Charlie Jane Anders

Charlie Jane Anders (born July 24, 1969) is an American writer. She has written several novels as well as shorter fiction, published magazines and websites, and hosted podcasts. In 2005, she received the Lambda Literary Award for work in the transgender category, and in 2009, the Emperor Norton Award. Her 2011 novelette Six Months, Three Days won the 2012 Hugo and was a finalist for the Nebula and Theodore Sturgeon Awards. Her 2016 novel All the Birds in the Sky was listed No. 5 on Time magazine's "Top 10 Novels" of 2016, won the 2017 Nebula Award for Best Novel, the 2017 Crawford Award, and the 2017 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel; it was also a finalist for the 2017 Hugo Award for Best Novel.

Anders was born near Storrs, Connecticut, and grew up in nearby Mansfield. She studied English and Asian Literature at the University of Cambridge, and studied in China before moving to San Francisco in the early 2000s. Anders co-founded Other magazine, the "magazine of pop culture and politics for the new outcasts", with Annalee Newitz, and served as publisher during the magazine's run from 2002 to 2007. In 2006, she was a co-founding editor of the science fiction blog io9, a position she left in April 2016 to focus on novel writing.

Anders has had science fiction published in Tor.com, Strange Horizons, and Flurb. Additional (non-science-fiction) literary work has been published in McSweeney's and Zyzzyva.Anders's work has appeared in Salon, The Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Mother Jones, and the San Francisco Chronicle. She has had stories and essays in anthologies such as Sex For America: Politically Inspired Erotica, The McSweeney's Joke Book of Book Jokes, and That's Revolting!: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation.

Her first novel, Choir Boy, appeared in 2005 from Soft Skull Press; a young adult story about a boy transitioning gender in order to sing. In 2014, Tor Books acquired two novels from Anders. All the Birds in the Sky was published in 2016 and The City in the Middle of the Night was published 2019.

Unstoppable trilogy

Tor Teen acquired Unstoppable, a young adult trilogy from Anders in 2017. The first novel, Victories Greater Than Death, was published in 2021, and the second, Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak, in 2022. The third novel, Promises Stronger Than Darkness, was published in 2023.

Other work

In addition to her work as an author and publisher, Anders is a longtime event organizer. She organized a "ballerina pie fight" in 2005 for Other magazine; co-organized the Cross-Gender Caravan, a national transgender and genderqueer author tour; and a Bookstore and Chocolate Crawl in San Francisco. She emcees "Writers with Drinks", an award-winning San Francisco-based monthly reading series begun in 2001 that features authors from a wide range of genres and has been noted for its "free-associative author introductions".

She has been a juror for the James Tiptree Jr. Award and for the Lambda Literary Award. She formerly published the satirical website godhatesfigs.com which was featured by The Sunday Times as website of the week.

A television adaptation of Anders' Six Months, Three Days was being prepared for NBC in 2013, with the script written by Eric Garcia.

In March 2018, with her partner and co-host Annalee Newitz, Anders launched the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct, which "explor[es] the meaning of science fiction, and how it's relevant to real-life science and society." The podcast won the Hugo Award for Best Fancast in 2019, 2020 and 2022.

Anders co-created the Marvel Comics character Shela Sexton, also known as Escapade, a trans mutant super hero. The character debuted in Marvel's Voices: Pride #1 in June 2022.

Anders participated in the 2018 BookCon conference in New York City. She was Professional Guest of Honor at the 2019 WisCon.

• 2005 Best of the Bay Award for Writers with Drinks
• 2006 Best of the Bay Award for Writers with Drinks
• 2006 Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction finalist, for Choir Boy
• 2006 Lambda Literary Award, for Choir Boy
• 2011 Hugo, Nebula, and Theodore Sturgeon Award nominations for Six Months, Three Days.
• 2012 Hugo Award for Six Months, Three Days
• 2017 Nebula Award for All the Birds in the Sky
• 2017 IAFA William L. Crawford Fantasy Award for All the Birds in the Sky
• 2017 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel for All the Birds in the Sky
• 2018 Theodore Sturgeon Award for Don't Press Charges and I Won't Sue
• 2019 Hugo Award for Best Fancast for Our Opinions Are Correct (shared with Annalee Newitz)
• 2020 Arthur C. Clarke Award nomination for The City in the Middle of the Night
• 2020 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel for The City in the Middle of the Night.
• 2020 Locus Award for Best Short Story for "The Bookstore at the End of America"
• 2022 Hugo Award, Best Related Work for Never Say You Can’t Survive
• 2022 Hugo Award for Best Fancast for Our Opinions Are Correct (shared with Annalee Newitz)
• 2023 Locus Award for Best Young Adult Novel for Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak

Novels

• —— (2005). Choir Boy. Soft Skull Press. ISBN 978-1932360813.
• —— (2016). All the Birds in the Sky. Tor Books. ISBN 978-0765379948.
• —— (2019). The City in the Middle of the Night. Tor Books. ISBN 978-0765379962.
• Unstoppable:
  • —— (2021). Victories Greater Than Death. Tor Teen. ISBN 978-1250317315.
  • —— (2022). Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak. Tor Teen. ISBN 978-1250317391.
  • —— (2023). Promises Stronger Than Darkness. Tor Teen. ISBN 978-1250317506.

Short story collections

• —— (2017). Six Months, Three Days, Five Others. Tor.com. ISBN 978-0765394897.
• —— (2021). Even Greater Mistakes. Tor Books. ISBN 978-1250766502.

Short fiction

Non-fiction

• Anders, Charles (2002). The Lazy Crossdresser. California: Greenery Press. ISBN 978-1-890159-37-5.
• She's Such a Geek: Women Write About Science, Technology, and Other Nerdy Stuff. With Annalee Newitz. California: Seal Press. 2006. ISBN 978-1-58005-190-3.{{cite book}}:CS1 maint: others (link)
• Never Say You Can't Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times By Making Up Stories. New York: Tordotcom. 2021. ISBN 9781250800015.

Interviews

• Sirius, R.U. (January 31, 2007). "Girls Are Geeks, Too". 10 Zen Monkeys. Retrieved April 16, 2015.

Critical studies and reviews of Anders' work

• "Choir Boy: Charlie Anders". Softskull.com. Softskull Press. Archived from the original on October 19, 2012. Retrieved January 6, 2017.
• Woyke, Elizabeth. "Other". The New York Review of Magazines. Archived from the original on February 23, 2015. Retrieved April 16, 2015.