Kelly Link

Kelly Link
Born	1969 Miami, Florida
Language	English
Nationality	United States
Alma mater	Columbia University
Genres	fantasy, horror
Spouse(s)	Gavin Grant
Children	Ursula Annabel Link Grant.
Influences M. R. James, Eudora Welty, Georgette Heyer, Theodore Sturgeon, Joan Aiken, Carol Emshwiller, Angela Carter

Kelly Link (born 1969) is an American editor and author of short stories. While some of her fiction falls more clearly within genre categories, many of her stories might be described as slipstream or magic realism: a combination of science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, and realism. Among other honors, she has won a Hugo award, three Nebula awards, and a World Fantasy Award for her fiction.

Link is a graduate of Columbia University in New York and the MFA program of UNC Greensboro. In 1995, she attended the Clarion East Writing Workshop.

Link and husband Gavin Grant manage Small Beer Press, based in Northampton, Massachusetts. The couple's imprint of Small Beer Press for intermediate readers is called Big Mouth House. They also co-edit St. Martin's Press's Year's Best Fantasy and Horror anthology series with Ellen Datlow. (The couple inherited the "fantasy" side from Terri Windling in 2004.) Link was also the slush reader for Sci Fiction, edited by Datlow.

Link taught at Lenoir-Rhyne College in Hickory, North Carolina, with the Visiting Writers Series for spring semester 2006. She has taught or visited at a number of schools and workshops including Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York; Brookdale Community College, Lincroft, New Jersey; the Imagination Workshop at Cleveland State University; New England Institute of Art & Communications, Brookline, Massachusetts; Clarion East at Michigan State University; Clarion West in Seattle, Washington; and Smith College, near her home in Northampton. She has participated in the Juniper Summer Writing Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst's MFA Program for Poets & Writers.

Awards

Books

• Stranger Things Happen: Salon Book of the Year, Village Voice favorite (available here [1] as a free download, under a Creative Commons license)
• Magic for Beginners: 2006 Locus Award for best short story collection (available here [2] as a free download, under a Creative Commons license)
• Pretty Monsters: 2008 World Fantasy and Locus Award finalist.

Selected stories (award winners)

• "Pretty Monsters": 2009 Locus Award for Best Novella
• "Magic for Beginners": 2005 Nebula Award for Best Novella
• "The Faery Handbag": 2005 Hugo and Nebula Award for Best Novelette, Locus Award winner
• "Stone Animals": 2005 Best American Short Stories
• "Louise's Ghost": 2001 Nebula Award for Best Novelette
• "The Specialist's Hat": 1999 World Fantasy Award
• "Travels with the Snow Queen": 1997 James Tiptree, Jr. Award

As author

• 4 Stories (chapbook), Small Beer Press, 2000
• Stranger Things Happen, Small Beer Press, 2001
• Magic For Beginners, Small Beer Press, 2005, reprinted by Harcourt, 2005
• Catskin: a swaddled zine, Jelly Ink Press, date unknown
• Pretty Monsters: Stories, Viking Juvenile, 2008

As editor

• Trampoline Small Beer Press, 2003
• The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror volume 17– (with Ellen Datlow and Gavin J. Grant) St. Martin's Press, 2004–

In addition, Link and Grant have edited a semiannual small press fantasy magazine: Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet (or LCRW) since 1997. An anthology, The Best of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, was published by Del Rey Books in 2007.

External links

• Kelly Link official website
• Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet
• Kelly Link at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Kelly Link's awards and nominations at the Locus Index to Science Fiction Awards
• Essay on Link's story "Lull" at Fantastic Metropolis
• RealAudio Interview from KCRW's Bookworm show
• An excerpt from Origin Story from the magazine A Public Space
• Reading by Kelly from the Stonecoast MFA program's Winter 2008 residency