Nicola Griffith (; born 30 September 1960) is a British American novelist, essayist, and teacher. She has won the Washington State Book Award (twice), Nebula Award, James Tiptree, Jr. Award, World Fantasy Award, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and six Lambda Literary Awards. In 2024 she was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.. Retrieved 25 July 2024. In 2025, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association named her the 41st Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master in recognition of her significant contributions to the literature of science fiction and fantasy.. Retrieved 2 April 2025. In addition to her fiction, Griffith is known for her contributions to feminist and queer literature, her disability advocacy, and her role in founding the Literary Prize Database Project and the #CripLit community for disabled writers.
Personal life
Griffith was born 30 September 1960 in Leeds, to Margaret and Eric Griffith.Griffith, Nicola (2007). And Now We Are Going to Have a Party, Volume 1: Limb of Satan. Seattle: Payseur & Schmidt. Griffith's family is Catholic and she is one of five children. She knew she was gay by age 13.
Griffith is cousin to British actor Clare Higgins.
Griffith's earliest surviving literary efforts include an illustrated booklet she was encouraged to create to prevent her from making trouble among her fellow nursery school students. At age eleven she won a BBC student poetry prize and read aloud her winning work for radio broadcast.
Her early reading included the works of such novelists as Henry Treece"If you like the Aud books you might like ...,", "Ask Nicola". Retrieved 10 March 2014 and Rosemary Sutcliff;"The Makers of Britain" by Nicola Griffith. Retrieved 1 April 2014. fantastic fiction including the works of E. E. Smith, Frank Herbert, and J. R. R. Tolkien; nonfiction and history – Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was a particular favorite.
Griffith took interest in the sciences as a teenager. She entered University of Leeds to study microbiology but did not complete a degree. Griffith was the lead singer and cofounder of the band Janes Plane, which experienced some success in England before breaking up.
By the late 1980s, Griffith had begun experiencing symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS), though her illness remained undiagnosed. She was diagnosed with MS in March 1993.
While studying at Michigan State University, Griffith met and fell in love with fellow writer Kelley Eskridge. On 4 September 1993, Griffith and Eskridge announced their commitment ceremony in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, perhaps the first same-sex commitment announcement the paper had published. Griffith and Eskridge were legally married 4 September 2013.
Griffith wanted citizenship so she could remain in the country with her wife, but because she was a lesbian, she couldn't receive citizenship through marriage, and all other pathways were closed. After much effort, Griffith received permission to live and work in the United States based on her "importance as a writer of lesbian/science fiction," making her the first out lesbian to receive a National Interest Waiver. Her immigration resulted in a new law, and she is now a dual US/UK citizen.
Career In late 1987 Griffith made her first professional fiction sale: "Mirrors and Burnstone" to Interzone. Her debut novel, Ammonite, received several offers from publishers, including St. Martin's Press, Avon Press, and Del Rey Books. Griffith has since published nine full-length novels, a memoir, and numerous short stories, essays, and novellas. While Griffith has said that she "resists labels to describe her work," much of her published material contains themes of gender and sexuality.
Literary Activism
In 2015, Griffith "founded the Literary Prize Data working group whose purpose initially was to assemble data on literary prizes in order to get a picture of how gender bias operates within the trade publishing ecosystem."
In 2015 she began #CripLit, an online community for disabled writers."
Major Works
In 2017, after completing her thesis, entitled "Norming the Queer: Narrative Empathy via Focalised Heterotopia," Griffith received her PhD by publication from Anglia Ruskin University.
Critics have described Stay as both an allegorical and cautionary novel, emphasizing its focus on the protagonist’s effort to reclaim her sense of self following profound personal loss.
Griffith released She Is Here in February 2026. It contains six nonfiction essays, four poems, three short stories, a novella, drawings, and an interview with Nisi Shawl.
Griffith spent nearly ten years researching early medieval Britain for Hild, drawing on historical and scientific methods to construct the novel’s setting and social structures.
