heir to a kingdom, magical power, etc. She could never be an urban fantasy heroine. Her creator is Joanna Russ, who graduated from Cornell, got a master's degree from Yale, and ( Read more... )

As part of the research for Diana Comet Presents...75 Years of Fabulous Writers (Don't click until June 1st), I looked up lots of award winners and discovered that Lisa Tuttle is the only person to have declined a Nebula. Here's a quote from her from the June 1982 Ansible(and thank goodness for it):

"When you last heard from me, I'd written to ( Read more... )

If you've ever sat around a big circle and had to keep quiet while other people rip apart your beloved creative work, you can thank Judy Merril. She was one of the co-founders of the Milford Science Fiction Writers' Conference back in the 1950's, and you can hear the echoes of Milford in Clarion, Sycamore Hill, Viable Paradise, Blue Heaven and ( Read more... )

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Alice Mary Norton was an ambitious young writer who went off to college to become a teacher. Then the Depression set in, and she had to drop out to go work for the local library. She was told it would be easier to sell her books under a male name and so she legally became Andre. Her first book was published when she was 22, and for seventy years ( Read more... )