Nicola Griffith (/ˈnɪkələ ˈɡrɪfɪθ/; born 30 September 1960) is a British-American[1] novelist, essayist, and teacher. She has won the Washington State Book Award, Nebula Award, James Tiptree, Jr. Award, World Fantasy Award and six Lambda Literary Awards.
Nicola Griffith | |
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Born | Yorkshire, England | 30 September 1960
Occupation |
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Citizenship | United Kingdom and United States |
Period | 1987–present |
Genre | Fiction |
Website | |
nicolagriffith |
Griffith was born 30 September 1960 in Leeds, to Margaret and Eric Griffith.[2]
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.[2] : 17 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[3] and Rosemary Sutcliff;[4][5] 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;[3].
By the late 1980s, Griffith had begun experiencing symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS), though her illness remained undiagnosed. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in March 1993.[5]
While studying at Michigan State University, Griffith met and fell in love with fellow writer Kelley Eskridge.[5] On 4 September 1993, Griffith and Eskridge announced their commitment ceremony in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution,[6] 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.[7] 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.[5] Her immigration resulted in a new law, and she is now a dual US/UK citizen.[8]
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.[8][9]
By 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.[5] 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."[10]
In 2015 she began #CripLit, an online community for disabled writers."[10]