Katherine Kurtz | |
---|---|
Born |
Coral Gables, Florida, United States |
18 October 1944
Occupation | Novelist |
Genre | Fantasy |
Notable works | Deryni novels |
Website | |
www |
Katherine Irene Kurtz is an American fantasy writer, known for her sixteen historical fantasy novels in the Deryni series. She also wrote several occult alternate history novels in her Templar series, and urban fantasy novels in her Adept series.
Her 1970 debut novel, Deryni Rising, was influential for being one of the first fantasy novels written in a mode closer to historical fiction than to mythology or legend, as was common in the then-popular high fantasy works such as those by J. R. R. Tolkien. Writing in Strange Horizons, Kari Sperring calls Kurtz the "first writer of secondary-world historical fantasy", noting her close attention to the importance of faith in pre-modern Western societies and her portrayal of magic as a formal, ritual practice as opposed to the "picaresque and informal" way magic was depicted in other fantasy of the time.
Kurtz was born October 18, 1944 in Coral Gables, Florida, where she also grew up. She graduated with a B.S. in chemistry from the University of Miami. She married Scott MacMillan in 1983 and had a son with him. Until 2007, they lived in Ireland, and since then again in the United States, in Virginia.
(with Deborah Turner Harris)
(with Deborah Turner Harris)
A partial list of works Kurtz has edited or contributed to is as follows:
In addition, she has contributed to a number of anthologies.