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Karen Joy Fowler

(b.1950)

Karen Joy Fowler is the author of six novels including Booker Prize finalist and international bestseller We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Wit's End, and The Jane Austen Book Club -- which spent thirteen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, was a New York Times Notable Book, and was adapted as a major motion picture from Sony Pictures. Her novel Sister Noon was a finalist for the 2001 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction, and her short story collection Black Glass won the World Fantasy Awards. Fowler and her husband, who have two grown children, live in Santa Cruz, California.

Genres: Science Fiction, Historical

Novels

   Peripheral Vision (1986)
   The War of the Roses (1991)
   Sarah Canary (1991)
   The Sweetheart Season (1996)
   Sister Noon (2001)
   The Jane Austen Book Club (2004)
   Wit's End (2008)
     aka The Case of the Imaginary Detective
   We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (2013)
   Booth (2022)

Collections

   Artificial Things (1986)
   Letters from Home (1991) (with Pat Cadigan and Pat Murphy)
   Black Glass (1998)
   What I Didn't See (2010)

Anthologies edited

Mota 2003: Courage (2003) (with John Reed)

Anthology series

James Tiptree Award Anthology
   1. The James Tiptree Award Anthology 1 (2004) (with Pat Murphy and Debbie Notkin)
   2. The James Tiptree Award Anthology 2 (2005) (with Pat Murphy and Jeffrey D Smith)
   3. The James Tiptree Award Anthology 3 (2007) (with Pat Murphy, Debbie Notkin and Jeffrey D Smith)
   4. The James Tiptree Award Anthology 4 (2008) (with Pat Murphy, Debbie Notkin and Jeffrey D Smith)

Series contributed to

Outspoken Authors
12. The Science of Herself (2013)

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy
2. The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016 (2016) (with John Joseph Adams)

Non fiction show

Karen Joy Fowler recommends

Tomorrowing (2024)
Terry Bisson
"Such a delight to spend time, through these pages, inside the capacious brain, the boundless imagination, the brilliant wit of Terry Bisson, national treasure."

Choice (2024)
Neel Mukherjee
"This book speaks to our present moment with such intelligence as to move it from the merely brilliant to the vitally important. Kaleidoscopic yet intimate, philosophical yet affecting, Choice is a stunning, haunting accomplishment."

All Our Yesterdays (2024)
Joel H Morris
"Lady Macbeth is surely one of our most instantly recognizable characters, a shorthand now for heartless and overweening ambition. In All Our Yesterdays, Morris has given her the deep, nuanced, and complicated backstory she deserves. With witches! Thoroughly engrossing, highly recommended."

The Musical Mozinskis (2024)
Susan Petrone
"As they grow, the harmonious (and unharmonious) Mozinski children come apart as often as they come together, because extraordinary talent is not what makes a family a family. Completely original, wonderfully magical, and totally charming."

The Future (2023)
Naomi Alderman
"It is the genius of Naomi Alderman to embed a smart and thought-provoking meditation inside a page-turner of a book. This is one wild (and thoughtful) ride. Many things to think! Many things to feel!"

The Beautiful and the Wild (2023)
Peggy Townsend
"Townsend has written a breath-stopping, heart-thumping, page-turning, keep-you-up-at-night story. Wild is the word."

The Possibilities (2023)
Yael Goldstein-Love
"Unpredictable and a page-turner, equal parts passion and philosophy, The Possibilities is the tense and twisty tale of an imperiled child, a crumbling marriage, and the desperate woman who is trying to save them both."

The House of Lincoln (2023)
Nancy Horan
"Here, happily, is Nancy Horan doing once again what Nancy Horan does best - telling us the part of the story we don't yet know. Strong on fine detail yet cognizant of the expansive historical context, Horan's newest is wonderfully immersive, memorable, important, and pertinent. An ambitious and accomplished work."

The Brightest Star (2023)
Gail Tsukiyama
"I can think of no better author than the incomparable Gail Tsukiyama to introduce readers to Anna May Wong. For all of her remarkable life, Wong struggled against the racism of Hollywood and the conservatism of her family. For every triumph there was a disappointment, but for every disappointment, there was also a triumph. Through it all, the ups, the downs, the in-betweens, Tsukiyama keeps her focus on Wong's bright, resilient spirit. A beautiful, haunting book."

The Dog of the North (2023)
Elizabeth McKenzie
"Even funnier, even more romantic than McKenzie's wonderful last, The Portable Veblen, this is a screwball comedy worthy of a Preston Sturgis screenplay. You will be surprised, delighted, and grateful to be aboard The Dog of the North with the admirable Penny Rush as she faces every challenge her wild and crazy family can throw at her. A book that lifts the spirits."

