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Suzette Haden Elgin
Suzette Haden Elgin -- science fiction writer, artist, and musician;
linguist; grandmother of ten -- was born in Missouri in 1936.
All sorts of things happened, and in the late 60s she found herself
widowed, re-married, and a graduate student in linguistics at
the University of California San Diego with five little kids at
home. Money for school was scarce; Suzette started writing science
fiction novels to pay her tuition. She survived grad school with
the distinction of being the only UCSD student ever to have to
write two dissertations (one on English, one on Navajo)
to get just one PhD. She went on to teach linguistics at San Diego
State University, retiring in 1980 to the Arkansas Ozarks, where
she can still be found.
Her first novel, The Communipaths, was published as half of an Ace
Double in 1970, starting her Coyote Jones series. That series [Furthest;
At the Seventh Level; Star-Anchored, Star-Angered] was
followed by The Ozark Trilogy (an SF Book Club Alternate selection,
re-issued in a single volume by the University of Arkansas Press in
March 2000), and then the Native Tongue series [Native Tongue;
The Judas Rose; Earthsong]. She constructed a language,
Láadan, for the Native Tongue books; a grammar and dictionary
were published by SF3 in 1988.
The second and third books in the Native Tongue trilogy, Judas
Rose and Earthsong, are reissued on October 15th by Feminist
Press, both with "scholarly afterwords." A homepage for the three books
(and for the Láadan Grammar) has been posted at Suzette's
SFWA website, with excerpts, FAQ, and discussion questions.
She has published a modest amount of shorter fiction, mostly short
stories on Ozark themes; her most recent story was "Soulfedge
Rock," in Scarborough and McCaffrey's anthology, Space
Opera, in 1996. She founded the Science Fiction Poetry Association,
and she publishes a bimonthly e-mail newsletter, Linguistics
& Science Fiction.
In her spare time she publishes nonfiction, including the Gentle
Art of Verbal Self-Defense series; her most recent nonfiction
book is The Language Imperative, just out in February 2000
from Perseus Books. She can be reached by e-mail to ocls@madisoncounty.net,
or from her Web locations:
Elsewhere in infinity plus:
Elsewhere on the www:
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