Ellen Kushner


Ellen Kushner is an American editor and writer of fantasy fiction. From 1996 until 2010, she was the host of the radio program Sound and Spirit, produced by WGBH in Boston and distributed by Public Radio International.

Background and personal life

Kushner was born in a Jewish family 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. Kushner is bisexual.

Career

Kushner began her career as a fantasy editor for Tor Books. During her tenure at Tor, she wrote and published five Choose Your Own Adventure gamebooks, and in 1987 published her first novel, Swordspoint. 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 September 2006 by Small Beer Press. The Fall of the Kings 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.
From 2011 to 2014 audiobook versions of all three novels were produced under the label of Neil Gaiman Presents. The Swordspoint adaptation won the 2013 Audie Award for Best Audio Drama, an Earphones Award from AudioFile, and the 2013 Communicator Award: Gold Award of Excellence. The adaptation of The Fall of the Kings won the 2014 Wilbur Award.
Kushner's second novel, Thomas the Rhymer, won the World Fantasy Award and the Mythopoeic Award in 1991. She has also published short stories and poetry in various anthologies, including The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror and the Borderland series of urban fantasy anthologies for teenage readers.
In 1987, Kushner relocated from New York to Boston, and began working as a presenter in radio. She worked with public radio station WBGH-FM, first hosting its all-night radio program "Night Air". In 1989 she hosted the Nakamichi International Music Series for American Public Radio, and later produced three Jewish holiday specials with APR, Festival of Liberation: the Passover Story in World Music, The Door is Open: a Jewish High Holiday Meditation, and Beyond 1492.
Beginning in 1996, Kushner wrote, programmed and hosted the series "Sound & Spirit", produced by WGBH/PRI. "Sound & Spirit" was an hour-long weekly series "exploring the human spirit through music and ideas." Episodes featured folk, classical, and world music, with a wide variety of special guests including Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart, religious historian Elaine Pagels, and writer Neil Gaiman. "Sound & Spirit" remained on the air until 2010.
In 2002, she released a CD of her story The Golden Dreydl: A Klezmer Nutcracker, which uses music from Pyotr Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker to tell a Hanukkah story. The music on the CD is performed by Shirim Klezmer Orchestra. The Golden Dreydl won a Gracie Award from American Women in Radio and Television. A live theater version of The Golden Dreydl was performed in 2008 and 2009 at Vital Theater in New York City, written by Kushner and directed by Linda Ames Key.
In 2007, Kushner, along with Elizabeth Schwartz and Yale Strom, scripted the musical audio drama The Witches of Lublin for public radio. Based on the history of Jewish women who were klezmer musicians in 18th Century Europe, The Witches of Lublin premiered on radio stations nationwide in April 2011 with performances by Tovah Feldshuh and Simon Jones. It won the 2012 Wilbur Award for Best Single Program, Radio; the 2012 Grace Allen Award for Best Director, and the 2012 Gabriel Award: Arts, Local Release, Radio.
In 2011 she co-edited Welcome to Bordertown, an anthology of new stories from Terri Windling's seminal shared-world series. In an audiobook adaptation Neil Gaiman read his own work, set to an original score by Boiled in Lead's Drew Miller.
In 2015, Kushner created Tremontaine, a serialized prequel to Swordspoint, for the Serial Box platform. The series ran for four seasons.
With Sherman and others, she is actively involved in the interstitial art movement. She is the co-founder and past president of the Interstitial Arts Foundation.
She is also a member of the Endicott Studio and has taught classes and seminars as part of Hollins University's MFA program; the Odyssey Writing Workshop; and the Clarion Writers' Workshop.

Awards

AwardCategoryYearWorkResult
Gaylactic Spectrum AwardsHall of Fame2000SwordspointWon
Gaylactic Spectrum AwardsNovel2003The Fall of the KingsNomitated
Gaylactic Spectrum AwardsNovel2007The Privilege of the SwordNomitated
Gaylactic Spectrum AwardsNovel2018TremontaineNomitated
James Tiptree Jr. Award–2007The Privilege of the Sword
Locus AwardAnthology1981Basilisk
Locus AwardAnthology1998The Horns of Elfland
Locus AwardAnthology2012Welcome to Bordertown
Locus AwardAnthology2017Tremontaine
Locus AwardFantasy Novel1991Thomas the Rhymer
Locus AwardFantasy Novel2003The Fall of the Kings
Locus AwardFantasy Novel2007The Privilege of the SwordWon
Locus AwardFirst Novel1988Swordspoint
Locus AwardNovelette2010"A Wild and a Wicked Youth"
Locus AwardShort Story2010"Dulce Domum"
Locus AwardShort Story2011"The Man with the Knives"
Locus AwardShort Story2011"The Children of Cadmus"
Locus AwardShort Story2022"Immortal Coil"
Mythopoeic AwardAdult Literature2003The Fall of the KingsNomitated
Mythopoeic AwardFantasy1991Thomas the RhymerWon
Nebula AwardNovel2007The Privilege of the SwordNomitated
Skylark Award–2024–Won
World Fantasy AwardNovel1991Thomas the RhymerWon
World Fantasy AwardNovel2007The Privilege of the SwordNomitated
World Fantasy AwardNovella1998The Fall of the KingsNomitated
World Fantasy AwardShort Fiction1999"The Death of the Duke"Nomitated

Published works

Kushner has published four edited volumes, four novels, two poems, and more than forty short stories, beginning with Basilisk in 1980, an anthology for which she served as editor. Her first novel, 1987's Swordspoint, is considered a central text in the fantasy of manners subgenre and was inducted into the Gaylactic Spectrum Awards Hall of Fame in 2000.