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Press Kit
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About Aliette

Aliette de Bodard was born in the US, but grew up in France (in the gorgeous city of Paris, to be precise). Although French is her mother tongue, her parents insisted early on that she learn to speak English.

She first discovered SF through the works of Isaac Asimov, and then moved to fantasy when she happened upon a copy of Ursula Le Guin’s “The Earthsea Quartet”, which today remains one of her favorite books in the genre. She decided to write when her family moved to London for a few years: she found a copy of Orson Scott Card’s “How to Write Fantasy and Science Fiction”, which first made her realise that she could try her hand at writing.

She is an alumni of Saint-Louis de Gonzague (Paris), Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle (London), and studied in Lycée Louis le Grand (Paris), in a classe préparatoire, a prep course for the competitive exams which would enable her to enter an engineering school. After two years of intensive classes, Aliette was admitted into Ecole Polytechnique, one of France’s top engineering schools. During her class préparatoire, she started writing regularly, which enabled her to find a distraction from science. She completed two novels during her studies.

Halfway through Ecole Polytechnique, she started writing short stories instead of novels, in order to improve faster–and went on writing those after she graduated.

In June 2006, Aliette attended Orson Scott Card’s Literary Bootcamp, which enabled her to sharpen her skills, as well as come back with a wealth of information about the craft and the business of writing.

Her writing took off after she got picked out of Interzone‘s slushpile by the inimitable Jetse de Vries; this marked the beginning of a growing number of sales, out of which several were made to semi-professional or professional markets. She won Writers of the Future in 2007, and was able to join SFWA as an Active Member in 2008, and became a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2009, narrowly losing to David Anthony Durham.

She has won three Nebula Awards, an Ignyte Award, a Locus Award, a European Science Fiction Association Achievement Award and four British Science Fiction Association Awards, in addition to being a finalist for the Hugo and Sturgeon Award, and on the Tiptree Award Honour List. She is a current Hugo, Ignyte and Locus award finalist.

She is the author of the Hugo-award-nominated series The Universe of Xuya, set in a galactic empire of Vietnamese inspiration, where scholars administrate planets and sentient spaceships are parts of families, the latest book of which is Seven of Infinities (Subterranean Press, Locus Award finalist).

She also wrote the Dominion of the Fallen series, set in an alternate Paris devastated by a magical war, which comprises The House of Shattered Wings (Gollancz/Ace, 2015 British Science Fiction Award and Locus Award finalist), The House of Binding Thorns (Gollancz/Ace, 2017 European Science Fiction Association Achievement Award, Locus Award finalist), The House of Sundering Flames (Gollancz/JABberwocky Literary Agency, Locus Award finalist), and Of Dragons, Feasts and Murders (JABberwocky Literary Agency, Locus Award finalist).

Her latest book Fireheart Tiger (Tor.com) is a sapphic romantic fantasy set in a universe inspired by precolonial Vietnam.

Aliette lives in Paris with her family, in a flat with more computers than she really needs, and a bunch of Lovecraftian plants that are steadily taking over the living room.

Awards

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Original Picture credits
Pigeon and Bridge: Vincent Boiteau
(All pictures distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License)