Catherynne M. Valente (born May 5, 1979) is an American fiction writer, poet, and literary critic. For her

speculative fiction Speculative fiction is a term that has been used with a variety of (sometimes contradictory) meanings. The broadest interpretation is as a category of fiction encompassing genres with elements that do not exist in reality, recorded history, nat ...

novels she has won the annual James Tiptree,

Andre Norton Andre Alice Norton (born Alice Mary Norton, February 17, 1912 – March 17, 2005) was an American writer of science fiction and fantasy, who also wrote works of historical and contemporary fiction. She wrote primarily under the pen name ...

, and Mythopoeic Fantasy awards. Her short fiction has appeared in ''

Clarkesworld Magazine ''Clarkesworld Magazine'' (ISSN 1937-7843) is an American online fantasy and science fiction magazine. It released its first issue October 1, 2006 and has maintained a regular monthly schedule since, publishing fiction by authors such as Elizabe ...

'', the World Fantasy Award–winning anthologies '' Salon Fantastique'' and ''

Paper Cities ''Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy'' is a 2008 speculative fiction anthology edited by Ekaterina Sedia. Background ''Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy'' was first published in 2008 by Senses Five Press in trade paperback f ...

'', along with numerous "Year's Best" volumes. Her critical work has appeared in the ''International Journal of the Humanities'' as well as in numerous essay collections.

Career

Catherynne M. Valente's novels have been nominated for Hugo, World Fantasy, and Locus awards. Her 2009 book ''

Palimpsest In textual studies, a palimpsest () is a manuscript page, either from a scroll or a book, from which the text has been scraped or washed off so that the page can be reused for another document. Parchment was made of lamb, calf, or kid skin an ...

'' won the

Lambda Award Lambda Literary Awards, also known as the "Lammys", are awarded yearly by Lambda Literary to recognize the crucial role LGBTQ writers play in shaping the world. The Lammys celebrate the very best in LGBTQ literature.The awards were instituted i ...

for LGBT Science Fiction or Fantasy. Her two-volume series '' The Orphan's Tales'' won the 2008

Mythopoeic Award The Mythopoeic Awards for literature and literary studies are given annually for outstanding works in the fields of myth, fantasy, and the scholarly study of these areas. Established by the Mythopoeic Society in 1971, the Mythopoeic Fantasy Awa ...

, and its first volume, ''The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden'', won the 2006 James Tiptree Jr. Award and was nominated for the 2007

World Fantasy Award The World Fantasy Awards are a set of awards given each year for the best fantasy fiction published during the previous calendar year. Organized and overseen by the World Fantasy Convention, the awards are given each year at the eponymous ann ...

. In 2012, Valente's work won three Locus Awards: Best Novelette (''White Lines on a Green Field''), Best Novella (''Silently and Very Fast'') and Best YA Novel (''

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making ''Fairyland'' is a series of fantasy novels by Catherynne M. Valente. The novels follow a 12-year-old girl named September as she is spirited away from her average life to Fairyland. In Valente's previous novel, ''Palimpsest'', the narrator brief ...

''). In 2011, her children's novel ''

'' debuted at #8 on the ''New York Times'' Best Seller List. Its sequel, ''The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There'', featured at #5 on ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...

'' Best Fiction of 2012 list. In 2009, she donated her archive to the

Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, doing business as Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, commonly known as SFWA ( or ) is a Non-profit organization, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization of professional science fiction an ...

(SFWA) Collection in the department of Rare Books and Special Collections at

Northern Illinois University Northern Illinois University (NIU) is a public research university in DeKalb, Illinois. It was founded as Northern Illinois State Normal School on May 22, 1895, by Illinois Governor John P. Altgeld as part of an expansion of the state's system ...

. She is a regular panelist on the podcast '' SF Squeecast''.

Multimedia and mythpunk

Valente tours regularly both in America and abroad. She occasionally performs with singer/songwriter

S. J. Tucker S. J. Tucker (born February 22, 1980) is an Arkansas-born North American female singer-songwriter. Originally inspired by alternative folk rock artists like Joni Mitchell, Jeff Buckley and Ani DiFranco, Tucker – also called "Sooj" or "Skinn ...

