Catherynne M. Valente

For the Italian singer, see Caterina Valente.

Catherynne Morgan Valente^[1] (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.

Catherynne M. Valente
Born	(1979-05-05) May 5, 1979 (age 46) Seattle, Washington, U.S.
Occupation	Poet novelist literary critic
Alma mater	UC San Diego University of Edinburgh
Genre	Postmodern, fantasy, mythpunk
Notable awards	James Tiptree Jr. (2006) Million Writers Award (2007) Rhysling Award (2007) Mythopoeic Award (2008) Andre Norton Award (2009) Locus Award (2014)
Website
catherynnemvalente.com

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.^[2]

She is a regular panelist on the podcast SF Squeecast.^[3]

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.^[4]

Valente is active in the crowdfunding movement of online artists, and her novel The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making was the first^{[citation needed]} online, crowdfunded book to win a major literary award before traditional publication.^[5][6][7]

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.^[8] 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.^[9]

Selected works

Novels

• The Labyrinth (2004)
• The Ice Puzzle (2004)
• Yume No Hon: The Book of Dreams (2005)
• The Grass-Cutting Sword (2006)
• Palimpsest (2009)
• Deathless (2011)
• Radiance (2015)
• The Glass Town Game (McElderry, 2017). Illustrated by Rebecca Green^[10][11][12]
• Space Opera (2018)
• Mass Effect: Andromeda Annihilation (2018)
• Comfort Me with Apples (2021)
• Space Oddity (2024)

Novellas

• Silently and Very Fast (2011)
• Six-Gun Snow White (2013)
• Speak Easy (2015)^[13]
• The Refrigerator Monologues (2017)
• The Past Is Red (2021)

The Orphan's Tales

Main article: The Orphan's Tales

• The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden (vol. 1) (October 2006)
  • Book of the Steppe
  • Book of the Sea
• The Orphan's Tales: In the Cities of Coin and Spice (vol. 2) (October 2007)
  • Book of the Storm
  • Book of the Scald

A Dirge for Prester John

Published by Night Shade Books:

• The Habitation of the Blessed (2010)
• The Folded World (2011)

Fairyland

Main article: Fairyland (series)

Published by Feiwel & Friends:

• Prequel: The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland—For a Little While^[14] (2011)
• The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (2011) started out in 2009 as a crowdfunded middle-grade online novel (originally, a fictional children's book in Palimpsest).^[15]
• The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There (2012)
• The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two (2013)
• The Boy Who Lost Fairyland (2015)
• The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home (2016)

Fiction collections

• This Is My Letter to the World: The Omikuji Project, Cycle One (2010)
• Ventriloquism (2010)
• Myths of Origin, Omnibus collection containing The Labyrinth, Yume No Hon: The Book of Dreams, The Grass-Cutting Sword, and Under in the Mere (2011)
• The Melancholy of Mechagirl (2013)
• The Bread We Eat in Dreams (2013)
• The Future Is Blue (2018)

Poetry collections

• Music of a Proto-Suicide (2004)
• Apocrypha (2005)
• Oracles: A Pilgrimage (2006)
• The Descent of Inanna (2006)
• A Guide to Folktales in Fragile Dialects (2008)

