Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Read-Alikes
Kij Johnson is a writer of short stories, novels and occasional other things. Her first sale was in 1987 to a small Minnesota magazine, Tales of the Unanticipated; since then she has sold more than fifty shorter works of fiction, as well as poems, nonfiction, and game materials. Her books include The Fox Woman (Tor, 1999); Fudoki (Tor, 2003, a finalist for the World Fantasy Award); the short story collection At the Mouth of the River of Bees (Small Beer Press, 2012, a finalist for the World Fantasy Award); The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe (Tor.com, 2016, winner of the World Fantasy Award); and The River Bank, a sequel to Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows (Small Beer Press, 2017). There was also a Star Trek: The Next Generation book with bestseller Greg Cox, Dragon's Honor.
She is a three-time winner of the Nebula Award (2010, 2011, and 2012), and the World Fantasy Award (2009, 2017, and 2019), and a winner of the Hugo Award (2012), as well as winning the French Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire (2017), the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award (1992); the Crawford Award (1999); and others. Her short stories include the award-winners "Fox Magic," "26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss," "Spar," "Ponies," "The Man Who Bridged the Mist," and "The Privilege of the Happy Ending." She's been translated into seventeen languages, and her work has been optioned for Hollywood twice.
In the past, she's had all the cool jobs: managing editor for Tor Books, Collections and Graphic Novels Editor for Dark Horse Comics, Continuity Director and Creative Director for various worlds at Wizards of the Coast/TSR, a subject matter expert for Microsoft, and a manager for user educations groups in several tech companies.
Currently, she lives in Lawrence Kansas with a cat, Jurat.
Kij Johnson's website
This bio was last updated on 10/15/2023. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.
Even now, every story I write is a conscious craft experiment, whatever else
it is. It was very early in my fiction-writing life that I realized the kinds of
stories I wanted to write would happen only if I forced myself past the
margins of what I thought I already knew how to do, what I think of as my
glibnesses. Even at the beginning I knew I loved vocabulary and lyricism,
and I had intuitively developed an understanding of the uses for scenic and
narrative writing. I also had a lot of experience with interiority and feelings because of all that bad poetry and journalling in high school and college. It seemed evident that if I worked hard on just those things, I could within a
year or two write publishable — maybe even popular! — fiction that was
atmospheric and full of feels. I also could tell that this would get boring for
me — I had read plenty of author notes from writers, Arthur Conan Doyle,
Fredric Brown and others, who grew to hate their comfortable niches.
As a child I had read obsessively in a lot of adult genres. I loved SF
and fantasy, but I read a lot more mysteries and romances, and then there
was horror, biographies, history, the classics, science. I didn 't always
...
Hiromi Kawakami was born in Tokyo in 1958. Her first novel, Kamisama (God), was published in 1994. In 1996, she was awarded the Akutagawa Prize for Hebi o Fumu (Tread on a Snake) and in 2001 she won the Tanizaki Prize for her... (more)
If you enjoyed:
The Privilege of the Happy Ending
Try:
People from My Neighborhood
by Hiromi Kawakami
Kim Fu is a Canadian-born writer living in Seattle, Washington. SHe is the author of For Today I Am a Boy which won the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, as well as a New ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
The Privilege of the Happy Ending
Try:
Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century
by Kim Fu
We recommend 3 similar authors
The House on Biscayne Bay
by Chanel Cleeton
As death stalks a gothic mansion in Miami, the lives of two women intertwine as the past and present collide.
The Flower Sisters
by Michelle Collins Anderson
From the new Fannie Flagg of the Ozarks, a richly-woven story of family, forgiveness, and reinvention.
The Funeral Cryer by Wenyan Lu
Debut novelist Wenyan Lu brings us this witty yet profound story about one woman's midlife reawakening in contemporary rural China.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
