Catherynne M. Valente

For the Italian singer, see Caterina Valente.

Catherynne M. Valente (born May 5, 1979) is an American fiction writer, poet, and literary critic. For her speculative fiction novels she has won the annual James Tiptree, Andre Norton, and Mythopoeic Fantasy awards. Her short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, the anthologies Salon Fantastique and Paper Cities, 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.

Catherynne M. Valente
Born	(1979-05-05) May 5, 1979 (age 44) Seattle, Washington, U.S.
Occupation	Poet novelist literary critic
Alma mater	UC San Diego University of Edinburgh
Genre	Postmodern, fantasy, mythpunk
Notable awards	James Tiptree Jr. Award (2006), storySouth Million Writers Award (2007), Rhysling Award (2007), Mythopoeic Award (2008), Andre Norton Award (2009), Locus Award (2014)
Website
catherynnemvalente.com

Career

Valente's 2009 book Palimpsest won the Lambda Award for LGBT Science Fiction or Fantasy. Her two-volume series The Orphan's Tales won the 2008 Mythopoeic Award, 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. In 2012, Valente 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).

In 2011, her children's novel The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making 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's Best Fiction of 2012 list.

In 2009, she donated her archive to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) Collection in the department of Rare Books and Special Collections at Northern Illinois University.^[1]

She is a regular panelist on the podcast SF Squeecast.^[2]

Multimedia and mythpunk

Valente tours with singer/songwriter S. J. Tucker, who has composed albums based on Valente's work. The pair perform reading concerts featuring dancers, aerial artists, art auctions featuring jewelry and paintings based on the novels, and other performances.^[3]

Valente is active in the crowdfunding movement of online artists, and her novel The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making was the first^{[citation needed]} online, crowdfunded book to win a major literary award before traditional publication.^[4][5][6]

In a 2006 blog post, Valente coined the term mythpunk as a joke for describing her own and other works of challenging folklore-based fantasy.^[7] Valente and other critics and writers have discussed mythpunk as a subgenre of mythic fiction that starts in folklore and myth and adds elements of postmodernist literary techniques.^[8]

Selected works

Novels

• The Labyrinth (2004)
• The Ice Puzzle (2004)
• Yume No Hon: The Book of Dreams (2005)
• The Grass-Cutting Sword (2006)
• Palimpsest (2009)
• Deathless (2011)
• Radiance (2015)
• The Glass Town Game (McElderry, 2017). Illustrated by Rebecca Green^[9][10][11]
• Space Opera (2018)
• Mass Effect: Andromeda Annihilation (2018)
• Comfort Me with Apples (2021)
• Space Oddity (2024)

Novellas

• Silently and Very Fast (2011)
• Six-Gun Snow White (2013)
• Speak Easy (2015)^[12]
• The Refrigerator Monologues (2017)
• The Past Is Red (2021)

The Orphan's Tales

Main article: 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:

• The Habitation of the Blessed (2010)
• The Folded World (2011)

Fairyland

Main article: Fairyland (series)

Published by Feiwel & Friends:

• Prequel: The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland—For a Little While^[13] (2011)
• The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (2011) started out in 2009 as a crowdfunded middle-grade online novel (originally, a fictional children's book in Palimpsest).^[14]
• 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 (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 (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" Paper Cities, ed. Ekaterina Sedia (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 (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

Year	Award	Work (if applicable)
2006	James Tiptree Jr. Award	The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden (vol. 1)^[15]
2007	storySouth Million Writers Award	, Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 3^[16]
2007	World Fantasy Award Nominee (Best Novel)	The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden (vol. 1)^[17]
2008	Rhysling Award (long poem category)	The Seven Devils of Central California October 26, 2012, at the Wayback Machine, Farrago's Wainscot Summer 2007
2008	Mythopoeic Award (adult literature)	The Orphan's Tales (series)^[18]
2009	World Fantasy Award Nominee (nominee, Best Short Story)	A Buyer's Guide to Maps of Antarctica, Clarkesworld Magazine May 2008^[19]
2009	Andre Norton Award	The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making^[20]
2010	CultureGeek Readers' Choice Award (Best Web Fiction of the 21st Century)	The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making^[21]
2010	Hugo Award for Best Novel (nominee)	Palimpsest^[22]
2010	Locus Awards (nominee)	Palimpsest^[22]
2010	Lambda Literary Awards	Palimpsest^[22]
2012	Hugo Award for Best Fancast	SF Squeecast (with Lynne M. Thomas, Seanan McGuire, Paul Cornell, and Elizabeth Bear)^[23]
2012	Nebula Award for Best Novelette (nominee)	"Fade to White"^[24]
2012	Time Top 10 Fiction Books	The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There^[25]
2012	Locus Award for Best Young Adult Book	The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making^[26]
2012	Locus Award for Best Novella	"Silently and Very Fast"
2014	Locus Award for Best Young Adult Book	The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two^[27]
2016	Eugie Foster Memorial Award for Short Fiction	"The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild"^[28]
2017	Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire	The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There^[29]
2017	Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award	The Future Is Blue^[30]
2019	Hugo Award for Best Novel (nominee)	Space Opera
2022	Hugo Award for Best Novella (nominee)	The Past is Red^[31]
2022	Hugo Award for Best Novelette (nominee)	"L'Esprit de L'Escalier"^[31]
2022	Hugo Award for Best Short Story (nominee)	"The Sin of America"^[31]

