Ann Leckie Biography, Age, Education, Novels, Husband, Imperial Radch trilogy, author of science fiction and fantasy

Ann Leckie Biography

Ann Leckie is an American author of science fiction and fantasy. She is best known for her 2013 debut novel Ancillary Justice won the 2014 Hugo Award for Best Novel as well as the Nebula Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the BSFA Award. The sequels Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy each won the Locus Award and were nominated for the Nebula Award.

Ann Leckie Age

Ann Leckie was born on March 2, 1966, in Toledo, Ohio United States. Ann Leckie is 53 years old as of 2019.

Ann Leckie Education

Ann Leckie obtained her degree in music from Washington University in 1989. She has since held various jobs, including as a waitress, a receptionist, a land surveyor, and a recording engineer. She is married to David Harre, with whom she has a son and daughter, and lives with her family in St. Louis, Missouri.

Ann Leckie Husband

lives in StLouis, Missouri, with her husband, children, and cats. She’s currently the Secretary for the SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America).

Ann Leckie author of science fiction and fantasy

Ann Leckie grown up as a science fiction fan in St. Louis, Missouri, Leckie’s attempts in her youth to get her science fiction works published were unsuccessful. One of her few publications from that time was an unattributed bodice-ripper in True Confessions. After giving birth to her children in 1996 and 2000, boredom as a stay-at-home mother motivated her to sketch a first draft of what would become Ancillary Justice for National Novel Writing Month 2002. In 2005, Leckie attended the Clarion West Writers Workshop, studying under Octavia Butler. After that, she wrote Ancillary Justice over a period of six years; it was picked up by Orbit in 2012.

She has published numerous short stories, including in Subterranean Magazine, Strange Horizons and Realms of Fantasy. Her short stories have been selected for inclusion in year’s best collections, such as The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, edited by Rich Horton. She edited the science fiction and fantasy online magazine Giganotosaurus from 2010 to 2013 and is assistant editor of the PodCastle podcast. She served as the secretary of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America from 2012 to 2013.

Ann Leckie Imperial Radch trilogy

Ann Leckie has debut novel of Ancillary Justice, as the first book of “Imperial Radch” space opera trilogy, was published to critical acclaim in October 2013 and obtained all principal English-language science fiction awards. It follows Breq, the sole survivor of a starship destroyed by treachery, and the vessel of that ship’s artificial consciousness, as she attempts to revenge herself on the ruler of her civilization. The sequel, Ancillary Sword, was published in October 2014, and the conclusion, Ancillary Mercy, was published in October 2015. “Night’s Slow Poison” (2014) and “She Commands Me and I Obey” (2014) are short stories set in the same universe.

Ann Leckie novels

In 2015 Ann Leckie published books like Orbit Books purchased two additional novels from Leckie. The first, Provenance, was published on 3 October 2017 and is set in the Imperial Radch universe. The second was to have been an unrelated science fiction novel. In April 2018, Orbit announced that Leckie’s first fantasy novel, The Raven Tower, would be published in early 2019.

Foreigner by C. J. Cherryh
The City and the City by China Miéville
The Jargoon Pard by Andre Norton
Nice fox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee
Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

Ann Leckie Bibliography

• Ancillary Justice, Orbit, 1 October 2013, ISBN 978-0-356-50240-3
• Ancillary Sword, Orbit, 7 October 2014, ISBN 978-0-356-50241-0
• Ancillary Mercy, Orbit, 6 October 2015, ISBN 978-0-356-50242-7
• Ann Leckie Short fiction
• “Hesperia and Glory,” Subterranean Magazine 4, 2006 (reprinted in Science Fiction: The Best of the Year 2007 Edition, edited by Rich Horton)
• “Marsh Gods,” Strange Horizons, July 7, 2008
• “The God of Au,” Helix #8, (reprinted in The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2009 edited by Rich Horton)
• “The Endangered Camp,” Clockwork Phoenix 2, 2009 (reprinted in The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2010, edited by Rich Horton)
• “The Unknown God,” Realms of Fantasy, February 2010
• “Beloved of the Sun,” Beneath Ceaseless Skies, October 21, 2010
• “Maiden, Mother, Crone,” Realms of Fantasy, December 2010
• “Another Word for World,” Future Visions: Original Science Fiction Stories Inspired by Microsoft, 2015

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Ann Leckie Youtube Interview

Describe your latest book.

Ann Leckie: My latest book, Provenance, is set in a distant star system and is about Ingray, a young woman who wants needs to impress her powerful mother and outdo her very competitive brother. She plans to do this by springing a notorious thief from prison, one who can tell her the location of some, particularly valuable artifacts. Provenance is set in the same universe as the Ancillary trilogy, but it’s not set in Radch space, and it doesn’t deal with the same characters. It’s standalone.

In this society, the possession of such artifacts called “vestiges” is extremely important, a way of staking a claim to family and personal history, and Ingray wants to hand these vestiges over to her mother, to use as leverage against one of her political opponents. But almost immediately things start to go wrong: getting the thief out of prison cost Ingray everything she had and now she’s flat broke; the person she’s sprung from prison claims not to be the person Ingray was after; and she seems to have caught the attention of the eccentric — and tenacious — alien Geck Ambassador to the Presger.

