Catherynne M. Valente

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Catherynne M. Valente was born on May 5th, 1979 in Seattle, Washington, but grew up in the wheatgrass paradise of Northern California. She graduated from high school at age 15, going on to UC San Diego and Edinburgh University, receiving her BA in Classics with an emphasis in Ancient Greek Linguistics. She then drifted away from her MA program and into a long residence in the concrete and camphor wilds of Japan.

She is the author of over a dozen works of fiction and poetry, including Palimpsest, the Orphan’s Tales series, Deathless, and the crowdfunded phenomenon The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Own Making. She is the winner of the Andre Norton, Tiptree, Mythopoeic, Rhysling, Lambda, Locus and Hugo awards. She has been a finalist for the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards.
 
She currently lives on an island off the coast of Maine with a small but growing menagerie of beasts, some of which are human, having drifted back to America and the mythic frontier of the Midwest.

Author's Comment:
Q: Many children seem to find themselves in Fairyland. Is there an age cut off? Will September ever be too old to come back?

A: This falls a bit into spoilers for the rest of the series, so I’ll be vague. I hate the idea that magic has an expiration date, that you can age out of adventure. That growing up means dying a little to the possibilities of the world. I hate it in books and I hate it when people behave in real life as though those things were true. So…you be the judge!

Nationality: American