Charlie Jane Anders

Charlie Jane Anders (born July 24, 1969) is an American writer specializing in speculative fiction. She has written several novels as well as shorter fiction. Her novels, including as All the Birds in the Sky and The City in the Middle of the Night, received critical acclaim and won major literary awards including the Nebula Award for Best Novel and Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. All three novels in her young adult trilogy Unstoppable have won the Locus Award for Best Young Adult Book.

Anders's fiction has received numerous literary awards, including the Crawford Award, Hugo Award, Lambda Literary Award, Locus Award, Nebula Award, and Theodore Sturgeon Award.

Early life, education and career Anders was born in a small farm town near Storrs, Connecticut on July 24, 1969 and grew up in nearby Mansfield. She studied English and Asian Literature at the University of Cambridge, and studied in China In 2006, she was a co-founding editor of the science fiction blog io9, a position she left in April 2016 to focus on novel writing.

Literary career Anders has had science fiction published in Tor.com, Strange Horizons, and Flurb. Additional (non-science-fiction) literary work has been published in McSweeney's and Zyzzyva. Anders's work has appeared in Salon, The Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Mother Jones, and the San Francisco Chronicle. She has had stories and essays in anthologies such as Sex For America: Politically Inspired Erotica, The McSweeney's Joke Book of Book Jokes, and That's Revolting!: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation.

Her first novel, Choir Boy, appeared in 2005 from Soft Skull Press; a young adult story about a boy transitioning gender in order to sing. In 2014, Tor Books acquired two novels from Anders. All the Birds in the Sky was published in 2016 and The City in the Middle of the Night was published 2019.

In August 2025, her most recent novel Lessons in Magic and Disaster was published.

Unstoppable trilogy Tor Teen acquired Unstoppable, a young adult trilogy from Anders, in 2017. The first novel, Victories Greater Than Death, was published in 2021, and the second, Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak, in 2022. The third novel, Promises Stronger Than Darkness, was published in 2023.

Other work

In addition to her work as an author and publisher, Anders is a longtime event organizer. She organized a "ballerina pie fight" in 2005 for Other magazine; co-organized the Cross-Gender Caravan, a national transgender and genderqueer author tour; and a Bookstore and Chocolate Crawl in San Francisco. She emcees "Writers with Drinks", an award-winning San Francisco-based monthly reading series begun in 2001 that features authors from a wide range of genres and has been noted for its "free-associative author introductions".

She has been a juror for the James Tiptree Jr. Award and for the Lambda Literary Award. She formerly published the satirical website godhatesfigs.com which was featured by The Sunday Times as website of the week.

A television adaptation of Anders' Six Months, Three Days was being prepared for NBC in 2013, with the script written by Eric Garcia.

In March 2018, with her partner and co-host Annalee Newitz, Anders launched the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct, which "explor[es] the meaning of science fiction, and how it's relevant to real-life science and society." The podcast won the Hugo Award for Best Fancast in 2019, 2020 and 2022.

Anders co-created the Marvel Comics character Shela Sexton, also known as Escapade, a trans mutant super hero. The character debuted in Marvel's Voices: Pride #1 in June 2022.

Awards and honors

Literary awards

Year Work Award Category Result Ref. 2006 Choir Boy Edmund White Award — Lambda Literary Award Transgender Literature 2011 "Six Months, Three Days" Nebula Award Novelette 2012 Hugo Award Novelette Theodore Sturgeon Award — 2016All the Birds in the Sky Nebula Award Novel Time Magazine Top Ten Novels of 2016 — 2017 Crawford Award — Hugo AwardNovel Locus Award Fantasy Novel "Don't Press Charges and I Won't Sue" James Tiptree Jr. Award — 2018 Locus Award Short Story Theodore Sturgeon Award — Six Months, Three Days, Five Others Locus Award Collection "The Bookstore at the End of America" Locus Award Short Story The City in the Middle of the Night Arthur C. Clarke Award — Hugo Award Novel Locus Award Science Fiction Novel "If You Take My Meaning" Locus Award Novelette Theodore Sturgeon Award — Victories Greater Than Death Andre Norton Award — 2022 Even Greater Mistakes Locus Award Collection World Fantasy Award Special-Professional Victories Greater Than Death Locus Award Young Adult Book Lodestar Award — Lodestar Award — 2024 Promises Stronger Than Darkness Locus Award Young Adult Book Lodestar Award — A Soul in the World Locus Award Short Story

Fancasts Year Work Award Category Result Ref. 2019 Our Opinions Are Correct (with Annalee Newitz) Hugo Award Fancast 2020 2022