Nicola Griffith is a native of Yorkshire, England, where she earned her beer money teaching women’s self-defense, fronting a band, and arm-wrestling in bars, before discovering writing and moving to the US. Her immigration case was a fight and ended up making new law: the State Department declared it to be “in the National Interest” for her to live and work in this country. This didn’t thrill the more conservative power-brokers, and she ended up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, where her case was used as an example of the country’s declining moral standards.
In 1993 a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis slowed her down a bit, and she concentrated on writing.
Nicola, now a dual US/UK citizen, holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Anglia Ruskin University, is married to writer Kelley Eskridge, and lives in Seattle. Most of the time she is happily lost in the seventh century (writing the second novel about Hild, Menewood), emerging occasionally to drink just the right amount of beer and take enormous delight in everything.
In 1993 a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis slowed her down a bit, and she concentrated on writing.
Nicola, now a dual US/UK citizen, holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Anglia Ruskin University, is married to writer Kelley Eskridge, and lives in Seattle. Most of the time she is happily lost in the seventh century (writing the second novel about Hild, Menewood), emerging occasionally to drink just the right amount of beer and take enormous delight in everything.
Genres: Mystery, Fantasy, Science Fiction
Series
Novels
Novellas
Series contributed to
Some of the Best from Tor.com (with Charlie Jane Anders, Dale Bailey, Kelly Barnhill, Richard Bowes, Marie Brennan, Adam Christopher, John Chu, A M Dellamonica, Ruthanna Emrys, Max Gladstone, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Maria Dahvana Headley, Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen, Yoon Ha Lee, Ken Liu, Seanan McGuire, Daniel José Older, Mary Rickert, John Scalzi, Veronica Schanoes, Genevieve Valentine, Jo Walton, Kai Ashante Wilson, Ray Wood and Isabel Yap)
Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2014 Edition (2015)
Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2014 Edition (2015)
Anthologies edited
Bending the Landscape: Horror (1997) (with Stephen Pagel)
Bending the Landscape: Fantasy (1997) (with Stephen Pagel)
Bending the Landscape: Science Fiction (1998) (with Stephen Pagel)
Bending the Landscape: Fantasy (1997) (with Stephen Pagel)
Bending the Landscape: Science Fiction (1998) (with Stephen Pagel)
Anthologies containing stories by Nicola Griffith
Short stories
Song of Bullfrogs, Cry of Geese (1991) | |||
Yaguara (1994) | Nebula Awards (nominee) |
Awards
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Nicola Griffith recommends

Halfway Human (1998)
Carolyn Ives Gilman
"Fascinating ... the best SF novel I've read in a long time."

Spin State (2003)
(Spin , book 1)
Chris Moriarty
"Vivid, sexy, and sharply written... a nonstop, white knuckle tour of quantum physics, artificial intelligence, and the human heart."

Passing Strange (2017)
Ellen Klages
"Ellen Klages's love for queer San Francisco is evident in every line: its history, its mystery, and its people in all their variety and glory. I smiled as I read. You will, too."

The Mere Wife (2018)
Maria Dahvana Headley
"The Mere Wife is an astonishing reinterpretation of Beowulf Beowulf in suburbia--epic, operatic, and razor-sharp, a story not of a thick-thewed thegn, but of women at war, as wives and warriors, mothers and matriarchs. Their chosen weapons are as likely to be swords as public relations, and they wield both fearlessly. They rule, and they fight."

A Study in Honor (2018)
(Janet Watson Chronicles, book 1)
Claire O'Dell
"A Study in Honor is a fast-moving, diverse science-fictional Holmes and Watson reinterpretation set in near future Washington DC. As a deliciously intersectional makeover of a famous literary duo it’s enormously satisfying. Clean, clear, and vastly enjoyable."

The Best Bad Things (2018)
Katrina Carrasco
"Gritty street fiction set in the lawless past when Port Townsend was the Deadwood of the Pacific Northwest, Katrina Carrasco's The Best Bad Things is a bloody brawl of a book. Carrasco uses a whippy structure and flexible prose to play an unsettling shell game as Alma, dressed as Jack, sheds her impulse control along with her corsets, and the plot accelerates into a visceral, unexpected underworld of bare-knuckle fighting, opium smuggling, and genderqueer lust."

Miranda in Milan (2019)
Katharine Duckett
"Love and lust, mothers and monsters, magicians and masked balls, all delivered with Shakespearean panache."

The Parting Glass (2019)
Gina Marie Guadagnino
"Read The Parting Glass for its rich tapestry of 1830s lower Manhattan, where the stately drawing rooms of wealthy WASPs on Washington Square are sustained by the cheap labour drawn from the tenements nearby. Or read it as a fascinating study of immigration and social class, race and ethnicity, religion and sexuality in early New York. Or as the tale of Maire O'Farrell and her twin brother Seanin, fresh off the boat, who help each other lie to get work in a wealthy householduntil they both fall in love with the daughter of the house. Or read it as a tragedy of lies and a triumph of love, or a delicious subversion of the marriage plot. But read it."

The Women's War (2019)
(Women's War, book 1)
Jenna Glass
"#MeToo and #Resistance though the lens of epic fantasy."

A Song for a New Day (2019)
Sarah Pinsker
"Experiencing Sarah Pinsker's A Song For a New Day is like listening to a fine, well-rehearsed song unleashed live. It's a deeply human song of queer found family and the tension between independence and belonging, thoughtful and raw like the best live music. It's also a cautionary tale of what happens when we privilege convenience over connection. If you love performancethe magic of head-thrown-back ecstatic musical communionread this book."

Sorrowland (2021)
Rivers Solomon
"Sorrowland is a raw, powerful, and visceral read. With Vern, Rivers Solomon has created a woman who simply side-steps her damage, and level after level of difficulty-young, Black, queer, blind, alone in the woods with two newborns and pursued by monstrous government agents-to assume her own power. Nature, joy, science, belonging, human metamorphosis, generational oppression, strength, and sheer lust for life: if Toni Morrison, M. Night Shyamalan, and Marge Piercy got together they might, if they were lucky, produce something with the unstoppable exhilaration of this novel. Sorrowland is sui generis."

Things We Lost to the Water (2021)
Eric Nguyen
"In Things We Lost to the Water, Eric Nguyen not only uses water to great effect but the prose itself feels like water: clear, powerful, and life-giving. While reading we believe that being loved and being flawed are not incompatible, nor belonging and being estranged. Nguyen helps us understand that we can all float if we let go of having to swim the same way to the same rhythmwe will find our own level in our own time. This is a beautiful book!"

One Two Three (2021)
Laurie Frankel
"One Two Three is a powerful and nuanced novel about hope, human frailty, and love. Laurie Frankel takes a clear-eyed look at the mess we make of the world when we privilege profits over people and, brilliantly, without flinching from the truth, allows no hint of contempt, disgust, or hatred to enter the conversation. Three sisters, Mab, Monday, and Mirabel, understand that you can’t fight old problems with traditional tools. Their gifts and differences and love for each other help them to understand that their mother-our mothers-can’t make the change the world needs. It’s up to the daughters to act, to move us forward, to tell a different story. It is the daughters who will save us. One Two Three is the blueprint for a true revolution."
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