Ellen Kushner(www.ellenkushner.com) is a novelist, performer, and public-radio personality. Her novelThomas the Rhymer (Morrow/Tor, 1990; Bantam Spectra, 2004), won the World Fantasy and Mythopoeic Awards in 1991. The Fall of the Kings(Bantam, 2002), written with Delia Sherman,takes place 60 years after her first novel,Swordspoint, A Melodrama of Manners(Unwin Hyman, 1987).Swordspointwas reissued in 2003 by Bantam Spectra with a new afterword and three previously uncollected short stories. The latest in what's now called the "Riverside" Series, The Privilege of the Sword, takes place about 20 years after Swordspoint, was published by Bantam Books in 2006, with a limited hardcover edition from Small Beer Press.

Kushner's children's fantasy storyThe Golden Dreydl: A Klezmer Nutcracker(2001 Gracie Allen Award) is available on CD from Rykodisc. She does a live version of the show with Shirim Klezmer Orchestra each holiday season. A chapter-book version, The Golden Dreydl, was published by Charlesbridge in 2007. A children's theatre version, A Klezmer Nutcracker, was produced by New York's Vital Theatre in 2008-09, with Kushner herself playing Tante Miriam!

Her Esther: the Feast of Masks (2003 Gracie Allen Award), a one-woman show with music exploring issues of identity and self-revelation, is available online in a radio version, and also tours live. For Rykodisc she also created the CDWelcoming Children Into the World(1999).

Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in anthologies includingThe Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, The Coyote Road, & Troll's Eye View(eds. Datlow and Windling). She has been an instructor at Michigan Clarion, Odyssey Workshop, Cape Cod Writers' Center, and at ISIS (Interstitial Studies Institute at SUNY/New Paltz). She has been a Tiptree judge (1994), is part of Terri Windling's Endicott Studio for Mythic Arts, and helped to found the Interstitial Arts Foundation, where she currently serves as President.

Ellen Kushner began her career in New York as a fantasy editor, first at Ace Books with Jim Baen (where she editedBasilisk, 1980), then at Timescape with David Hartwell. In 1987 she moved to Boston to work at WGBH Radio. In 2006, she and her partner, Delia Sherman, moved back to Manhattan. Since 1996 Kushner has been host/writer of PRI's award-winning weekly seriesSound & Spirit, heard on public radio stations nationwide and online at www.wgbh.org/pri/spirit. Tune in to the show on Sunday at 5 p.m. as you're driving home, on Boston's WGBH 89.7 FM!