Sarah Pinsker

Pinsker was born in New York and lived in several places of the United States including Illinois and Texas.[4] When she was 14, her family settled in Toronto, Canada.[4] She returned to the US to attend college.[4] She currently lives in Baltimore, Maryland, where she has managed grants for a nonprofit. In addition to writing fiction she is a singer/songwriter with the band Stalking Horses[5] and has had multiple albums released through independent labels.[6] She also volunteers as director at large for the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) and hosts the Baltimore Science Fiction Society's Dangerous Voices Variety Hour reading series.[7]

Pinsker says her writing is heavily influenced by the science fiction and literary fiction which filled her parents' home,[6] adding she is one of the rare authors who read "short stories as much as novels" when she was young.[5] Among her early influences as an author were the works of Ursula K. Le Guin[6] and Kate Wilhelm.[7] Later influences on her fiction include Octavia Butler, Karen Joy Fowler, Kij Johnson, and Kelly Link.[7]

Pinsker started out publishing her short fiction in magazines such as Asimov's Science Fiction, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, Daily Science Fiction, the Journal of Unlikely Cartography, and Fireside. Anthologies containing her stories include Long Hidden, How to Live on Other Planets, Queers Destroy Science Fiction,[8] and Whose Future is It?.[9] Among the collections of the "year's best" stories which include her stories are The Best Science Fiction of the Year Volume 2, Year's Best Weird Fiction Vol 2, Year's Best Young Adult Speculative Fiction 2015, The Year's Best YA Speculative Fiction and The Year's Best Military and Adventure Fiction 2015.[8]

In 2019, her debut novel A Song for a New Day was published. The novel follows the life of a musician in a future where pandemics and terrorism makes public events such as concerts illegal. The novel won the 2019 Nebula Award.[1]

Pinsker's fiction has been called "thoughtful, subtle",[10] "creepy"[11] and "dreamlike".[12] Speaking of her fiction, Pinsker says "It is a good time to be someone who has something to say about a group or a personal experience that hasn't been touched on before. Science fiction looks at the world through a slightly different lens, so it's fun to put that lens onto new experiences."[13]

Pinsker has been nominated nine times for the Nebula Award, winning in the categories of Best Novel[1] and Best Novelette.[3] She has also won the Philip K. Dick Award and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award along with being a four-time finalist for the Hugo and a finalist for the World Fantasy and Tiptree Awards.

• "In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind" (novelette in Strange Horizons, July 2013) won the 2014 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best short fiction[14] and was a finalist for the Nebula Award.
• "No Lonely Seafarer" (short story in Lightspeed, Sept. 2014) selected as an honorable mention for the 2014 Tiptree Award.
• "A Stretch of Highway Two Lanes Wide" (Short story in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March–April 2014) was a finalist for the 2015 Nebula Award.
• "Our Lady of the Open Road" (novelette in Asimov's Science Fiction, June 2015) won the 2016 Nebula Award, was on the shortlist for the Sturgeon Award, and placed third in the 2016 Asimov's Readers' Poll.
• "Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea" (novelette in Lightspeed, February 2016)[15] selected as a finalist for the 2016 Nebula Award.[16][17]
• "And Then There Were (N-One)", nominated for the 2017 Nebula Award for Best Novella[18] and the 2018 Hugo Award for Best Novella.[19]
• “The Court Magician” was nominated for the 2019 World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction.[20]
• Short story collection Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea won the 2019 Philip K. Dick Award.
• Debut novel A Song for a New Day received the 2019 Nebula Award for Best Novel.[21]

• Official website
• Sarah Pinsker at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database