Teen Couple Have Fun Outdoors (2022)
Aravind Jayan
"Utterly original and beautifully rendered. In the age of the internet, still stories of family remain ageless. Jayan sets us in a moment when the past and present are in precarious balance and leaves us to settle for ourselves what has been broken and what will never be. Loved it."

It All Comes Down to This (2022)
Therese Anne Fowler
"A compulsively readable, thoroughly enjoyable tale of three sisters, their histories, their problems, and their unravelling secrets. Contemporary, but with a delightfully Austenish tone. I read it in a single gulp."

31 Paradiso (2022)
Rhoda Huffey
"31 Paradiso is so filled with energy, the pages fairly crackle. A story of revelations, told with enormous vim and vigor, pain and wisdom, wit and wildness, (and also, shuffles and heel rolls.) The first great American tap-dancing novel!"

Housebreaking (2022)
Colleen Hubbard
"An unforgettable portrait of a young woman at war with the world and herself. Protagonist Del can be hard to like, but she remains easy to love. This is a brilliant and exciting debut."

Out There (2022)
Kate Folk
"Extraordinary through-the-looking-glass tales, all delivered with a side of menace . . . Wonderfully weird and weirdly wonderful, Kate Folk is a dazzling talent."

The Last Confessions of Sylvia P. (2022)
Lee Kravetz
"Bold, compelling, and gorgeously written, The Last Confessions of Sylvia P. is slightly reminiscent of AS Byatt's Possession, but instead of a love story, this is a tale of rivalry and betrayal. A truly satisfying page-turner."

The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections (2022)
Eva Jurczyk
"Who doesn't love a mystery involving rare books and bad librarians? This clever, deftly written story has all that and more. A great pleasure from beginning to end."

Destroyer of Light (2021)
Jennifer Marie Brissett
"A saga that combines many of sf’s most beloved tropes-a remnant of humanity struggling to survive on a far away world, aliens whose goals are dangerously unknowable, alien/human hybrids with unpredictable abilities, suspense, plot twists, and that good old sense of wonder. Hugely ambitious, impressively accomplished."

The Book of Form and Emptiness (2021)
Ruth Ozeki
"Once again, Ozeki has created a masterpiece. Her generous heart, remarkable imagination, and brilliant mind light up every page."

The First Law of Thermodynamics (2021)
James Patrick Kelly
"A quintessntially protean writer...I continue to be regularly surprised by where he goes and what he's doing with his fiction."

Build Your House Around My Body (2021)
Violet Kupersmith
"This impressively constructed weave of stories, haunted by the ghosts of history and family, is gorgeous, completely original, and quite disturbing—usually all at the same time. Beware! This book might swallow you up."

Gold Diggers (2021)
Sanjena Sathian
"Is the American dream about hard work and sacrifice or is it about the lure of the Gold Rush, of quick riches there for the taking? Greed, regret and love are all at work here in Sathian’s completely original, utterly absorbing, complex and confident debut novel. A bravura performance from an exciting new voice."

Burning Girls and Other Stories (2021)
Veronica Schanoes
"This book is for those who like their fairy tales strong and dark. A beautifully written, sharply imaginative collection--stories of vengeance and fury, stories of wit and grit. Many pleasures and many surprises and highly recommended."

Brood (2021)
Jackie Polzin
"This is the most wonderful book! Acutely observed and flawlessly conveyed. Completely original, full of surprise, humor, grief, and wisdom and just the right amount of chickens. I am hugely on board with Brood."

The Charmed Wife (2021)
Olga Grushin
"With the publication of her first novel, Grushin instantly became one of my favorite writers. She touches the borders of myth and fairytale in everything she does, but never so explicitly as here, in this dark and dreamy retelling of Cinderella. Inside the plot, magic comes and goes. But inside the reader, it's all magic, all of us happily caught in Grushin's hypnotic spell."

With or Without You (2020)
Caroline Leavitt
"A wonderful novel about life as mess and disappointment, life as catastrophe and regret, but also life as transformation and resilience. Leavitt’s characters are great company, and watching them find a way forward in their suddenly altered world is a joy. Deeply engaging, tense but hopeful, and completely recommended."

Betty (2020)
Tiffany McDaniel
"Tiffany McDaniel has given us a vivid and haunting portrait of the writer as a young girl. Betty Carpenter survives the brutality of her childhood through her father's stories and his steadfast belief in her own. A novel of tragedy and trouble, poetry and power, not a story you will soon forget."

Lake Life (2020)
David James Poissant
"A beautiful story about family and especially about the paradox of adult children. Vividly imagined and carefully rendered, Lake Life is both generous and unflinching. I loved every member of this functionally dysfunctional cast."

