Meredith Ann Pierce (born July 5, 1958, in

Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is a port, seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the county seat, seat of King County, Washington, King County, Washington (state), Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in bo ...

) is a

fantasy Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving Magic (supernatural), magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy ...

writer and

librarian A librarian is a person who works professionally in a library providing access to information, and sometimes social or technical programming, or instruction on information literacy to users. The role of the librarian has changed much over time, ...

. Her books deal in fantasy worlds with mythic settings and frequently feature young women who first wish only to love and be loved, yet who must face hazard and danger to save their way of life, their world, and so on, usually without being respected for their efforts until the end of the story.

Career

Her first book started a trilogy often referred to as

The Darkangel Trilogy ''The Darkangel Trilogy'' is a series of novels by American author Meredith Ann Pierce published between 1982 and 1990. It is set in the distant future, when the Moon has long since been Terraforming, terraformed into a lush paradise complete w ...

. Published in 1982, ''The Darkangel'' featured a story that Pierce claims came to her all at once while she read the account of a dream recounted to

Carl Jung Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philo ...

, one of the fathers of

psychiatry Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of mental disorders. These include various maladaptations related to mood, behaviour, cognition, and perceptions. See glossary of psychiatry. Initial psych ...

. It was followed in 1984 by ''A Gathering of Gargoyles'', and concluded in 1989 with ''The Pearl of the Soul of the World''. These books told the story of a slave girl who finds herself trying to kill a darkangel to avenge his kidnapping of her mistress. She then finds herself forced to care for the thirteen wraiths who were once his beautiful and unwilling brides, and must also resist the attractions of the vampyre. As she makes her way through the books, she finds more and more responsibility laid on her slender shoulders, with few friends and much danger as well. Pierce's second and more popular trilogy, The Firebringer Trilogy, involved a tribe of

unicorn The unicorn is a legendary creature that has been described since antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead. In European literature and art, the unicorn has for the last thousand years o ...

s on a different fantasy world. It started with ''Birth of the Firebringer'' in 1985, continued in ''Dark Moon'', published in 1992, and ended with ''The Son of Summer Stars'' in 1996. Jan, the hero of the trilogy, is part messiah, part

King Arthur King Arthur ( cy, Brenin Arthur, kw, Arthur Gernow, br, Roue Arzhur) is a legendary king of Britain, and a central figure in the medieval literary tradition known as the Matter of Britain. In the earliest traditions, Arthur appears as a ...

-figure. All three books were re-printed by

Firebird Books Firebird Books (launched January 2002) is an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., publishing mainly paperback reprint editions of science fiction and fantasy for teenagers and adults. It was created by Sharyn November, one of the few children's ...

in 2003. Pierce has written other fantasy novels, which are frequently published as either Young Adult Fiction or as general Fantasy, and sometimes in each category. Her most recent book, ''Waters Luminous and Deep'', is a book of short stories marketed for adults.

Books

The Darkangel Trilogy

*1982 '' The Darkangel'' **Won

International Reading Association The International Literacy Association (ILA), formerly the International Reading Association (IRA), is an international global advocacy and member professional organization that was created in 1956 to improve reading instruction, facilitate dialo ...

Children's Book Award **Won

California Young Reader Medal The California Young Reader Medal is a set of five annual literary awards conferred upon picture books and fiction books selected by vote of California schoolchildren from a ballot prepared by committee. The program was established in 1974 with Int ...

*1985 ''A Gathering of Gargoyles'' *1990 ''The Pearl of the Soul of the World''

The Firebringer Trilogy

*1985 ''Birth of the Firebringer'' *1992 ''Dark Moon'' *1996 ''The Son of Summer Stars''

Other books

*1985 ''The Woman Who Loved Reindeer'' *1988 ''Where the Wild Geese Go'' - a picture book *2001 ''Treasure at the Heart of the Tanglewood'' *2004 ''Waters Luminous and Deep'' - a book of short fiction

External links

* , "Moon and Unicorn"
Interview at Sequential Tart
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Pierce, Meredith Ann 1958 births Living people American children's writers American fantasy writers American women short story writers American women novelists Writers from Seattle 20th-century American novelists 21st-century American novelists American women children's writers Women science fiction and fantasy writers 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American women writers 20th-century American short story writers 21st-century American short story writers Novelists from Washington (state)