Ellen Kushner
Ellen Kushner weaves together multiple careers as a writer, radio host, teacher, performer and public speaker.
A graduate of Barnard College, she also attended Bryn Mawr College, and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. She began her career in publishing as a fiction editor in New York City, but left to write her first novel Swordspoint, which has become a cult classic, hailed as the progenitor of the “mannerpunk” (or “Fantasy of Manners”) school of urban fantasy. Swordspoint was followed by Thomas the Rhymer (World Fantasy Award and the Mythopoeic Award), and two more novels in her “Riverside” series. In 2015, Thomas the Rhymer was published in the UK as part of the Gollancz “Fantasy Masterworks” line.
In addition, her short fiction appears regularly in numerous anthologies. Her stories have been translated into a wide variety of languages, including Japanese, French, Dutch, German, Spanish, Latvian and Finnish.
Upon moving to Boston, she became a radio host for WGBH-FM. In 1996, she created Sound & Spirit, PRI’s award-winning national public radio series. With Ellen as host and writer, the program aired nationally until 2010; many of the original shows can now be heard archived online.
As a live stage performer, her solo spoken word works include Esther: the Feast of Masks, and The Golden Dreydl: a Klezmer ‘Nutcracker’ for Chanukah (with Shirim Klezmer Orchestra). In 2008, Vital Theatre commissioned her to script a full-scale theatrical version. The Klezmer Nutcracker played to sold-out audiences in New York City, with Kushner in the role of the magical Tante Miriam.
In 2012, Kushner entered the world of audiobooks, narrating and co-producing “illuminated” versions of all three of the “Riverside” novels with SueMedia Productions for Neil Gaiman Presents at Audible.com—and winning a 2013 Audie Award for Swordspoint.
Other recent projects include the urban fantasy anthology Welcome to Bordertown (co-edited with Holly Black), and The Witches of Lublin, a musical audio drama written with Elizabeth Schwartz and Yale Strom (which one Gabriel, Gracie and Wilbur Awards in 2012). In 2015 she contributed to and oversaw the creation of the online Riverside series prequel Tremontaine for Serial Box with collaborators Joel Derfner, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Malinda Lo, Racheline Maltese and Patty Bryant.
A dauntless traveler, Ellen Kushner has been a guest of honor at conventions all over the world. She regularly teaches writing at the prestigious Clarion Workshop and the Hollins University Graduate Program in Children’s Literature.
Ellen Kushner is a co-founder and past president of the Interstitial Arts Foundation, an organization supporting work that falls between genre categories. She lives in New York City with author and educator Delia Sherman, a lot of books, airplane and theater ticket stubs, and no cats whatsoever.
“Have you seen Marcus?" he asked his ugly friend."Yes, he was stoping some people in the Violet Room from climbing the curtains.""What for?""They were not professionals.""Oh.”
“Let the fairy tale begin on a winter's morning, then, with one drop of blood newly-fallen on the ivory snow: a drop as bright as a clear-cut ruby, red as a single spot of claret on the lace cuff.”
“The time of testing, and of playing, was over. This was the final duel for one of them. Now they were fighting for their lives--for the one life that would emerge from this elegant battle. . . . For the moment the two of them were evenly matched, arm against arm. Michael prayed that it would never stop, that there would always be this moment of utter mastery, beautiful and rare, and no conclusion ever be reached.”
“Richard knew he was fighting for his life, and he was terribly happy.”
“Across the troubled maelstrom of time, people always need a beer.”
“But I saw the pair of them, along with everyone else. Hard to miss. Him towering like a raggedy scarecrow in that flapping black scholar's gown, and the sword always quiet next to him, sweet as honey, and poison with it.”
“—Ellos tienen las espadas. —Lord Halliday sonrió mirándose las manos—. Nosotros tenemos todos los demás. Las cosas se igualan, no obstante, con una punta de acero en la garganta. —Todo el mundo vive a punta de espada —entonó Ferris.”
“—Los duelos sólo son a muerte cuando lo que hay en juego es una de estas dos cosas: poder o dinero. —¿Qué hay del honor? —¿Qué se puede comprar con el honor? —preguntó cínicamente la duquesa.”
“Que comience el cuento de hadas una mañana de invierno, en tal caso, con una gota recién caída en la nieve marfileña: una gota tan brillante como un rubí bien cortado, roja como una solitaria mancha de clarete en un puño de encaje. Y lo que aquí se sigue, por consiguiente, es que el mal acecha detrás de cada ventana rota, maquinando malicia y encantamiento; mientras que detrás de los postigos cerrados los justos duermen sus sueños a esta temprana hora en la Ribera. Pronto despertarán para ocuparse de sus quehaceres; y uno, tal vez, será tan adorable como el día y estará armado, como lo están los justos, para enfrentarse a un triunfo predestinado...”
“He said, 'They're only whores,' as though their very availability rendered them worthless.”
“What was it about scholarship and learning, he wondered, that seemed to wither the hearts of University men, leaving them incapable of loving anything as imperfect and fallible as an actual human being?”
“Not being the sort to throw a book, she pounded her fist on her cushion.”
“And Ferris had watched Alec go past him out of the door noted the bones...but he never would have connected that ragged man with the honey-and-acid creature who'd insulted him at Diane's house.”
“There's the road to heaven, and there's the road to hell, and there? That's the road to Faerie.”