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	Ref.
2006	The Orphan's Tales (vol. 1)	James Tiptree Jr. Award	—	Won	[16]
2007	The Eight Legs of Grandmother Spider	Rhysling Award	Long Poem	Finalist	[17]
	The Orphan's Tales (vol. 1)	World Fantasy Award	Novel	Finalist	[18]
	"Urchins, While Swimming"	Million Writers Award	—	Won	[19]
2008	"The Seven Devils of Central California"	Rhysling Award	Long Poem	Won	[17]
	The Orphan's Tales (vol. 1 & 2)	Mythopoeic Award	Adult Literature	Won	[20]
2009	"A Buyer's Guide to Maps of Antarctica"	World Fantasy Award	Short Fiction	Finalist	[21]
	"Damascus Divides the Lovers by Zero, or the City is Never Finished" (with Amal El-Mohtar)	Rhysling Award	Long Poem	Finalist	[17]
	The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making	Andre Norton Award	—	Won	[22]
2010	Palimpsest	Hugo Award	Novel	Finalist	[23]
		Lambda Literary Award	Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror	Won	[24]
		Locus Award	Fantasy Novel	Finalist	[25]
		Mythopoeic Award	Adult Literature	Finalist	[26]
2011	Deathless	James Tiptree Jr. Award	—	Longlisted	[27]
	Silently and Very Fast	Nebula Award	Novella	Finalist	[28]
	"Thirteen Ways of Looking at Space/Time"	Locus Award	Short Story	Finalist	[29]
2012	"The Bread We Eat in Dreams"	Locus Award	Short Story	Finalist	[30]
	Deathless	Locus Award	Fantasy Novel	Finalist	[30]
		Mythopoeic Awards	Adult Literature	Finalist	[31]
	"Fade to White"	Nebula Award	Novelette	Finalist	[32]
		Sidewise Award	Short Form	Finalist	[33]
	The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making	Locus Award	Young Adult Book	Won	[30]
	Silently and Very Fast	Hugo Award	Novella	Finalist	[34]
		Locus Award	Novella	Won	[30]
		Theodore Sturgeon Award	—	Finalist	[35]
		World Fantasy Award	Novella	Finalist	[36]
	"White Lines on a Green Field"	Locus Award	Novelette	Won	[30]
2013	"Fade to White"	Hugo Award	Novelette	Finalist	[37]
	The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There	Locus Award	Young Adult Book	Finalist	[38]
	Six-Gun Snow White	Nebula Award	Novella	Finalist	[39]
2014	The Bread We Eat in Dreams	Locus Award	Collection	Finalist	[40]
	The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland	Locus Award	Young Adult Book	Won	[40]
	Six-Gun Snow White	Hugo Award	Novella	Finalist	[41]
		Locus Award	Novella	Won	[40]
		World Fantasy Award	Novella	Finalist	[42]
2015	Radiance	James Tiptree Jr. Award	—	Honor List	[43]
2016	"The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild"	Eugie Award	—	Won	[44]
2017	The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making; The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There	Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire	Foreign Young Adult Novel	Won	[45]
	"The Future Is Blue" (novelette)	Locus Award	Novelette	Finalist	[46]
		Theodore Sturgeon Award	—	Won	[47]
	"The Limitless Perspective of Master Peek, or, the Luminescence of Debauchery"	Eugie Award	—	Finalist	[48]
2018	The Refrigerator Monologues	Locus Award	Collection	Finalist	[49]
2019	The Future Is Blue (collection)	British Fantasy Award	Collection	Finalist	[50]
		Locus Award	Collection	Finalist	[51]
	Space Opera	Campbell Memorial Award	Science Fiction Novel	Finalist	[52]
		Hugo Award	Novel	Finalist	[53]
		Locus Award	Science Fiction Novel	Finalist	[51]
2021	Comfort Me with Apples	Shirley Jackson Award	Novel	Finalist	[54]
2022		Locus Award	Novella	Finalist	[55]
	The Past Is Red	Hugo Award	Novella	Finalist	[56]
		Locus Award	Novella	Finalist	[55]
		Ursula K. Le Guin Prize	—	Finalist	[57]
	"L'Esprit de L'Escalier"	Eugie Award	—	Finalist	[58]
		Hugo Award	Novelette	Finalist	[56]
		Locus Award	Novelette	Finalist	[55]
	"The Sin of America"	Hugo Award	Short Story	Finalist	[56]
		Locus Award	Short Story	Finalist	[55]
2023	"The Difference Between Love and Time"	Hugo Award	Novelette	Finalist	[59]
		Locus Award	Novelette	Finalist	[60]
	Osmo Unknown and the Eightpenny Woods	Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book	—	Finalist	[59]
2024	The Best of Catherynne M. Valente, Volume One	Locus Award	Collection	Finalist	[61]
2025	Space Oddity	Locus Award	Science Fiction Novel	Finalist	[62]
	Space Opera	Seiun Award	Translated Novel	Pending	[63]

Other awards

Year	Work	Award	Category	Result	Ref.
2012	Apex Magazine (with Lynne M. Thomas and Jason Sizemore)	Hugo Award	Semiprozine	Finalist	[34]
	SF Squeecast (with Lynne M. Thomas, Seanan McGuire, Paul Cornell, and Elizabeth Bear)	Hugo Award	Fancast	Won	[34]
2013	SF Squeecast (with Lynne M. Thomas, Seanan McGuire, Paul Cornell, and Elizabeth Bear)	Hugo Award	Fancast	Won	[37]