Greer Ilene Gilman is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 author of fantasy

Fantasy

Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...

 stories.

Her stories are noted for their dense prose style, which is strongly focused on native English roots

Anglish

Anglo-Saxon linguistic purism is a kind of English linguistic purism, which favors words of native origin over those of foreign origin. In its mild form, it merely means using existing native words instead of foreign ones...

, sometimes reminiscent of Gerard Manley Hopkins

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. was an English poet, Roman Catholic convert, and Jesuit priest, whose posthumous 20th-century fame established him among the leading Victorian poets...

. Her characteristic themes are drawn from a mixture of North English and Scottish ballad

Ballad

A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...

s and seasonal rituals, which she uses to create a complex mythology centered around the seasons and constellations of her fictional world of Cloud.

Her novel Moonwise, in which two women travel in a world they have created, won the Crawford Award

Crawford Award

The IAFA William L. Crawford Fantasy Award is a literary award given to a writer whose first fantasy book was published during the preceding 18 months. It's one of several awards presented by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts , and is presented at the conference each...

 for 1991. Her collection of three stories, Cloud & Ashes: Three Winter's Tales won the Tiptree Award in 2009, and has been shortlisted for the Mythopoeic Award in 2010. Both are published by Small Beer Press

Small Beer Press

Small Beer Press is a publisher of fantasy and literary fiction, based in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was founded by Gavin Grant and Kelly Link in 2000 and publishes novels, collections, and anthologies. It also publishes the zine Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, chapbooks, the Peapod Classics...

. The novella "A Crowd of Bone" published in Trampoline: an anthology won the 2004 World Fantasy Awards. Her work has also been published in Salon Fantastique, The Faces of Fantasy, and Mythic Delirium. Her essay, "Girl, Implicated: The Child in the Labyrinth in the Fantastic" appeared in the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, vol.19 no. 2. Her chapter on "The Languages of the Fantastic" will appear in the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature.

External links

• Official site
• "A Crowd of Bone" by Greer Gilman, from the Trampoline anthology