Elizabeth Hand (born March 29, 1957) is an American writer.

Elizabeth Hand
Elizabeth Hand at Finncon 2007 in Jyväskylä, Finland
Elizabeth Hand at Finncon 2007 in Jyväskylä, Finland
Born (1957-03-29) March 29, 1957 (age 66)
Yonkers, New York, U.S.
OccupationNovelist
Alma materCatholic University of America
GenreScience fiction, Fantasy
Website
elizabethhand.com

Life and career edit

Hand grew up in Yonkers and Pound Ridge, New York. She studied drama and anthropology at the Catholic University of America. Since 1988, Hand has lived in coastal Maine, the setting for many of her stories, and as of 2000 lives in Lincolnville.[1] She also lives part-time in Camden Town, London which has been the setting for Mortal Love and the short story "Cleopatra Brimstone".

Hand's first story, "Prince of Flowers", was published in 1988 in Twilight Zone magazine, and her first novel, Winterlong, was published in 1990. With Paul Witcover, she created and wrote DC Comics' 1990s cult series Anima.[2] Hand's other works include Aestival Tide (1992); Icarus Descending (1993); Waking the Moon (1994), which won the Tiptree Award and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award; the post-apocalyptic novel Glimmering (1997); contemporary fantasy Black Light (1999), a New York Times Notable Book; the historical fantasy Mortal Love (2004), a Washington Post Notable Book; the psychological thriller Generation Loss (2007), and the World Fantasy Award-winning "The Maiden Flight of McCauley's Bellerophon". Her story collections are Last Summer at Mars Hill (1998) (which includes the Nebula and World Fantasy award-winning title novella); Bibliomancy (2002), winner of the World Fantasy Award;[3] and Saffron and Brimstone: Strange Stories, which includes the Nebula Award-winning "Echo" (2006). Mortal Love was also shortlisted for the 2005 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature.

Among Hand's other recent short fiction, "Pavane for a Prince of the Air" (2002) and "Cleopatra Brimstone" (2001) won International Horror Guild Awards.[4] Most recently, she won the Shirley Jackson Award for Generation Loss and the World Fantasy Award in 2008 for Illyria,[3] and the Inkpot Award in 2018.[5]

She also writes movie and television spin-offs, including Star Wars tie-in novels and novelizations of such films as The X-Files and 12 Monkeys. She contributed a Bride of Frankenstein novel to the recent series of classic movie monster novels published by Dark Horse Comics.

One of Hand's themes from the Winterlong saga is the remorseless exploitation of animal and plant species to create what she calls "geneslaves." Examples include a three-hundred-year-old genetically reconstructed and cerebrally augmented Basilosaurus by the name of Zalophus; the aardmen, hybrids of dog and man; hydrapithecenes, human-fish or human-cuttlefish hybrids somewhat resembling Davy Jones and his crew from the Pirates of the Caribbean film series; and sagittals, whelks genetically engineered to be worn as a bracelet and, when its host feels threatened or agitated, extrude a spine laced with a deadly neurotoxin.

Hand is a longtime reviewer and critic for The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Review, Salon, and Village Voice, among others. She also writes a regular review column for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Bibliography edit

Novels edit

  • 1988 WinterlongISBN 0-553-28772-9
  • 1992 Aestival TideISBN 0-553-29542-X
  • 1993 Icarus DescendingISBN 0-553-56288-6
  • 1994 Waking the Moon (longer UK edition) – ISBN 0-586-21747-9
  • 1995 Waking the Moon (US edition preferred by the author [1]) – ISBN 0-06-105214-0
  • 1997 Glimmering (second edition 2012) – ISBN 0-06-100805-2
  • 1999 Black LightISBN 0-06-105266-3
  • 2000 "Chip Crockett's Christmas Carol" in Sci Fiction
  • 2002 "Cleopatra Brimstone" in Redshift
  • 2003 "The Least Trumps" in Conjunctions 39: The New Wave Fabulists
  • 2004 Mortal Love[6]ISBN 0-06-105170-5
  • 2006 Chip Crockett's Christmas Carol (illustrated by Judith Clute; originally published December 2000) – ISBN 1-870824-49-0. The story is a tribute to entertainers Sandy Becker and Joey Ramone. An online edition of Chip Crockett's Christmas Carol was serialized by Hand on her Livejournal community "theinferior4".
  • 2006 IllyriaISBN 1-905834-63-2, ISBN 978-1-905834-63-1
  • 2007 The Bride of Frankenstein (media tie-in) – ISBN 1-59582-035-3
  • 2012 Radiant Days
  • 2015 Wylding Hall (novella)
  • 2019 Curious Toys
  • 2020 The Book of Lamps and Banners
  • 2022 Hokuloa Road
  • 2023 A Haunting on the Hill (a sequel to Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House)

Cass Neary Crime Novels edit

Star Wars Expanded Universe edit

Adaptations edit

Short fiction edit

Collections
Stories
  • 1990 "Jangletown" (with Paul Witcover; in The Further Adventures of The Joker)
  • 1993 "Lucifer Over Lancaster" (with Paul Witcover; in The Further Adventures of Superman)
  • 1994 "The Erl-King"

Book reviews edit

Year Review article Work(s) reviewed
2000 Hand, Elizabeth (May 2000). "Books". F&SF. 98 (5): 29–34.
  • Bailey, Dale (1999). American nightmares : the haunted house formula in American popular fiction. Bowling Green State University Popular Press.
2011 Hand, Elizabeth (July–August 2011). "Books". F&SF. 121 (1&2): 42–48.
  • Pacitti, Tony (2010). My best friend is a Wookie. Adams Media.
  • Yu, Charles (2010). How to live in a science fictional universe. Pantheon.
  • Kimmel, Daniel M. (2011). Jar Jar Binks must die ... and other observations about science fiction movies. Fantastic Books.

Footnotes edit

  1. ^ Elizabeth Hand Biography - life, family, children, parents, name, story, history, mother, young, book - Newsmakers Cumulation Retrieved 2017-04-28.
  2. ^ Elizabeth Hand – SCIFIPEDIA Archived July 21, 2006, at the Wayback Machine
  3. ^ a b World Fantasy Convention (2010). "Award Winners and Nominees". Archived from the original on December 1, 2010. Retrieved February 4, 2011.
  4. ^ "ElizabethHand.com". Archived from the original on May 18, 2006. Retrieved June 5, 2020.
  5. ^ Inkpot Award
  6. ^ Publishers Weekly. "Elizabeth Hand.com". Elizabeth Hand.com. Archived from the original on July 16, 2012. Retrieved October 19, 2012.

External links edit