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.