# Nicola Griffith

Nicola Griffith (/ˈnɪkələ ˈɡrɪfɪθ/; 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. In 2024 she was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

## Personal life

Griffith was born 30 September 1960 in Leeds, to Margaret and Eric Griffith. Griffith's family is Catholic and she is one of five children. She knew she was gay by age 13.
Griffith is cousin to British actor Clare Higgins.
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.$^{:17}$ 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 and Rosemary Sutcliff; fantastic fiction including the works of E. E. Smith, Frank Herbert, and J. R. R. Tolkien; nonfiction and history — Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was a particular favorite.
Griffith took interest in the sciences as a teenager. She entered University of Leeds to study microbiology but did not complete a degree. Griffith was the lead singer and cofounder of the band Janes Plane, which experienced some success in England before breaking up.
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.

## Career

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, essays, and novellas. While Griffith has said that she "resists labels to describer her work," much of her published material contains themes of gender and sexuality.
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."
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.

## Awards and honors

| Year | Title | Award | Category | Result |
| 1993 | Ammonite | BSFA Award | — | Shortlisted |
| 1993 | Ammonite | James Tiptree, Jr. Award | — | Won |
| 1993 | Ammonite | Lambda Literary Award | Lesbian Science Fiction/Fantasy | Won |
| 1993 | Touching Fire | James Tiptree, Jr. Award | — | Longlisted |
| 1994 | Ammonite | Arthur C. Clarke Award | — | Shortlisted |
| 1994 | Ammonite | Locus Award | First Novel | Shortlisted |
| 1995 | "Yaguara" | Nebula Award | Novella | Nominated |
| 1996 | Slow River | Nebula Award | Novel | Won |
| 1996 | Slow River | Lambda Literary Award | Science Fiction/Fantasy | Finalist |
| 1998 | Bending the Landscape | Lambda Literary Award | Science Fiction/Fantasy | Won |
| 1999 | The Blue Place | Gaylactic Spectrum Awards | Novel | Nominated |
| 1999 | The Blue Place | Lambda Literary Award | Lesbian Mystery | Won |
| 1999 | Bending the Landscape: Science Fiction | Gaylactic Spectrum Awards | Other Work | Won |
| 1999 | Bending the Landscape: Science Fiction | Lambda Literary Award | Science Fiction/Fantasy | Won |
| 2000 | Slow River | Gaylactic Spectrum Awards | Hall of Fame | Won |
| 2002 | Bending the Landscape: Horror | Gaylactic Spectrum Awards | Other Work | Won |
| 2002 | Bending the Landscape: Horror | Lambda Literary Award | Anthology | Finalist |
| 2002 | Bending the Landscape: Horror | Lambda Literary Award | Science Fiction/Fantasy | Finalist |
| 2003 | Stay | Lambda Literary Award | Lesbian Fiction | Finalist |
| 2005 | With Her Body | Gaylactic Spectrum Awards | Other Work | Finalist |
| 2005 | With Her Body | Lambda Literary Award | Science Fiction/Fantasy | Finalist |
| 2008 | And Now We Are Going to Have a Party | Lambda Literary Award | Lesbian Memoir or Biography | Won |
| 2010 | "It Takes Two" | Hugo Award | Novelette | Finalist |
| 2013 | Hild | Bisexual Book Awards | Fiction | Shortlisted |
| 2013 | Hild | James Tiptree, Jr. Award | — | Honor |
| 2013 | Hild | Nebula Award | Novel | Finalist |
| 2014 | Hild | John W. Campbell Memorial Award | — | Shortlisted |
| 2014 | Hild | Washington State Book Award | Fiction | Won |
| 2018 | So Lucky | Over the Rainbow Booklist | — | Top 10 |
| 2019 | So Lucky | Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award | — | Shortlisted |
| 2019 | So Lucky | Tournament of Books | — | Shortlisted |
| 2019 | So Lucky | Washington State Book Award | Fiction | Won |
| 2022 | Spear | Los Angeles Times Book Prize | Ray Bradbury Prize | Won |
| 2022 | Spear | Nebula Award | Novel | Finalist |
| 2023 | Spear | HWA Crown Awards | Gold | Longlisted |
| 2023 | Spear | Locus Award | Fantasy Novel | Nominated |
| 2023 | Spear | Ursula K. Le Guin Prize | — | Shortlisted |
| | Spear | World Fantasy Award | Novel | Shortlisted |

## Publications
### Fiction

* —— (1992). Ammonite. Del Rey. ISBN 9780345452382.
* —— (1995). Slow River. Ballantine Books. ISBN 9780345395375.
* —— (2018). So Lucky. MCD x FSG Originals. ISBN 9780374265922.
* —— (2022). Spear. Tordotcom. ISBN 9781250819321.

#### Aud Torvingen series

* —— (1998). The Blue Place. William Morrow. ISBN 9780380974467.
* —— (2002). Stay. Black Lizard. ISBN 9781400032303.
* —— (2007). Always. Riverhead Books. ISBN 9781594489358.

#### The Hild Sequence series

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

### Nonfiction

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

### Anthologies

* Bending the Landscape: Fantasy, Overlook Books, ISBN 9781585675760 (1997, with Stephen Pagel)
* Bending the Landscape: Science Fiction, Overlook Books, ISBN 9780879517328 (1998, with Stephen Pagel)
* Bending the Landscape: Horror, Overlook Books, ISBN 9781585673728 (2001, with Stephen Pagel)

### Collections

* —— (2004). With Her Body. Aqueduct Press. ISBN 9780974655949.
* —— (2014). Cold Wind. Tor Books. ISBN 9781466871342.
* —— (2018). Glimmer. Dia Art Foundation. ISBN 9780944521885.

### 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)
* "It Takes Two" (2009)

### Critical studies and reviews of Griffith's work

* Holland, Cecelia (December 2013). "Locus Looks at Books: Divers Hands". Locus (635): 22. Review of Hild.