When did you know you were a writer?

 Ann Leckie: I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was a child. In fact, my family expected that I would be a writer. I tried off and on for years, but for the most part, I assumed I just wasn’t talented enough, didn’t have good ideas, and couldn’t do it. I was in my late 30s when I seriously decided to try to write. I wrote and submitted things for about three years before I sold something. All that time, when people asked me what I did, I would say, “Oh, I’m a stay-at-home mom,” because “I’m a writer” just felt presumptuous like I was claiming something I wasn’t entitled to.

Then I attended Clarion West, and there’s something amazing about spending six weeks with people who not only take writing seriously and talk about writing a lot, but who take you seriously as a writer we were all writers, we were all there to write, to read, and to discuss each other’s writing. Sometime after I got home from that, someone asked me what I did and I said, “I’m a writer.” And I was astonished that those words had come out of my mouth. But the experience of those weeks of people interacting with me as though I were, in fact, a writer made a huge difference.

What does your writing workspace look like?

 Ann Leckie: I write in a few different places, depending on where I am in the process and what I need to be working on. I have an office in the basement that my husband built for me, and I do a lot of work there. It has a comfortable chair and an ergonomic keyboard, and I have two monitors — the best for editing. The wall on one side of my desk is perfect for post-its with various notes about whatever it is I’m working on. Oh, and I have an electric kettle just behind the desk.

Those are really the essentials: a desk, a comfy chair, tools to write with, and tea. Well, being able to cut off distractions is important. I also sometimes take a laptop to a café and work there, particularly when I’m feeling too distracted by the Internet, or by things that need doing at home. (There are always things that need doing at home.)

Introduce one other author you think people should read, and suggest a good book with which to start.

 Ann Leckie: There are so many fabulous writers out there, any number of whom deserve more attention than they get. I feel like C. J. Cherryh is a major writer in the field, and her name doesn’t come up as much as it should when people are talking about works that are important to the history of science fiction, or that people should take a look at. There are several places to start. Downbelow Station or Cyteen, for instance, provide good intros to the many fabulous books set in her Union-Alliance. But my personal favorite is Foreigner, which stands alone quite well, but is also the first in an excellent series.

What’s your biggest grammatical pet peeve?

 Ann Leckie: People lecturing about grammatical errors that aren’t actually errors! There’s nothing ungrammatical about the singular “they,” and there’s nothing wrong with splitting infinitives or ending sentences with prepositions. There’s nothing wrong with using the passive voice — it’s a perfectly legitimate construction and sometimes exactly the right way to say something. And nine times out of 10, the examples of “passive voice” that peevers give aren’t in the passive voice, to begin with! So I guess my biggest grammatical pet peeve is people who are obnoxious about their grammatical pet peeves.

Name a guilty pleasure you partake in regularly.

 Ann Leckie: I guess I don’t believe in guilty pleasures. I feel like, if I like something, I like it. Why should I feel guilty or ashamed of it? Because some people sneer at what I like or look down on it? I think life’s too short to worry about whether or not I’m supposed to like things, and at my age, I figure if someone is going to think less of me for my taste in movies or food or whatever, then I don’t need to worry too much about them — I’ll spend my energy and thoughts on my actual friends.

I also find it interesting how many “guilty pleasures” are, say, things that kids like, or foods that poor people eat (unless, of course, it’s that recently rediscovered “hearty and authentic” poverty food that’s taking hip cuisine by storm). Or things that women like! Because everyone knows romance novels are trashy, right? Except, not. Romance novels are like any other kind of novel 90% of them are crap, and some of the remaining 10% is awesome. Same for anything else, not just novels. Once I noticed that pattern — of just what kinds of things were being classed as “guilty pleasures” I stopped calling low-prestige indulgences “guilty pleasures.” They’re just pleasures, straight up.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

 Ann Leckie: To keep going. “The published are persistent.” There are so many temptations to quit, so many reasons to not keep going, so many voices telling you it’s not worth it and you’re wasting your time. I can’t promise that everyone who continues writing will hit it big, but I can tell you that determined persistence will get you pretty far. It doesn’t seem like it sometimes, of course, but no matter how far you go, you’re going step by step. Each step seems small, but it’s the keeping on stepping that gets you there. Which leads to a related piece of good advice I’ve gotten: don’t compare your progress to others you’ll certainly find someone farther down your desired path than you are and then you’ll feel inadequate.

The Five Awesome Books List

 Ann Leckie: Book lists are hard! There are so many wonderful books and only so many slots on a list. And choosing a theme doesn’t necessarily narrow things down satisfactorily, because any choice will end up excluding a really cool book that you really wish you could put on the list. (Or that I wish I could put on the list, anyway.) And then anyone reading the list is bound to say, “The ten best space operas with sentient turtles? And Lee and Miller’s Agent of Change isn’t on the list? BOGUS!”