Sansei and Sensibility (2020)
Karen Tei Yamashita
"This capacious collection is witty, sharp—funny at times, angry at times—always amazing, and never, never dull. I think Jane Austen would be surprised, but delighted. I surely am."

The Mother Code (2020)
Carole Stivers
"Carole Stivers is far from the first to wonder if motherhood can be scientifically replicated, but this is a thoughtful and thought-provoking addition to that meditation. An end-of-times tale that focuses less on what has been lost and more on what and who might be saved (and how). Stivers' wonderful story settles right on the line between human and machine, as blame and threat and rescue and love shift from character to character in surprising and powerful ways."

The Jane Austen Society (2020)
Natalie Jenner
"Few things draw disparate people together so quickly as discovering they love the same writers. Few writers cement such friendships as deeply as Austen does. I believe that the readers of Jenner's book will fall in love with the readers inside Jenner's book, all of us thinking and dreaming of Austen the whole while. What could be better? Nothing, that's what! A wonderful book, a wonderful read."

My Dark Vanessa (2020)
Kate Elizabeth Russell
"A truly remarkable debut, deeply thoughtful, deeply emotional, compelling and disturbing in equal measure. I raced to the ending and then found the book lingered with me long after that last page. It is lingering still."

Miss Austen (2020)
Gill Hornby
"Hornby’s gift to the world of Austen lovers is to return to Cassandra her rightful recognition as Jane’s most intimate and sustaining relationship, her greatest love. This is a deeply imagined and deeply moving novel. Reading it made me happy and weepy in equally copious amounts."

The Last Train to London (2019)
Meg Waite Clayton
"The Last Train to London is painful and beautiful, absorbing and unforgettable. A wonderful tribute to courage, to a remarkable woman, to the ones she saved, and the ones she could not. Recommend this book to anyone who thinks no single person can make a difference."

Hollow Kingdom (2019)
(Hollow Kingdom, book 1)
Kira Jane Buxton
"A plucky hero, a boisterous tale, startling prose and eerie events combine for a thoroughly enjoyable account of the end of the world as we know it. The Secret Life of Pets meets The Walking Dead."

Mother Country (2019)
Irina Reyn
"In any given family, the relationship between mother and child is complicated and challenging. At any given moment, a sizable percentage of the world's people are being forced to live through a war they didn't start and are unlikely to benefit from. Put those two things together, and you have the backdrop for this powerful, painstakingly imagined, timely and timeless novel."

In the Night Wood (2018)
Dale Bailey
"Every story is a ghost story, Bailey tells us. But not every ghost story is as haunting as this one. Nor as luminously written, literate, absorbing, transporting, and all-around excellent. I couldn’t put it down."

The Removes (2018)
Tatjana Soli
"Soli's new novel focuses on General Custer, the frontier, and the Indian wars. This is a western, but a modern one - beautifully detailed and carefully researched, completely free of the questionable mythologies that sometimes characterize the genre. A vivid, sometimes harrowing, but always riveting read."

The Evolution of Love (2018)
Lucy Jane Bledsoe
"Given our current seemingly endless string of natural disasters, this is a timely story and a compelling one. I Highly Recommend."

Pride and Prometheus (2018)
John Kessel
"As a book-loving girl myself, I’ve worried for years over the treatment and fate of Lizzy Bennet’s sister Mary in Pride and Prejudice. Finally! Along comes John Kessel to give her this splendid book of her own, her own quick mind and her own stout heart. Mary’s adventure occurs in just that place where Austen meets Shelley and, in the end, more will be required of her than of any Austen heroine before her. Dark and gripping and tense and beautiful."

All the Names They Used for God (2018)
Anjali Sachdeva
"A new and important voice has arrived on the scene."

The Immortalists (2018)
Chloe Benjamin
"For someone who loves stories about brothers and sisters, as I do, The Immortalists is about as good as it gets. It's amazing how good this book is."

Other Arms Reach Out to Me (2017)
Michael Bishop
"Intelligence, invention, surprise, wit, and wisdom. Michael Bishop's work is a master class in all of the above. This collection is a joy."

Everfair (2016)
(Everfair, book 1)
Nisi Shawl
"A book with gorgeous sweep, spanning years and continents, loves and hates, histories and fantasies...Everfair is sometimes sad, often luminous, and always original. A wonderful achievement."

My Last Continent (2016)
Midge Raymond
"A love story about the Antarctic and the creatures, humans included, who are at home there. Half adventure, half elegy, and wholly recommended."

A Hundred Thousand Worlds (2016)
Bob Proehl
"A work of wit and heart."

