Ellen Kushner

Ellen Kushner (born October 6, 1955) is an American writer of fantasy novels. From 1996 until 2010, she was the host of the radio program Sound & Spirit, produced by WGBH in Boston and distributed by Public Radio International.

Background and personal life

Kushner was born in Washington, D.C. and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. She attended Bryn Mawr College and graduated from Barnard College. She lives in New York City with her wife and sometime collaborator, Delia Sherman. They held a wedding in 1996 and were legally married in Boston in 2004.

Writing career

Kushner's first books were five Choose Your Own Adventure gamebooks. During that period, she published her first novel, Swordspoint in 1987. A sequel set 18 years after Swordspoint, called The Privilege of the Sword, was published in July 2006, with a first hardcover edition published in late August 2006 by Small Beer Press. The Fall of the Kings (2002) (co-authored by Sherman) is set 40 years after Swordspoint. All three books are considered mannerpunk novels, and take place in a nameless imaginary capital city and its raffish district of Riverside, where swordsmen-for-hire ply their trade.