Catherynne M Valente biography

Catherynne M. Valente was born in Seattle in 1979. She graduated from high school at age 15, going on to UC San Diego and Edinburgh University, receiving her B.A. in Classics with an emphasis in Ancient Greek Linguistics.

She currently lives on a small island off the coast of Maine.

Her first novel, The Labyrinth, was published in 2004, and her second, Yume no Hon: The Book of Dreams was released in the summer of 2005. Her third novel, The Grass-Cutting Sword, came out in the summer of 2006. Prime has also published two collections of her poetry, Apocrypha, and Oracles. Her third volume of poetry, The Descent of Inanna, was published early in 2006.

The Orphan's Tales, a duology of original fairy tales, was released in the fall of 2006. Volume I, In the Night Garden, went on to win the James Tiptree Jr. Award for the expansion of gender and sexuality in speculative fiction, and has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award. Volume II, In the Cities of Coin and Spice, came out in the fall of 2007. The Orphan's Tales won the Mythopoeic Award for adult literature in 2008.

Palimpsest was published in February 2009 and her first short story collection, Ventriloquism, will be released by PS Publishing in late 2010.

The latest project that she's working on, a novel retelling of the Russian fairy tales of Marya Morevna and Koschei the Deathless set in Stalinist Russia will be released from Tor in 2011.

All Catherynne M Valente Reviews