Short Bio
Charlie Jane Anders is hard at work on a new adult novel, tentatively called The Prodigal Mother. Most recently, she wrote the young adult Unstoppable trilogy: Victories Greater Than Death, Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak, and Promises Stronger Than Darkness. She's also the author of the short story collection Even Greater Mistakes, and Never Say You Can't Survive (August 2021), a book about how to use creative writing to get through hard times. Her other books include The City in the Middle of the Night and All the Birds in the Sky. She's won the Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, Lambda Literary, Crawford and Locus Awards. She co-created Escapade, a transgender superhero, for Marvel Comics and wrote her into the long-running New Mutants comic. And she's currently the science fiction and fantasy book reviewer for the Washington Post. Her TED Talk, "Go Ahead, Dream About the Future" got 700,000 views in its first week. With Annalee Newitz, she co-hosts the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct.
Photo credit: Sarah Deragon/Portraits to the People. Download headshots for promotional use here.
Long Bio
Charlie Jane Anders is hard at work on a new adult novel, tentatively called The Prodigal Mother. Most recently, she wrote the young adult Unstoppable trilogy: Victories Greater Than Death, Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak, and Promises Stronger Than Darkness. Other recent books include the short story collection Even Greater Mistakes, which won a Locus Award. And Never Say You Can't Survive, a book about how to use creative writing to get through hard times, which won a Hugo Award.
Her novel The City in the Middle of the Night came out in 2019—it won the Locus Award for Best SF Novel, and was named one of the year's best books by the Guardian, Den of Geek, Polygon and Autostraddle, among others, and was optioned for television by Sony and Mom de Guerre Productions. Her 2016 novel, All the Birds in the Sky, was #5 on Time Magazine's list of the year's 10 best novels in any genre, and won the Nebula, Locus and Crawford awards. Her first novel, Choir Boy, won a Lambda Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Edmund White First Novel Award.
Charlie Jane co-created a transgender mutant hero named Shela Sexton aka Escapade for Marvel Comics. Escapade was introduced in Marvel Voices: Pride 2022, and has been appearing in the long-running comic New Mutants, with Charlie Jane writing. Stephanie Burt calls Escapade's introduction in New Mutants "a roaring success."
Since September 2022, Charlie Jane has also been the monthly science fiction and fantasy book reviewer for the Washington Post.
Charlie Jane was a founding editor of io9.com, a blog about science fiction and futurism, and went on to become its editor in chief. Her fiction and journalism have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Slate, McSweeney's, Mother Jones, the Boston Review, Tor.com, Tin House, Teen Vogue, Conjunctions, Wired Magazine, the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Asimov's Science Fiction, Lightspeed Magazine, Catamaran Literary Reader, ZYZZYVA, and numerous anthologies and "best of the year" collections. Her novelette "Six Months, Three Days" won a Hugo Award, and her short story "Don't Press Charges and I Won't Sue" won a Theodore Sturgeon Award.
Charlie Jane also won the Emperor Norton Award, for "extraordinary invention and creativity unhindered by the constraints of paltry reason."
Her TED Talk, "Go Ahead, Dream About the Future" has been viewed more than three million times.
She hosts the long-running monthly reading series Writers With Drinks, in which she makes up fictional bios for the authors (and nobody's sued yet.) Charlie Jane also organizes the Bookstore and Chocolate Crawl, which brings a mob of people to local bookstores to buy tons of books, and eat chocolate along the way. And during the covid-19 crisis, she also helped to organize a series of online fundraisers for local bookstores, at welovebookstores.org. She also helps to organize and co-host the monthly Trans Nerd Meet Up.
Back in the day, Charlie Jane created the satirical website GodHatesFigs.com, which received many "best of the web" awards. She was also part of the editorial staff of Anything That Moves, the influential bisexual magazine, and helped out with many other queer publishing projects including Black Sheets/Black Books. And she also organized tons of events such as the notorious Ballerina Pie Fight—plus an event in a hair salon where people got their hair cut while reading stories about haircuts to an audience.
With Annalee Newitz, Charlie Jane co-hosts a podcast about the meaning of science fiction called Our Opinions Are Correct. The podcast has been going strong for two years, and won a Hugo Award for Best Fancast. Anders and Newitz also collaborated on io9, plus an anthology called She's Such a Geek: Women Write About Science, Technology & Other Nerdy Stuff, and a magazine called other magazine.
Charlie Jane hugs trees, and keeps a British penny in her left shoe at all times.
Agent: Russ Galen, Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary Agency russellgalen@sgglit.com
Author contact: charlieanders2@gmail.com
If you would like to request a review copy of Even Greater Mistakes (Tor Books) or Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak (Tor Teen) please email the following:
For Tor Teen: torteenpublicity@torteenbooks.com
For Tor Books: torpublicity@tor.com
For media and event requests, please contact my publicist: Saraciea.Fennell@tor.com
