Ellen Kushner weaves together multiple careers as a writer, radio host and performer. She is also a popular speaker at venues from synagogue pulpits to science fiction conventions and beyond.

Since 1996, she has been heard by audiences around the country as the host of PRI's award-winning national public radio series, Sound & Spirit ), which Bill Moyers called "the best program on public radio, bar none."

Her first novel, Swordspoint: A Melodrama of Manners, which begins her "Riverside" series, was hailed as the progenitor of the "Mannerpunk" (or "Fantasy of Manners") school of urban fantasy. Her second novel, Thomas the Rhymer, won both the 1991 World Fantasy Award and the Mythopoeic Award. With Delia Sherman she co-wrote The Fall of the Kings. Her most recent novel, The Privilege of the Sword, a genre-crossing, gender-bending novel published by Bantam Books and Small Beer Press, earned an eclectic range of honors, from New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age, to finalist for the Nebula and Tiptree Awards, and won the Locus Award. Her work has been translated into many languages, including Japanese, French, German, Latvian and Finnish. Complete bibliography here

As a performer, her solo spoken word works include Esther: the Feast of Masks, and The Golden Dreydl: a Klezmer 'Nutcracker' for Chanukah (with Shirim Klezmer Orchestra, on Rykodisc CD), which she revised and published as a children's chapter book by Charlesbridge as The Golden Dreydl. In 2008, Vital Theatre in New York City commissioned her to script a fullscale theatrical version. The Klezmer Nutcracker played to sold-out audiences, with Kushner in the role of the magical Tante Miriam, throughout the 2008-09 holiday season, and the 2009-10 holiday season featured an all-new production of The Klezmer Nutcracker at Vital.

Latest projects are Welcome to Bordertown, an anthology of new stories from Terri Windling's seminal shared-world series, which Ellen co-edited with Holly Black, and The Witches of Lublin, a musical audio drama written with Elizabeth Schwartz & Yale Strom for public radio.   Works-in-Progress include a musical, The Bone Chandelier, with composer Ben Moore,  two novels, and a short story collection.  Ellen Kushner is a co-founder of the Interstitial Arts Foundation, an organization supporting work that falls between genre categories. She lives in New York City.

copyright © 2011 Ellen Kushner