References

1. Thomas, Lynne M. (March 20, 2009). . Confessions of a Curator. Archived from the original on November 13, 2012. Retrieved March 21, 2009.
2. . SF Squeecast blog. Archived from the original on August 19, 2018. Retrieved March 1, 2016.
3. . The Interstitial Arts Foundation. March 31, 2011. Archived from the original on March 30, 2016. Retrieved April 6, 2015.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
4. . The Locus Index to SF Awards. 2010. Archived from the original on June 5, 2011. Retrieved April 6, 2015.
5. . Science Fiction Awards Watch. May 15, 2010. Archived from the original on May 25, 2010. Retrieved April 6, 2015.
6. "The Big Idea: Catherynne M. Valente". Whatever: All Cake and Hand Grenades. May 12, 2011. Retrieved April 6, 2015.
7. . Rules for Anchorites. March 28, 2006. Archived from the original on May 6, 2015. Retrieved October 20, 2015.
8. Vanderhooft, JoSelle (January 24, 2011). . Archived from the original on February 19, 2015. Retrieved February 19, 2015.
9. The Glass Town Game. Kirkus Reviews.
10. "The Glass Town Game by Catherynne M Valente". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved May 3, 2023.
11. Glass Town Game by Catherynne M. Valente. Booklist Online.
12. . Subterranean Press. January 4, 2015. Archived from the original on April 11, 2015. Retrieved April 6, 2015.
13. Valente, Catherynne M. (July 27, 2011). "The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland – For a Little While by Catherynne M. Valente". Tor.com. Retrieved February 2, 2013.
14. Valente, Catherynne M. . Archived from the original on March 1, 2012. Retrieved June 16, 2009.
15. . tiptree.org. Archived from the original on September 29, 2015. Retrieved October 20, 2015.
16. . www.storysouth.com. Archived from the original on March 22, 2013. Retrieved October 20, 2015.
17. World Fantasy Convention (2010). . Archived from the original on December 1, 2010. Retrieved February 4, 2011.
18. . Mythopoeic Society. Archived from the original on October 6, 2015. Retrieved October 20, 2015.
19. . www.worldfantasy.org. Archived from the original on October 15, 2013. Retrieved 2015-10-20.
20. "sfadb: Andre Norton Award 2010". www.sfadb.com. Retrieved October 20, 2015.
21. "Nebula Awards Interview: Catherynne M. Valente - SFWA". SFWA. December 20, 2010. Retrieved October 20, 2015.
22. "sfadb : Catherynne M. Valente Awards". www.sfadb.com. Retrieved October 20, 2015.
23. The Hugo Awards: 2012 Hugo Award Winners September 2, 2012, Accessed September 3, 2012
24. "Congratulations to the 2012 Nebula Award Winners". Tor.com. May 18, 2013. Retrieved April 6, 2015.
25. "Top 10 Fiction Books". Time. December 4, 2012. Retrieved April 25, 2013.
26. . Locus Online News. June 16, 2012. Archived from the original on October 21, 2012. Retrieved April 6, 2015.
27. "Locus Young Adult Award". Worlds without End. Retrieved April 6, 2015.
28. "Valente Wins Eugie Award". Locus. September 6, 2016. Retrieved February 19, 2019.
29. . Worlds without End. Archived from the original on January 8, 2018. Retrieved April 6, 2015.
30. "2017 Campbell and Sturgeon Award Winners". Solaris. Retrieved June 6, 2017.
31. "2022 Hugo Awards". The Hugo Awards. April 7, 2022. Retrieved September 5, 2022.

External links

 

Wikiquote has quotations related to Catherynne M. Valente.

• Official website  
• Blog
• Catherynne M. Valente at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• 2010 Interview on the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast
• 2007 Interview with Jay Tomio
• Catherynne M. Valente at Library of Congress, with 10 library catalog records
• Patreon page