Nancy Kress (born January 20, 1948, Buffalo, New York, as Nancy Anne Koningisor) is one of the most decorated American science fiction writers of her generation, with six Nebula Awards, two Hugo Awards, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award across a career that began with her first published story in 1976. She is best known for hard science fiction grounded in genetic engineering, biotechnology, consciousness, and the social consequences of biological change.
Her breakthrough came with the 1991 novella Beggars in Spain, which won both the Hugo and Nebula for Best Novella in the same year. The novella was expanded into the 1993 novel Beggars in Spain and the trilogy that followed (Beggars and Choosers, Beggars Ride), which imagines a future society transformed by the genetic creation of the Sleepless, humans engineered to never need sleep, with higher IQ, accelerated productivity, and probable immortality, and the cascading economic and political crisis that follows. Her Probability trilogy (Probability Moon, Probability Sun, Probability Space) extends the same concerns to first contact and the physics of perception.
She has published more than thirty novels, four short story collections, and well over one hundred short stories. Her additional Nebula wins are for the 1986 Best Short Story Out of All Them Bright Stars, the 1998 Best Novelette The Flowers of Aulit Prison, and Best Novella wins for Fountain of Age (2007), After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall (2012), and Yesterday's Kin (2014). Her second Hugo came in 2009 for the Best Novella The Erdmann Nexus. Her most recent novel Observer was co-written with biologist and Biocentrism theorist Dr. Robert Lanza and explores the nature of consciousness and reality. Her historical fantasy The Queen's Witch, set in the court of Henry VIII, is scheduled for 2026.
Her three craft books are now standard reading in fiction writing programs: Beginnings, Middles and Ends (Writer's Digest, 1993); Dynamic Characters: How to Create Personalities That Keep Readers Captivated; and Characters, Emotion and Viewpoint: Techniques and Exercises for Crafting Dynamic Characters and Effective Viewpoints (Writer's Digest, 2005, part of the Write Great Fiction series). She writes a regular column for Writer's Digest and teaches at venues around the world including a visiting lectureship at the University of Leipzig, both Clarion and Clarion West, and the annual Taos Toolbox science fiction writing workshop. She lives in Seattle with her husband, writer Jack Skillingstead.
