Ursula Vernon is a unique hybrid author who writes science fiction and fantasy with equal ease for both young people and adults. Her stories, regardless of audience, tend to be quirky, wonderfully engaging, and hilariously, organically funny. Even her darkest stories have a thread of humor, because Vernon simply can’t help it.
Born into a military family, Vernon traveled frequently as a child. Throughout, she dreamed of being a writer, a dream encouraged by her grandmother, who gifted Vernon with a subscription to Writer’s Digest. (“I read it religiously,” she says.) But it was as an artist that Vernon first found success, selling prints and hand-painted shirts at conventions. This led to her Hugo Award-winning webcomic Digger (2003–2011), which she wrote and illustrated. In 2008, Vernon published her first children’s book, Nurk, and followed it with the Dragonbreath and Hamster Princess series, which combined totaled 17 volumes.
As T. Kingfisher, Vernon has authored a prolific array of adult fantasy and science fiction that includes Nine Goblins (2013), (2015), (2016) and (2020), which won that year’s Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction.