Griffith has identified Hild as her first explicitly bisexual protagonist, written in response to the underrepresentation of bisexual characters in fiction.
So Lucky is an autobiographical novel that follows a woman navigating life after being diagnosed with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis.
Critics have noted So Lucky incorporates disability activism and critiques medical and pharmaceutical systems.
Griffith created the character Aud Torvingen, a lesbian crime fighter who first appeared in the novel The Blue Place (1998) and later returned in subsequent novels such as Stay.
Griffith has described Aud Torvingen as a central figure in her crime fiction series and planned additional novels featuring the character.
Awards and honors Year Title Award Category Result Ref.1993AmmoniteBSFA Award — James Tiptree, Jr. Award — Lambda Literary Award Lesbian Science Fiction/Fantasy Touching FireJames Tiptree, Jr. Award — 1994AmmoniteArthur C. Clarke Award — Locus Award First Novel 1995"Yaguara"Nebula Award Novella 1996Slow RiverNebula Award Novel Lambda Literary Award Science Fiction/Fantasy Joint winner with Melissa Scott’s Shadow Man; the 1996 blog post at erroneously lists Shadow Man as the sole winner, but the Lammys Directory at https://lambdaliterary.org/awards/lammys-directory-1988-present/ correctly lists both, as does the Internet Speculative Fiction Database at https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ay.cgi?29+1995 and Griffith's website shows the award itself https://nicolagriffith.com/2026/04/12/old-news-slow-river-won-the-lambda-literary-award/.1998Bending the LandscapeLambda Literary Award Science Fiction/Fantasy 1999The Blue PlaceGaylactic Spectrum Awards Novel Lambda Literary Award Lesbian Mystery Bending the Landscape: Science FictionGaylactic Spectrum AwardsOther Work Lambda Literary AwardScience Fiction/Fantasy 2000Slow RiverGaylactic Spectrum AwardsHall of Fame2002Bending the Landscape: HorrorGaylactic Spectrum AwardsOther WorkLambda Literary AwardAnthologyLambda Literary AwardScience Fiction/Fantasy2003StayLambda Literary AwardLesbian Fiction2005With Her BodyGaylactic Spectrum AwardsOther WorkLambda Literary AwardScience Fiction/Fantasy2008And Now We Are Going to Have a PartyLambda Literary Award Lesbian Memoir or Biography2010"It Takes Two"Hugo Award Novelette2013HildBisexual Book AwardsFictionJames Tiptree, Jr. Award—Nebula AwardNovel2014John W. Campbell Memorial Award—Washington State Book AwardFiction2018So LuckyOver the Rainbow Booklist—2019Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award—Tournament of Books—Washington State Book AwardFiction2022SpearLos Angeles Times Book PrizeRay Bradbury PrizeNebula AwardNovel2023HWA Crown AwardsGoldLocus AwardFantasy NovelUrsula K. Le Guin Prize—World Fantasy AwardNovel
Publications Fiction
Aud Torvingen series
The Hild Sequence series
Nonfiction
Anthologies Bending the Landscape: Fantasy, Overlook Books, (1997, with Stephen Pagel) Bending the Landscape: Science Fiction, Overlook Books, (1998, with Stephen Pagel) Bending the Landscape: Horror, Overlook Books, (2001, with Stephen Pagel)
Collections
Short fiction "An Other Winter's Tale" (1987) "Mirrors and Burnstone" (1988) "The Other" (1989) "We Have Met the Alien" (1990) "The Voyage South" (1990) "Down the Path of the Sun" (1990) "Song of Bullfrogs, Cry of Geese" (1991) "Wearing My Skin" (1991) "Touching Fire" (1993) "Yaguara" (1994) "A Troll Story" (2000) "It Takes Two" (2009)
Critical studies and reviews of Griffith's work Review of Hild. Review of Hild and Menewood.
References
External links
Official website
The story behind Hild – Online essay by Nicola Griffith : Freed by Constraint at Upcoming4.me 30 years ago : a love story in photos by Nicola Griffith, 2018