Still Time (2015)
Jean Hegland
"A moving, beautiful story about what persists and what doesn't, about what can be repaired and what can't."

Never at Home (2011)
L Timmel Duchamp
"Strange and heady, original and surprising."

Total Oblivion, More or Less (2009)
Alan DeNiro
"Chock-a-block with adventure, suspense and surprise. Apocalyptic family values, too! Recommended to all."

Dragon House (2009)
John Shors
"The street children are the heart of this touching book: their talents, friendships, and perils keep you turning the pages."

To Catch the Lightning (2008)
Alan Cheuse
"To Catch the Lightning is a story of loss - of choices made and prices paid, of the future coming fast and the past disappearing faster. Cheuse's narrative is refracted through multiple voices, each distinct, but each containing its own poetic precision. A wonderful, wonderful book of quiet power and great beauty."

Good-Bye and Amen (2008)
Beth Gutcheon
"A tour de force of structure and voice. Gutcheon had me at the first sentence and I didn't put the book down until I had finished it. Marvelous and memorable."

Love Walked in (2005)
(Love Walked in, book 1)
Marisa de los Santos
"A touching, triumphant story of the power and variety and responsibility of love. A joy to read, filled with characters you wish you knew in real life. Love Walked In is every bit as engaging as the classic movies Marisa de los Santos lovingly invokes."

A Sudden Country (2005)
Karen Fisher
"A gorgeous and mesmerizing story of a journey. Fisher provides both the historical context and the perfect detail with equal grace. She deals in big emotions, big adventures, big landscapes, and human-size people. This is a remarkable, remarkable book and I loved every word of it."

Magic for Beginners (2005)
Kelly Link
"A set of stories that are by turns dazzling, funny, scary, and sexy, but only when they are not all of those at once. Kelly Link has strangeness, charm and spin to spare. Writers better than this don't happen."

A Scattering of Jades (2002)
Alexander C Irvine
"A Scattering of Jades is one wild ride."

Carter Beats the Devil (2001)
Glen David Gold
"Gold has conjured one dead president, one blood-sucking dog, a ship full of pirates, and a cabal of Secret Service agents. it all makes for a wild and heartstopping show. Beautifully written, packed with fun, scares, and surprises. And magic in every word."

American Fuji (2001)
Sara Backer
"...deft and delightful."

Wild Life (2000)
Molly Gloss
"Heady cerebral satisfactions, gorgeous prose, and page-turning adventure."

Mockingbird (1998)
Sean Stewart
"Mockingbird manages to be witty, wicked, and wise. Wonderful!"

Neat Sheets (1996)
James Tiptree Jr
"The Poetry has a heightened sense of emotionalism, a clear message of isolationism and loneliness, a disappointed romanticism, and the occasional lash of a sharp wit."

Standard Candles (1996)
Jack McDevitt
"Long after you've closed this book,the stories will stay in your mind and in your heart."

More recommendations

Books containing stories by Karen Joy Fowler

Sense of Wonder (2023)
A Century of Science Fiction
edited by
Leigh Ronald Grossman

The Big Book of Modern Fantasy (2020)
edited by
Ann Vandermeer and Jeffrey S VanderMeer

Cursed (2020)
edited by
Paul Kane and Marie O'Regan

More books

Awards

	1986 Philip K Dick Award for Best Book (nominee) : Artificial Things
	1987 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Author
	1987 Nebula Award for Best Short Story (nominee) : The Faithful Companion at Forty
	1988 Hugo Award for Best Short Story (nominee) : The Faithful Companion at Forty
	1990 Nebula Award for Best Short Story (nominee) : Lieserl
	1991 Nebula Award for Best Novelette (nominee) : Black Glass [short story]
	1991 Nebula Award for Best Short Story (nominee) : The Dark
	1992 Nebula Award for Best Novel (nominee) : Sarah Canary
	1997 Nebula Award for Best Short Story (nominee) : The Elizabeth Complex
	1998 Hugo Award for Best Short Story (nominee) : Standing Room Only
	1998 Nebula Award for Best Short Story (nominee) : Standing Room Only
	1999 World Fantasy Award for Best Collection : Black Glass
	2002 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction for Best Book (nominee) : Sister Noon
	2005 Richard and Judy Award for Best Book (nominee) : The Jane Austen Book Club
	2013 Nebula Award for Best Novel (nominee) : We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
	2014 Booker Prize for Best Novel (nominee) : We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
	2014 John W Campbell Memorial Award for Best Novel (nominee) : We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
	2014 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction for Best Book : We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
	2022 Booker Prize for Best Novel (nominee) : Booth

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