, who along with her own varied discography composes albums based on Valente's work. The pair perform reading concerts throughout North America, often featuring dancers, aerial artists, art auctions featuring jewelry and paintings based on the novels, and other performances. Valente is active in the

crowdfunding Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over was raised worldwide by cro ...

movement of online artists, and her novel ''

'' was the first online, crowdfunded book to win a major literary award before traditional publication. In a 2006 blog post, Valente coined the term

mythpunk Since the advent of the cyberpunk genre, a number of derivatives of cyberpunk have become recognized in their own right as distinct subgenres in speculative fiction, especially in science fiction. Rather than necessarily sharing the digitally an ...

as a joke for describing her own and other works of challenging folklore-based fantasy. Valente and other critics and writers have discussed mythpunk as a subgenre of

mythic fiction Mythic fiction is literature that is rooted in, inspired by, or that in some way draws from the tropes, themes, and symbolism of myth, legend, folklore, and fairy tales. The term is widely credited to Charles de Lint and Terri Windling. Mythi ...

that starts in

folklore Folklore is shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. This includes oral traditions such as tales, legends, proverbs and jokes. They include material culture, rangin ...

and

myth Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not objectively true, the identification of a narrat ...

and adds elements of

postmodernist Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of modern ...

literary techniques.

Selected works

Novels

*''The Labyrinth'' (2004) *''The Ice Puzzle'' (2004) *'' Yume No Hon: The Book of Dreams'' (2005) *'' The Grass-Cutting Sword'' (2006) *''

'' (2009) *'' Deathless'' (2011) *''Radiance'' (2015) *''The Glass Town Game'' (2017) *''

Space Opera Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes space warfare, with use of melodramatic, risk-taking space adventures, relationships, and chivalric romance. Set mainly or entirely in outer space, it features technological and soc ...

'' (2018) *'' Mass Effect: Andromeda Annihilation'' (2018) *''Comfort Me with Apples'' (2021)

Novellas

*''Silently and Very Fast'' (2011) *'' Six-Gun Snow White'' (2013) *''Speak Easy'' (2015) *''

The Refrigerator Monologues ''The Refrigerator Monologues'' is a 2017 superhero fiction novel by Catherynne Valente, with art by Annie Wu, exploring the lives - and deaths - of superheroines, and of the girlfriends of superheroes; the title refers to "Women in Refrigerat ...

'' (2017) *'' The Past Is Red'' (2021) ;The Orphan's Tales * '' The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden'' (vol. 1) (October 2006) ** ''Book of the Steppe'' ** ''Book of the Sea'' * '' The Orphan's Tales: In the Cities of Coin and Spice'' (vol. 2) (October 2007) ** ''Book of the Storm'' ** ''Book of the Scald'' ;A Dirge for Prester John Published by

Night Shade Books Night Shade Books is an American, San Francisco–based imprint, formerly an independent publishing company, that specializes in science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Among its publications have been the U.S. edition of Iain M. Banks' novel ...

: * '' The Habitation of the Blessed'' (2010) * ''The Folded World'' (2011) ;Fairyland Published by

Feiwel & Friends Macmillan Publishers (occasionally known as the Macmillan Group; formally Macmillan Publishers Ltd and Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC) is a British publishing company traditionally considered to be one of the 'Big Five' English language publi ...

: *Prequel: ''The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland—For a Little While'' (2011) *''

'' (2011) started out in 2009 as a crowdfunded middle-grade online novel (originally, a fictional children's book in ''

''). *''The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There'' (2012) *''The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two ''(2013) *''The Boy Who Lost Fairyland'' (2015) *''The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home'' (2016)

Anthologies edited

*'' Nebula Awards Showcase 55'' (2021)

Poetry

*''Music of a Proto-Suicide'' (2004) *''Apocrypha'' (2005) *''Oracles: A Pilgrimage'' (2006) *''The Descent of Inanna'' (2006) *''A Guide to Folktales in Fragile Dialects'' (May 2008)

Nonfiction

* Introduction to ''

Jane Eyre ''Jane Eyre'' ( ; originally published as ''Jane Eyre: An Autobiography'') is a novel by the English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published under her pen name "Currer Bell" on 19 October 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. of London. The first ...

(Illustrated)'' (2007) * "Regeneration X" in ''Chicks Dig Time Lords'' (2010) * ''Indistinguishable from Magic'' (2014)

Short fiction

*"The Oracle Alone" ''Music of a Proto-Suicide'' (2004) *"Ghosts of Gunkanjima" ''

Papaveria Press Papaveria Press is an independent British publishing house based in Wakefield, West Yorkshire. It specializes in special, limited handbound editions and paperbacks in the fields of fairy tale, myth and poetry. History Papaveria Press was fo ...

