Karen Joy Fowler

Karen Joy Fowler (born 1950 in the United States) is the author of five novels and dozens of short stories. She won the 1999 World Fantasy Award for Black Glass, the 2003 Nebula Award for "What I Didn’t See, and the 2008 Nebula Award for "Always." Her 2004 mainstream novel, The Jane Austen Book Club, became a national best seller, and has been made into a movie.

Not always easily categorized, her work is subtle, highly conscious, and dryly inflected with irony. Not all readers (or critics) agree that her novel Sarah Canary is science fiction, and when Ellen Datlow published "What I Didn’t See" on scifiction.com in July 2002, a controversy erupted over whether the story had genre "credentials." (See L. Timmel Duchamp, "Something Rich and Strange: Karen Joy Fowler’s 'What I Didn’t See,'" in Justine Larbalestier, ed., Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century for an account of the controversy and a discussion of why the story is science fiction.)

Karen Joy Fowler is a co-founder, with Pat Murphy, of the James Tiptree, Jr. Memorial Award. She and her husband Hugh lived in Davis, California until 2007, when they moved to Santa Cruz, California. She has two children.

Bibliography

Novels

• Sarah Canary (1991)
• The Sweetheart Season (1996)
• Sister Noon (2002)
• The Jane Austen Book Club (2004)
• Wit's End (2008)

Short Story Collections

• Artificial Things (1985)
• Peripheral Vision (1990)
• Black Glass (1997)

Anthologies

• Letters from Home (1991) with Pat Cadigan and Pat Murphy; ed. by Sarah Lefanu
• MOTA 3: Courage (2003)
• The James Tiptree Award Anthology 1 (2005) with Pat Murphy, Debbie Notkin, and Jeffrey D. Smith
• The James Tiptree Award Anthology 2 (2006) with Pat Murphy, Debbie Notkin, and Jeffrey D. Smith
• The James Tiptree Award Anthology 3 (2007) with Pat Murphy, Debbie Notkin, and Jeffrey D. Smith

Short stories

• "The War of the Roses" (1985)
• "Praxis" (1985)
• "The Lake Was Full of Artificial Things" (1985)
• "The Poplar Street Study" (1985)
• "Recalling Cinderella" (1985)
• "The Dragon’s Head" (1986)
• "The Gate of Ghosts" (1986)
• "Face Value" (1986)
• "Contention" (1986)
• "Other Planes" (1986)
• "The Bog People" (1986)
• "Wild Boys” Variations on a Theme" (1986)
• "The View from Venus: A Case Study" (1986)
• "The Faithful Companion at Forty" (1987)
• "Letters from Home" (1987)
• "Lily Red" (1988)
• "Heartland" (1988)
• "Duplicity" (1989)
• "Faded Roses" (1989)
• "Game Night at the Fox and Goose" (1989)
• "Lieserl" (1990)
• "Sarah Canary and the Mermaid" (1990)
• "The Dark" (1991)
• "Black Glass" (1991)
• "Shimabara" (1995)
• "The Brew" (1995) (in Peter Beagle's The Immortal Unicorn)
• "The Marianas Islands" (1996)
• "The Elizabeth Complex" (1996) (link to the full text can be found below)
• "Standing Room Only" (1997) (link to the full text can be found below)
• "The Black Fairy’s Curse" (1997)
• "Go Back" (1998)
• "The Travails" (1998)
• "What I Didn’t See" (2002) Nebula award winner. (link to the full text can be found below)
• "King Rat" (2003)
• "Private Grave 9" (2003)
• "Always (short story)" (2007) - Asimov's, April/May 2007; winner, Nebula short story (full text at the link below)

Full-text Online

• "Always"
• [1] "What I Didn't See"
• [2]"The Elizabeth Complex"
• [3]"Standing Room Only"
• [4]Annotated Bibliography

Further reading

• Karen Joy Fowler's web site

• IMDB page for the movie of The Jane Austen Book Club
• ISFDB
• Wikipedia entry on Karen Joy Fowler

• Interview with Karen Joy Fowler
• "Playing with the Big Boys: Alternate History in Karen Joy Fowler's 'Game Night at the Fox and Goose'" by L. Timmel Duchamp
• "Karen Joy Fowler's 'Elizabeth Complex'" by L. Timmel Duchamp
• Review of Sarah Canary by Kathleen Ann Goonan
• Review of The Sweetheart Season by Kathleen Ann Goonan