Nicola Griffith

In 2024 she was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. In 2025, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association named her the 41st Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master in recognition of her significant contributions to the literature of science fiction and fantasy. In addition to her fiction, Griffith is known for her contributions to feminist and queer literature, her disability advocacy, and her role in founding the Literary Prize Database Project and the #CripLit community for disabled writers.

Nicola Griffith studied at Michigan State University. The recorded working language is British English and English. The field of work recorded is creative and professional writing. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are science fiction, fantasy, mystery fiction and thriller. Works named in the authority record are Slow River. Distinctions recorded are Nebula Award for Best Novel, Lambda Literary Award, World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology and Otherwise Award.

• Name — Nicola Griffith • Born — 30 September 1960 • Birthplace — Yorkshire, England • Occupation — * Novelist • short story author • essayist • Citizenship — United Kingdom and United States • Period — 1987–present • Genre — Fiction • Website — nicolagriffith.com

• Illustration — Nicola Griffith in 2007 Griffith was born 30 September 1960 in Leeds, to Margaret and Eric Griffith. Griffith's family is Catholic and she is one of five children. She knew she was gay by age 13. Griffith is cousin to British actor Clare Higgins. Griffith's earliest surviving literary efforts include an illustrated booklet she was encouraged to create to prevent her from making trouble among her fellow nursery school students. At age eleven she won a BBC student poetry prize and read aloud her winning work for radio broadcast. Her early reading included the works of such novelists as Henry Treece and Rosemary Sutcliff; fantastic fiction including the works of E. E. Smith, Frank Herbert, and J. R. R. Tolkien; nonfiction and history – Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was a particular favorite. Griffith took interest in the sciences as a teenager. She entered University of Leeds to study microbiology but did not complete a degree. Griffith was the lead singer and cofounder of the band Janes Plane, which experienced some success in England before breaking up. By the late 1980s, Griffith had begun experiencing symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS), though her illness remained undiagnosed. She was diagnosed with MS in March 1993. While studying at Michigan State University, Griffith met and fell in love with fellow writer Kelley Eskridge. On 4 September 1993, Griffith and Eskridge announced their commitment ceremony in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, perhaps the first same-sex commitment announcement the paper had published. Griffith and Eskridge were legally married 4 September 2013. Griffith wanted citizenship so she could remain in the country with her wife, but because she was a lesbian, she couldn't receive citizenship through marriage, and all other pathways were closed. After much effort, Griffith received permission to live and work in the United States based on her "importance as a writer of lesbian/science fiction," making her the first out lesbian to receive a National Interest Waiver. Her immigration resulted in a new law, and she is now a dual US/UK citizen.

In late 1987 Griffith made her first professional fiction sale: "Mirrors and Burnstone" to Interzone. Her debut novel, Ammonite, received several offers from publishers, including St. Martin's Press, Avon Press, and Del Rey Books. Griffith has since published nine full-length novels, a memoir, and numerous short stories, essays, and novellas. While Griffith has said that she "resists labels to describe her work," much of her published material contains themes of gender and sexuality. Literary Activism In 2015, Griffith "founded the Literary Prize Data working group whose purpose initially was to assemble data on literary prizes in order to get a picture of how gender bias operates within the trade publishing ecosystem." In 2015 she began #CripLit, an online community for disabled writers." Major Works In 2017, after completing her thesis, entitled "Norming the Queer: Narrative Empathy via Focalised Heterotopia," Griffith received her PhD by publication from Anglia Ruskin University. Critics have described Stay as both an allegorical and cautionary novel, emphasizing its focus on the protagonist’s effort to reclaim her sense of self following profound personal loss. Griffith released She Is Here in February 2026. It contains six nonfiction essays, four poems, three short stories, a novella, drawings, and an interview with Nisi Shawl. Griffith spent nearly ten years researching early medieval Britain for Hild, drawing on historical and scientific methods to construct the novel’s setting and social structures. Griffith has identified Hild as her first explicitly bisexual protagonist, written in response to the underrepresentation of bisexual characters in fiction. So Lucky is an autobiographical novel that follows a woman navigating life after being diagnosed with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis. Critics have noted So Lucky incorporates disability activism and critiques medical and pharmaceutical systems. Griffith created the character Aud Torvingen, a lesbian crime fighter who first appeared in the novel The Blue Place (1998) and later returned in subsequent novels such as Stay. Griffith has described Aud Torvingen as a central figure in her crime fiction series and planned additional novels featuring the character.

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• Bending the Landscape: Fantasy, Overlook Books, (1997, with Stephen Pagel) • Bending the Landscape: Science Fiction, Overlook Books, (1998, with Stephen Pagel) • Bending the Landscape: Horror, Overlook Books, (2001, with Stephen Pagel) *

• "An Other Winter's Tale" (1987) • "Mirrors and Burnstone" (1988) • "The Other" (1989) • "We Have Met the Alien" (1990) • "The Voyage South" (1990) • "Down the Path of the Sun" (1990) • "Song of Bullfrogs, Cry of Geese" (1991) • "Wearing My Skin" (1991) • "Touching Fire" (1993) • "Yaguara" (1994) • "A Troll Story" (2000) • "It Takes Two" (2009)

• Review of Hild. • Review of Hild and Menewood.

Nicola Griffith is recorded as writer and novelist. Griffith received Nebula Award for Best Novel, Lambda Literary Award, World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology, Otherwise Award and Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award.