About Suzy McKee Charnas

Suzy McKee Charnas, photo by Kyle Zimmerman

I come from a long line of smart, tough, charming women who married clever but useless husbands, kicked the men out in exasperation, and raised the kids on their own. A born and bred New Yorker, child of two commercial artists, I was trained to be an artist myself. Nevertheless (or consequently), for the past thirty-plus years I've been living with my lawyer-husband in New Mexico, writing science fiction, fantasy, horror, weird non-fiction, and anything else that takes my fancy.

I wrote and drew my own comic books at age six and took a joint major at Barnard College -- Economic History -- because I wanted tools to build convincing societies to set fantastic stories in. Peace Corps teaching in western Nigeria taught me much that American Education falsifies or denies outright and made me permanently marginal to my home culture -- ideal positioning for any kind of artist ( luckily I've lots of good company out here).

I live, on and off, with cats, dogs, step kids, granddads, siblings, in-laws, a talent for getting outraged letters printed in the papers, and an imagination fired by the strange, the mysterious, and the provocative (my husband says I write "realistic stories about fantastic things"). My life experience so far has led me to liberalism (the search for a humane society), feminism (the search for gender parity), a light-hearted belief in reincarnation (the search for -- !); and, most importantly, the preference for exploring the questions (rather than demonstrating "The Answer") that drives really good stories.

-- SMC