Catherynne M. Valente

[[File:CatherynneMValente.jpg|thumb|300px|Catherynne M. Valente in 2009. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Catherynne M. Valente (born Bethany Thomas; May 5, 1979 in Seattle, Washington) is a Tiptree–, Andre Norton–, and Mythopoeic Award–winning novelist, poet, and literary critic. Her short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, the World Fantasy Award–winning anthologies Salon Fantastique and Paper Cities, along with numerous Year's Best volumes. Her critical work has appeared in the International Journal of the Humanities under the name Bethany L. Thomas as well as in the essay anthology Chicks Dig Time Lords. She currently lives on Peaks Island in the state of Maine with her husband. Valente has also published five books of poetry and won the Rhysling Award for speculative poetry.

Her debut novel, The Labyrinth, was a Locus Recommended Book, and her subsequent novels have been nominated for the Hugo, World Fantasy, and Locus awards. Her 2009 book, Palimpsest, won the Lambda Award for GLBT Science Fiction or Fantasy. Her two-volume series The Orphan's Tales won the 2008 Mythopoeic Award, and its first volume, The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden won the 2006 James Tiptree, Jr. Award, was nominated for the 2007 World Fantasy Award, and was The Plain Dealer's No. 1 summer reading novel in 2007.

In 2009, she donated her archive to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) Collection] in the department of Rare Books and Special Collections at Northern Illinois University.

Multimedia and mythpunk
Valente tours with singer/songwriter SJ Tucker, who along with her own varied discography composes albums based on Valente's work. The pair perform reading concerts throughout North America, often featuring dancers, aerial artists, art auctions featuring jewelry and paintings based on the novels, and other performances.

Valente is extremely active in the crowdfunding movement of online artists, and her novel The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making was the first online, crowdfunded book to win a major literary award before traditional publication.

Valente coined the term mythpunk as a joke for describing her own and other works of challenging folklore-based fantasy in a blog post in 2006.

Writing
Valente's work tends to center on folkloric and mythological themes, reimagining fairy tales and genre tropes via feminist, surrealist, and postmodern lenses. Her writing is characterized by stylistic and structural experimentation as well as complex linguistic and poetic techniques.

Poetry

 * Music of a Proto-Suicide (chapbook) (2004)
 * Apocrypha (Prime Books) ISBN 0-8095-5074-1 (2005)
 * Oracles: A Pilgrimage (Prime Books) ISBN 0-8095-0045-0 (2006)
 * The Descent of Inanna (Papaveria Press) (2006)
 * A Guide to Folktales in Fragile Dialects (May 2008)

Novels

 * The Labyrinth, Prime Books ISBN 1-894815-65-3 (2004)
 * The Ice Puzzle (2004)
 * Yume No Hon: The Book of Dreams, Prime Books ISBN 0-8095-1087-1 (2005)
 * The Grass-Cutting Sword, Prime Books ISBN 0-8095-6230-8 (2006)
 * Palimpsest, Bantam ISBN 0-553-38576-3 (2009)
 * Deathless, Tor Books ISBN 0-7653-2630-2 (2011)
 * Silently and Very Fast, Clarkesworld Magazine and WSFA Press (2011)
 * Six-Gun Snow White, Subterranean Press (2013)

The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden (vol. 1) ISBN 0-553-38403-1 (Oct 2006) The Orphan's Tales: In the Cities of Coin and Spice (vol. 2) ISBN 0-553-38404-X (Oct 2007)
 * The Orphan's Tales series (Bantam):
 * Book of the Steppe
 * Book of the Sea
 * Book of the Storm
 * Book of the Scald


 * A Dirge for Prester John series (Night Shade Books):
 * The Habitation of the Blessed (2010) ISBN 1-59780-199-2
 * The Folded World (2011) ISBN 1-59780-203-4
 * The Spindle of Necessity (TBA)


 * Fairyland series (Feiwel & Friends)


 * Prequel: The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland—For a Little While novella available to read at Tor.com (2011)
 * The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (2011)
 * The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There (2012)

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making started out in 2009 as a crowdfunded middle-grade online novel (originally, a fictional children's book in Palimpsest).

Nonfiction

 * Introduction to Jane Eyre (Illustrated) (Norilana Books) ISBN 1-934169-79-X (2007)
 * "Regeneration X" in Chicks Dig Time Lords (2010, Mad Norwegian Press)

Short fiction

 * "The Oracle Alone" Music of a Proto-Suicide (2004)
 * "Ghosts of Gunkanjima" Papaveria Press (2005)
 * "The Maiden-Tree" Cabinet des Fees (2005)
 * "Bones Like Black Sugar" Fantasy Magazine (2005)
 * "Psalm of the Second Body" PEN Book of Voices (2005)
 * "Ascent Is Not Allowed" The Minotaur in Pamplona (2005)
 * "Thread: A Triptych" Lone Star Stories (2006)
 * "Urchins, While Swimming" Clarkesworld Magazine (2006)
 * "Milk and Apples" Electric Velocipede (2006)
 * "Temnaya and the House of Books" Mythic (2006)
 * "A Grey and Soundless Tide" Salon Fantastique (2006)
 * "A Dirge For Prester John" INTERFICTIONS (2007)
 * "The Ballad of the Sinister Mr. Mouth" Lone Star Stories (2007)
 * "La Serenissima" Endicott Studio (2007)
 * "The Proslogium of the Great Lakes" Farrago's Wainscot (2007)
 * "A Buyer's Guide to Maps of Antarctica" Clarkesworld Magazine (2008)
 * "Tales of Beaty and Strangeness: City of Blind Delights" Clockwork Phoenix (2008)
 * "The Hanged Man" Farrago's Wainscot (2008)
 * "An Anthology of Urban Fantasy: Palimpsest" Paper Cities, ed. Ekaterina Sedia (2008)
 * "The Harpooner at the Bottom of the World" Spectra Pulse Magazine (2008)
 * " Golubash, or, Wine-War-Blood-Elegy" Federations (2009)
 * " The Secret History of Mirrors" Clockwork Phoenix 2 (2009)
 * " A Book of Villainous Tales:A Delicate Architecture" Troll's Eye View (2009)
 * "The Radiant Car Thy Sparrows Drew" Clarkesworld Magazine (2009)
 * "The Anachronist's Cookbook" Steampunk Tales (2009)
 * "A Between Books Anthology:Proverbs of Hell" The Stories in Between (2010)
 * "The Days of Flaming Motorcycles" Dark Faith (2010)
 * "Secretario" Weird Tales (2010)
 * "Thirteen Ways of Looking at Space/Time" Clarkesworld Magazine (2010)
 * "How to Become a Mars Overlord" Lightspeed Magazine (2010)
 * "15 Panels Depicting the Sadness of the Baku and the Jotai" Haunted Legends (2010)
 * "In the Future When All's Well" Teeth (2011)
 * "A Voice Like a Hole" Welcome to Bordertown (2011)
 * "The Wolves of Brooklyn" Fantasy Magazine (2011)
 * "The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland—For a Little While" Tor.com (2011)
 * "White Lines on a Green Field" Subterranean Magazine (2011)

Collections

 * This Is My Letter to the World: The Omikuji Project, Cycle One (2010)
 * Ventriloquism, short story collection (PS Publishing) (2010)
 * Myths of Origin (Wyrm Publishing) ISBN 1-890464-14-7, Omnibus collection containing The Labyrinth, Yume No Hon: The Book of Dreams, The Grass-Cutting Sword, and Under in the Mere (2011)