Featured Contributor: Elizabeth Bear

Elizabeth Bear has accomplished quite a lot during her science fiction career. The awards alone are almost endless: a John W. Campbell Award in 2005 for Best New Writer, an Audie Award in 2012 for Best Original Work, a Sturgeon Award, a Locus Award, three Hugo Awards…the list goes on and on.

Author Elizabeth Bear

After working across the spectrum of disciplines – from stable hand to typesetter and layout editor – Elizabeth now spends most of her time writing speculative fiction, although she is a frequent traveler between genre boundaries. She is infamous for her ability to jump around a variety of time periods, realms and styles with fearless agility and exceptional consistency. Breaking down this particular quality, she explained in an interview with Tor.com, “I’m one of those writers who has a hard time repeating herself, so all of my work is quite different.”

Elizabeth is also noted for her diverse approach to creating characters. Although frequently asked to elaborate on her goals for introducing such a diverse range of gender, race, identity and sexual preference into her work, Bear’s response is simple: “What I write reflects the world I know. My friends and family are not exclusively white and straight, so it would seem peculiar to me for the world I wrote in to be.”

Elizabeth lives in Massachusetts. She is a regular instructor at the Viable Paradise writers’ workshop in Martha’s Vineyard, and has also taught at Clarion, Clarion West, the WisCon Writer’s Respite and Odyssey.

Photo courtesy of Kyle Cassidy, source www.elizabethbear.com. Thank you Kyle Cassidy!