Elizabeth Bear | |
---|---|
Born | Sarah Bear Elizabeth Wishnevsky September 22, 1971 Hartford, Connecticut, United States |
Occupation | Novelist |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | The University of Connecticut |
Genre | Speculative fiction |
Notable works | Hammered |
Notable awards | 2005 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, 2006 Locus Award for Best First Novel, 2008 Hugo Award for Best Short Story, 2009 Hugo Award for Best Novelette |
Website | |
elizabethbear |
Sarah Bear Elizabeth Wishnevsky (born September 22, 1971) is an American author who works primarily in speculative fiction genres, writing under the name Elizabeth Bear. She won the 2005 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, the 2008 Hugo Award for Best Short Story for "Tideline," and the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Novelette for "Shoggoths in Bloom." She is one of only five writers who have gone on to win multiple Hugo Awards for fiction after winning the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (the others being C. J. Cherryh, Orson Scott Card, Spider Robinson, and Ted Chiang).
Bear is of Ukrainian and Swedish ancestry; some of her late ancestors claim to be of Viking heritage.
A native of Hartford, Connecticut, she has been a media industry professional, a stablehand, a fluff-page reporter, a maintainer of microbiology procedure manuals for a 1,000-bed inner-city hospital, a typesetter and layout editor, a traffic manager for an import-export business, and "the girl who makes the donuts at The Whole Donut at three A.M."
She lived in Las Vegas, Nevada for some time (the setting for the short stories "One-Eyed Jack and the Suicide King", "Follow Me Light", and "This Tragic Glass"), but she returned to Connecticut in January 2006.
Her first novel Hammered was published in January 2005 and was followed by Scardown in July and Worldwired in November of the same year. The trilogy features Canadian Master Warrant Officer Jenny Casey, who is also the main character in the short story "Gone to Flowers". Hammered won the Locus Award for Best First Novel in 2006.
The Chains That You Refuse, a collection of her short fiction, was published May 2006 by Night Shade Books. Blood and Iron, the first book in the fantasy series entitled "The Promethean Age", debuted June 27, 2006. She is also a coauthor of the ongoing Shadow Unit website/pseudo-TV series.