Joanna Russ (born February 22, 1937) is an American writer, academic and feminist. She is the author of a number of works of science fiction, fantasy and feminist literary criticism and is best known for The Female Man, a novel combining utopian fiction and satire. It used the device of parallel worlds as a form of a mediation of the ways that different societies might produce very different versions of the same person, and how all might interact and respond to sexism.
Biography
Russ was born at , New York City[1] to teachers Evarett I. and Bertha Zinner Russis[2],
Has been creating works of fiction since a very early age. Over the following years the young Russ filled countless notebooks with stories, poems, comics and illustrations, often hand-binding the material with thread.[2]
Russ graduated from Cornell University, where she studied with Vladimir Nabokov[3], in 1967 and received her MFA from the Yale Drama School in 1970. After teaching at several universities, including Cornell, she became a full professor at the University of Washington.[4]
Russ came to be noticed in the science fiction world in the late 1960s, a time when women were starting to enter the field in larger numbers,[5] in particular for her award-nominated novel Picnic on Paradise.[6] Much of her earliest published work was short horror fiction. It has been said that SF was a field dominated by male authors, often thought to be writing for a predominantly male audience.[5] Russ, who is openly lesbian,[7] was one of the most outspoken authors to challenge male dominance of the field, and is generally regarded as one of the leading feminist science fiction scholars and writers.[5]
Along with her work as a writer of prose fiction, Russ has also been a playwright, essayist, and author of nonfiction works such as the essay collection Magic Mommas, Trembling Sisters, Puritans & Perverts and the book-length study of modern feminism, What Are We Fighting For? For nearly fifteen years, she was an influential (if intermittent) review columnist for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.[8]
Russ won a 1972 Nebula Award for her short story "When It Changed" and a 1983 Hugo Award for her novella "Souls." Her fiction has been nominated for nine Nebula and three Hugo Awards, and her genre-related scholarly work was recognized with a Pilgrim Award in 1988.[6]
In recent years she has published little, largely due to chronic back pain and chronic fatigue syndrome.[9]
Selected bibliography
- Novels
- Short fiction collections
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- Children's fiction
- Kittatinny: A Tale of Magic (1978)
- Nonfiction collections
- Speculations on the Subjunctivity of Science Fiction (1973)
- Somebody's Trying to Kill Me and I Think It's My Husband: The Modern Gothic (1973)
- How to Suppress Women's Writing (1983)
- Magic Mammas, Trembling Sisters, Puritans and Perverts: Feminist Essays (1985)
- To Write Like a Woman (1996)
- What Are We Fighting For?: Sex, Race, Class, and the Future of Feminism (1997)
- The Country You Have Never Seen (2007)
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References
- ^ Russ, Joanna (1989), "The Dirty Little Girl", in Salmonson, Jessica Amanda, What Did Miss Darrington See?: An Anthology of Feminist Supernatural Fiction, Feminist Press, p. 236, ISBN 1558610065
- ^ Browne Popular Culture Library Manuscript Collection (forthcoming) [1]
- ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=NdNid3uKCnkC&dq=%22Joanna+Russ%22+nabokov&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=maOQB5JovO&sig=VJT-o2cK-H7LZvV204B79vaZ1L8&hl=en&ei=soZjSsPHOoiplAfTz9j9BQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7
- ^ http://nwda-db.wsulibs.wsu.edu/findaid/ark:/80444/xv52000
- ^ a b c Bacon-Smith, Camille (2000), Science Fiction Culture, University of Pennsylvania Press, p. 95, ISBN 0812215303
- ^ a b http://www.locusmag.com/SFAwards/Db/NomLit113.html#4482
- ^ Griffin, Gabriele (2002), Who's Who in Lesbian and Gay Writing, Routledge, p. 172, ISBN 0415159849
- ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=Aycq0Otnu18C&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19&dq=%22Joanna+Russ%22+F%26SF&source=bl&ots=ctHnM5MoQZ&sig=NQJ3xyfNQbTQk_xGYblQ_m3NoeY&hl=en&ei=qYljStKhNsmGlAfhp4yvDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1
- ^ "Feminist SFF & Utopia: Reviews: Joanna Russ". http://feministsf.org/reviews/russ.j.html. Retrieved 2006-09-25.
Further reading
- Cortiel, Jeanne. Demand My Writing: Joanna Russ/Feminism/Science Fiction. Science Fiction Texts and Studies. Liverpool, England: Liverpool UP, 1999. ISBN 0-85323-614-3
- ---. "Determinate Politics of Indeterminacy: Reading Joanna Russ's Recent Work in Light of Her Early Short Fiction." Future Females, the Next Generation: New Voices and Velocities in Feminist Science Fiction Criticism. Eds. Marleen S. Barr, et al. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000. 219-36. ISBN 0-8476-9126-8
- ---. Joanna Russ. Significant Contemporary Feminists: A Biocritical Sourcebook. Ed. Jenifer Scanlon. New York, Westport, CT, and London: Greenwood, 1999.
- Delany, Samuel R. "Orders of Chaos: The Science Fiction of Joanna Russ." Women Worldwalkers: New Dimensions of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Ed. Jane B. Weedman. Lubbock: Texas Tech P, 1985. 95-123.
- Delany, Samuel R. "Introduction." Joanna Russ. We Who Are About To. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2005. v-xv. ISBN 0-8195-6759-0
- Hacker, Marilyn. "Science Fiction and Feminism: The Work of Joanna Russ." Chrysalis 4 (1977): 67-79.
- Holt, Marilyn J. "Joanna Russ, 1937." Science Fiction Writers: Critical Studies of the Major Authors from the Early Nineteenth Century to the Present Day. Ed. Everett Franklin Bleiler. New York: Scribner's, 1982. 483-90.
- Law, Richard G. "Joanna Russ and The "Literature of Exhaustion"." Extrapolation 25 (1984): 146-56.
- Malmgren, Carl. "Meta-Sf: The Examples of Dick, Leguin, and Russ." Extrapolation: A Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy 43.1 (2002): 22.
External links
| Persondata |
| NAME |
Russ, Joanna |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES |
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| SHORT DESCRIPTION |
Feminist science fiction writer and critic. |
| DATE OF BIRTH |
February 22, 1937 (1937-02-22) (age 72) |
| PLACE OF BIRTH |
United States |
| DATE OF DEATH |
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| PLACE OF DEATH |
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