'' (2005) *"The Maiden-Tree" ''Cabinet des Fees'' (2005) *"Bones Like Black Sugar" '' Fantasy Magazine'' (2005) *"Psalm of the Second Body" ''PEN Book of Voices'' (2005) *"Ascent Is Not Allowed" ''The Minotaur in Pamplona'' (2005) *"Thread: A Triptych" ''Lone Star Stories'' (2006) *"Urchins, While Swimming" ''Clarkesworld Magazine'' (2006) *"Milk and Apples" '' Electric Velocipede'' (2006) *"Temnaya and the House of Books" ''Mythic'' (2006) *"A Grey and Soundless Tide" '' Salon Fantastique'' (2006) *"A Dirge For Prester John" ''Interfictions'' (2007) *"The Ballad of the Sinister Mr. Mouth" ''Lone Star Stories'' (2007) *"La Serenissima" '' Endicott Studio'' (2007) *"The Proslogium of the Great Lakes" ''Farrago's Wainscot'' (2007) *"A Buyer's Guide to Maps of Antarctica" ''Clarkesworld Magazine'' (2008) *"Tales of Beaty and Strangeness: City of Blind Delights" ''Clockwork Phoenix'' (2008) *"The Hanged Man" ''Farrago's Wainscot'' (2008) *"An Anthology of Urban Fantasy: Palimpsest" ''

'', ed.

Ekaterina Sedia Ekaterina Sedia (born July 9, 1970) is a Russian fantasy writer. She immigrated to the United States and attended college in New Jersey to obtain her Ph.D. Her most famous work is ''The Alchemy of Stone'', a steampunk novel that examines sexism a ...

(2008) *"The Harpooner at the Bottom of the World" ''Spectra Pulse'' (2008) *"Golubash, or, Wine-War-Blood-Elegy" ''Federations'' (2009) *"The Secret History of Mirrors" ''Clockwork Phoenix 2'' (2009) *"A Book of Villainous Tales:A Delicate Architecture" ''Troll's Eye View'' (2009) *"The Radiant Car Thy Sparrows Drew" ''Clarkesworld Magazine'' (2009) *"The Anachronist's Cookbook" ''Steampunk Tales'' (2009) *"A Between Books Anthology:Proverbs of Hell" ''The Stories in Between'' (2010) *"The Days of Flaming Motorcycles" ''Dark Faith'' (2010) *"Secretario" ''

Weird Tales ''Weird Tales'' is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine founded by J. C. Henneberger and J. M. Lansinger in late 1922. The first issue, dated March 1923, appeared on newsstands February 18. The first editor, Edwin Baird, pri ...

'' (2010) *"Thirteen Ways of Looking at Space/Time" ''Clarkesworld Magazine'' (2010) *"How to Become a Mars Overlord" '' Lightspeed'' (2010) *"15 Panels Depicting the Sadness of the Baku and the Jotai" ''Haunted Legends'' (2010) *"In the Future When All's Well" ''Teeth'' (2011) *"A Voice Like a Hole" ''Welcome to Bordertown'' (2011) *"The Wolves of Brooklyn" '' Fantasy Magazine'' (2011) *"The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland—For a Little While" ''Tor.com'' (2011) *"White Lines on a Green Field" '' Subterranean Magazine'' (2011)

Collections

*''This Is My Letter to the World: The Omikuji Project, Cycle One'' (2010) *''Ventriloquism'' (2010) *''Myths of Origin'', Omnibus collection containing ''The Labyrinth'', ''Yume No Hon: The Book of Dreams'', ''The Grass-Cutting Sword'', and ''Under in the Mere'' (2011) *''The Melancholy of Mechagirl ''(2013) *''The Bread We Eat in Dreams'' (2013) *''The Future Is Blue'' (2018)

Awards

References

External links

*
Blog
*
2010 Interview on the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast2007 Interview with Jay Tomio
*
Patreon page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Valente, Catherynne M. 1979 births Living people Postmodernists 21st-century American novelists 21st-century American poets 21st-century American short story writers 21st-century American women writers American fantasy writers American science fiction writers American women poets Women science fiction and fantasy writers Lambda Literary Award winners Hugo Award-winning writers American women novelists Writers from Seattle Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Rhysling Award for Best Long Poem winners Novelists from Washington (state)