Catherynne M. Valente

Catherynne Morgan Valente (born May 5, 1979) is an American fiction writer, poet, and literary critic. For her speculative fiction novels she has won the annual James Tiptree, Jr. Award, Andre Norton Award, and Mythopoeic Award. Her short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, the anthologies Salon Fantastique and Paper Cities, and numerous "Year's Best" volumes. Her critical work has appeared in the International Journal of the Humanities as well as other essay collections.

Career Valente's 2009 book Palimpsest won the Lambda Award for LGBT Science Fiction, Fantasy, or Horror. Her two-volume series The Orphan's Tales won the 2008 Mythopoeic Award, and its first volume, The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden, won the 2006 James Tiptree Jr. Award and was nominated for the 2007 World Fantasy Award. In 2012, Valente won three Locus Awards: Best Novelette (White Lines on a Green Field), Best Novella (Silently and Very Fast) and Best YA Novel (The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making).

In 2009, she donated her archive to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) Collection in the department of Rare Books and Special Collections at Northern Illinois University.

She is a regular panelist on the podcast SF Squeecast.

Multimedia and mythpunk Valente tours with singer/songwriter S. J. Tucker, who has composed albums based on Valente's work. The pair perform reading concerts featuring dancers, aerial artists, art auctions featuring jewelry and paintings based on the novels, and other performances.

Valente is active in the crowdfunding movement of online artists. Her novel The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making was the first online, crowdfunded book to win a major literary award before traditional publication.

In a 2006 blog post, Valente coined the term mythpunk as a joke for describing her own and other works of challenging folklore-based fantasy. Valente and other critics and writers have discussed mythpunk as a subgenre of mythic fiction that starts in folklore and myth and adds elements of postmodernist literary techniques.

Personal life In a 2025 interview published in Vector, Valente stated that she is queer and has ADHD.

Works

Novels and Novellas

Standalone adult works

Standalone young adult works

The Orphan's Tales

Fairyland

A Dirge for Prester John

The Space Opera

Media tie-ins

Fiction collections

Poetry collections Music of a Proto-Suicide (2004) Apocrypha (2005) Oracles: A Pilgrimage (2006) The Descent of Inanna (2006)

Short fiction

"The Oracle Alone" Music of a Proto-Suicide (2004) "Ghosts of Gunkanjima" Papaveria Press (2005) "The Maiden-Tree" Cabinet des Fees (2005) "Bones Like Black Sugar" Fantasy Magazine (2005) "Psalm of the Second Body" PEN Book of Voices (2005) "Ascent Is Not Allowed" The Minotaur in Pamplona (2005) "Thread: A Triptych" Lone Star Stories (2006) "Urchins, While Swimming" Clarkesworld Magazine (2006) "Milk and Apples" Electric Velocipede (2006) "Temnaya and the House of Books" Mythic (2006) "A Grey and Soundless Tide" Salon Fantastique (2006) "A Dirge For Prester John" Interfictions (2007) "The Ballad of the Sinister Mr. Mouth" Lone Star Stories (2007) "La Serenissima" Endicott Studio (2007) "The Proslogium of the Great Lakes" Farrago's Wainscot (2007) "A Buyer's Guide to Maps of Antarctica" Clarkesworld Magazine (2008) "Tales of Beaty and Strangeness: City of Blind Delights" Clockwork Phoenix (2008) "The Hanged Man" Farrago's Wainscot (2008) "An Anthology of Urban Fantasy: Palimpsest" Paper Cities, ed. Ekaterina Sedia (2008) "The Harpooner at the Bottom of the World" Spectra Pulse (2008) "Golubash, or, Wine-War-Blood-Elegy" Federations (2009) "The Secret History of Mirrors" Clockwork Phoenix 2 (2009) "A Book of Villainous Tales:A Delicate Architecture" Troll's Eye View (2009) "The Radiant Car Thy Sparrows Drew" Clarkesworld Magazine (2009) "The Anachronist's Cookbook" Steampunk Tales (2009) "A Between Books Anthology: Proverbs of Hell" The Stories in Between (2010) "The Days of Flaming Motorcycles" Dark Faith (2010) "Secretario" Weird Tales (2010) "Thirteen Ways of Looking at Space/Time" Clarkesworld Magazine (2010) "How to Become a Mars Overlord" Lightspeed (2010) "15 Panels Depicting the Sadness of the Baku and the Jotai" Haunted Legends (2010) "In the Future When All's Well" Teeth (2011) "A Voice Like a Hole" Welcome to Bordertown (2011) "The Wolves of Brooklyn" Fantasy Magazine (2011) "The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland—For a Little While" Tor.com (2011) "White Lines on a Green Field" Subterranean Magazine (2011)

Nonfiction Introduction to Jane Eyre (Illustrated) (2007) "Regeneration X" in Chicks Dig Time Lords (2010) Indistinguishable from Magic (2014)

Anthologies edited Nebula Awards Showcase 55 (2021)

Awards and honors

Awards for literature Year Work Award Category Result . 2006 James Tiptree Jr. Award — 2007 Rhysling Award Long Poem World Fantasy Award Novel Million Writers Award — 2008 Rhysling Award Long Poem 2009 World Fantasy Award Short Fiction (with Amal El-Mohtar) Rhysling Award Long Poem 2010 Palimpsest Hugo Award Novel Lambda Literary Award Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Locus Award Fantasy Novel Mythopoeic Award Adult Literature 2011 Deathless James Tiptree Jr. Award — Silently and Very Fast Nebula Award Novella Locus Award Short Story 2012 Locus Award Short Story Mythopoeic Awards Adult Literature Nebula Award Novelette Sidewise Award Short Form Locus Award Young Adult Book Locus Award Novella World Fantasy Award Novella Locus Award Novelette Locus Award Young Adult Book Six-Gun Snow White Nebula Award Novella 2014 Locus Award Collection Six-Gun Snow White Hugo Award Novella Locus Award Novella 2015 Radiance James Tiptree Jr. Award — 2016 Eugie Award — 2017 Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire Foreign Young Adult Novel (novelette) Locus Award Novelette Theodore Sturgeon Award — Eugie Award — 2018 Locus Award Collection 2019 (collection) British Fantasy Award Collection Locus Award Collection Space Opera Campbell Memorial Award Science Fiction Novel Hugo Award Novel Locus Award Science Fiction Novel 2022 Locus Award Novella Locus Award Novella Ursula K. Le Guin Prize — Eugie Award — Hugo Award Novelette Locus Award Novelette Osmo Unknown and the Eightpenny Woods Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book — 2025 Space Oddity Locus Award Science Fiction Novel Space Opera Seiun Award Translated Novel 2026 Hugo Award Novelette Locus Award Novelette

Other awards Year Work Award Category Result . 2012 Apex Magazine (with Lynne M. Thomas and Jason Sizemore) Hugo Award Semiprozine SF Squeecast (with Lynne M. Thomas, Seanan McGuire, Paul Cornell, and Elizabeth Bear) Hugo Award Fancast 2013 SF Squeecast (with Lynne M. Thomas, Seanan McGuire, Paul Cornell, and Elizabeth Bear) Hugo Award Fancast