The 10 Best Women Authors of Fantasy and Sci-Fi
For Women’s History Month, we wanted to highlight the best authors in the Fantasy and Sci-Fi genre! If you’ve been with Maude’s Book Club for a while, you know who our go-to authors are and we added them to this list.
The women listed below have broken barriers in the Sci-Fi genre and cemented themselves in Fantasy as well. They have all created incredible worlds for readers to get lost in and have become popular over time. Whether they have one trilogy under their belt or more, their writing has introduced readers to new perspectives and brilliant female characters.
Here are the women authors we chose to highlight for Women’s History Month! Come and join us in the discord to discuss all their wonderful novels.
Fonda lee
Fonda Lee is the author of the epic fantasy Green Bone Saga, consisting of the novels Jade City, Jade War, and Jade Legacy, along with a prequel novella The Jade Setter of Janloon and a short story collection, Jade Shards. She is also the author of the science fiction novels Zeroboxer, Exo and Cross Fire. Her most recent work is the fantasy novella, Untethered Sky.
Fonda is a winner of the World Fantasy Award, the Locus Award, and a five-time winner of the Aurora Award (Canada’s national science fiction and fantasy award), as well as a multiple finalist for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the Oregon Book Award. Her novels have garnered multiple starred reviews and appeared on Best of Year lists from NPR, Barnes & Noble, Syfy Wire, and others. Jade City has been translated in a dozen languages, named to TIME Magazine’s Top 100 Fantasy Books of All Time, and optioned for television development.
N.K. JEMISIN
N(ora). K. Jemisin is a New York Times-bestselling author of speculative fiction short stories and novels, who lives and writes in Brooklyn, NY. In 2018, she became the first author to win three Best Novel Hugos in a row. She has also won a Nebula Award, two Locus Awards, and is a recipient of the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship.
Her short fiction has been published in pro markets such as Clarkesworld, Tor.com, WIRED, and Popular Science; semipro markets such as Ideomancer and Abyss & Apex; and podcast markets and print anthologies. Her novels, a novella, and two short story collections are out now from Orbit Books. Her novels are represented by Lucienne Diver of the Knight Agency.
She is an emeritus member of the Altered Fluid writing group. In addition to writing, she has been a counselling psychologist and educator, a hiker and biker, and a political/feminist/anti-racist blogger. Although she no longer pens the New York Times Book Review science fiction and fantasy column called “Otherworldly” (which she covered for 3 years), her reviews can still be found online.
Martha Wells
Martha Wells has been an SF/F writer since her first fantasy novel was published in 1993, and her work includes The Books of the Raksura series, the Ile-Rien series, The Murderbot Diaries series, and other fantasy novels, most recently Witch King (Tordotcom, 2023). She has also written media tie-in fiction for Star Wars, Stargate: Atlantis, and Magic: the Gathering, as well as short fiction, YA novels, and non-fiction. She has won Nebula Awards, Hugo Awards, Locus Awards, and a Dragon Award, and her work has appeared on the Philip K. Dick Award ballot, the BSFA Award ballot, the USA Today Bestseller List, the Sunday Times Bestseller List, and the New York Times Bestseller List. She is a member of the Texas Literary Hall of Fame, and her books have been published in twenty-eight languages.
She is also a consulting producer on the Murderbot series for Apple TV+.
LEIGH BARDUGO
Leigh Bardugo is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Ninth House and the creator of the Grishaverse (now a Netflix original series) which spans the Shadow and Bone trilogy, the Six of Crows duology, the King of Scars duology—and much more. Her short fiction has appeared in multiple anthologies including The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy.
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER was a renowned African American author who received a MacArthur “Genius” Grant and PEN West Lifetime Achievement Award for her body of work. Born in Pasadena in 1947, she was raised by her mother and her grandmother. She was the author of several award-winning novels including PARABLE OF THE SOWER (1993), which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and PARABLE OF THE TALENTS (1995) winner of the Nebula Award for the best science fiction novel published that year. She was acclaimed for her lean prose, strong protagonists, and social observations in stories that range from the distant past to the far future.
Becky Chambers
Becky Chambers is the bestselling author of the Wayfarers series, the Monk and Robot novellas, and other works of science fiction. She is a two-time Hugo Award winner, a Locus Award winner, and has been nominated for the Nebula Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the Women's Prize for Fiction, among others. Her latest book is A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, the second installment of Monk and Robot. She is currently working on a new standalone novel.
Becky has a background in performing arts, and grew up in a family heavily involved in space science. She spends her free time playing video and tabletop games, watching bugs, and looking through her telescope. Having hopped around the world a bit, she has settled down (for the moment) in Humboldt County, California, where she lives with her wife. She hopes to see Earth from orbit one day.
R.F. KUANG
Rebecca F. Kuang is the #1 New York Times and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of the Poppy War trilogy, Babel: An Arcane History, Yellowface, and Katabasis (forthcoming). Her work has won the Nebula, Locus, Crawford, and British Book Awards. She has been named to the 2023 Time100 Next list and the Forbes 30 Under 30 Class of 2024. A Marshall Scholar, she has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford. She is now pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale, where she studies Sinophone literature and Asian American literature.
SARAH J MAAS
Sarah J. Maas is the prolific, #1 New York Times and internationally bestselling author of the Throne of Glass, A Court of Thorns and Roses and Crescent City series, which have sold more than 38 million copies in English worldwide and are published in thirty-eight languages. Maas is one of the most successful authors of the modern era, generating a far-reaching and ever-growing fanbase of readers, as well as a TikTok phenomenon, with the hashtag for her A Court of Thorns and Roses series having several billion views.
Suzanne Collins
In 1991, Suzanne Collins began her professional career writing for children's television. She worked on the staffs of several Nickelodeon shows, including the Emmy-nominated hit Clarissa Explains it All and The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo. For preschool viewers, she penned multiple stories for the Emmy-nominated Little Bear and Oswald. She also co-wrote the Rankin/Bass Christmas special, Santa, Baby! with her friend, Peter Bakalian, which was nominated for a WGA Award in Animation. Most recently she was the Head Writer for Scholastic Entertainment's Clifford's Puppy Days,and a freelancer on Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! While working on a Kids WB show called Generation O! she met children's author and illustrator James Proimos, who talked her into giving children's books a try.
The Hunger Games Trilogy, is an international bestseller. The Hunger Games has spent over six years to date on The New York Times bestseller list since publication in September 2008, and has also appeared consistently on USA Today and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists. It has been sold into 54 territories in 52 languages. In 2010 Suzanne was named to the TIME 100 list as well as the Entertainment Weekly Entertainers of the Year list. In 2016, she was presented the 2016 Authors Guild Award for Distinguished Service to the Literary Community for exemplifying the unique power of young people's literature to change lives and create lifelong book lovers. It was the first time the Guild presented the award to a YA author.
S.A. CHAKRABORTY
Shannon Chakraborty is the critically acclaimed, New York Times bestselling author of The Daevabad Trilogy and The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi. Her work has been translated into over a dozen languages and nominated for the Hugo, Locus, World Fantasy, Crawford, and Astounding awards. You can find her online at www.sachakraborty.com or on Instagram and Twitter at @SAChakrabooks, where she likes to talk about history, cooking, and Islamic art. She lives in New Jersey with her family and an ever-increasing number of cats.
Have you read any of the books listed above? If you have, let us know which one is your favourite! If you have any recommendations drop them in the comments below.
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