Nicola Griffithย is a native of Yorkshire, England, where she earned her beer money teaching womenโs self-defense, fronting a band, and arm-wrestling in bars, before discovering writing and moving to the United States. Her immigration case was a fight and ended up making new law: the State Department declared it to be โin the National Interestโ for her to live and work in this country. This didnโt thrill the more conservative powerbrokers, and she ended up on the front page of Theย Wall Street Journal, where her case was used as an example of the countryโs declining moral standards.
ย
In 1993 a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis slowed her down a bit, and she concentrated on writing: Ammoniteย (1993),ย Slow Riverย (1995),ย The Blue Place (1998),ย Stayย (2002), Alwaysย (2007), and Hild (2013). Griffith is the co-editor of the Bending the Landscape series of original short fiction. Her multimedia memoir, And Now We Are Going to Have a Party: Liner Notes to a Writerโs Early Life, is a limited collectorโs edition. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in an assortment of academic texts and a variety of journals, includingย Nature,ย New Scientist, Los Angeles Review of Books,ย and Out. Sheโs won the Washington State Book Award, the Tiptree, Nebula, the World Fantasy Award, the Premio Italia, and the Lambda Literary Award (six times), among many others.
ย
Now a dual U.S./U.K. citizen, Nicola Griffith is married to writer Kelley Eskridge. They live in Seattle, where Griffith is currently lost in the seventh century, emerging occasionally to drink just the right amount of beerย and take enormous delight in everything.