Elizabeth Hand (1957 - )

Genre: General Fiction, Drama/Theatre/Film, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Short Stories

Liz Hand, who lives in Lincolnville, Maine, and London, is a science fiction novelist, short story writer, reviewer, playwright, and comic book writer. She was born in California and grew up in Pound Ridge, NY, received her B.A in playwriting and cultural anthropology from The Catholic University of America in 1984 (after a punk interlude), worked for a number of years at the Smithsonian's National Air & Space Museum, quit to write full time, and moved to Maine in 1988. She has two children with Maine novelist Richard Grant. Her current partner is UK critic John Clute.

Hand is the author of six novels, including Waking the Moon, which received both the James Tiptree Jr. and Mythopeic Society Awards, Her first three novels -- Winterlong, Aestival Tide, and Icarus Descending -- were all finalists for the Philip K. Dick Award, and her novella Last Summer at Mars Hill, won the 1995 Nebula and World Fantasy Awards.

Besides her novels, Hand has also written numerous reviews, stories, and essays for the Washington Post (a regular contributor since 1988), the Detroit Metro Times, Village Voice, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, The Writer, Reflex, Science Fiction Age, Science Fiction Eye, and Penthouse, among others. Her review of Pat Cadigan's Synners, published in the New York Review of Science Fiction, March 1991, is available online, as are her review of Colin Harrison's Afterburn, Feb. 2000, and her article "The Metamorphosis of Stephen King" (and review of Hearts in Atlantis), Sept. 1999, both in the Village Voice. She also wrote an article on women and feminism in science fiction writing in the 7 April 2002 Washington Post.

Hand collaborated with Paul Witcover to create and write DC Comics' "gonzo-feminist" cult series Anima (you can see the comic book covers on Witcover's website). Her one-act play, "The Have-Nots," was produced in 1997 at the Battersea Arts Center as part of London's Fringe Theater Festival, and she has also written several novelizations of films and TV show episodes.

Works include:

• "Jangletown" (1990; with Paul Witcover)
• The Winterlong series: Winterlong (1990/1991); Aestival Tide (1992/1993), and Icarus Descending (1993)
• Waking the Moon (1994/1996); Waking the Moon review, by Eleanor M. Farrell
• Novelization of Terry Gilliam's film 12 Monkeys (1995)
• Novelization of TV script Millennium: The Frenchman (1997)
• Glimmering (1997/1998)
• Last Summer at Mars Hill (1998; collection of 11 short stories and one poem; the title story won both the Nebula and World Fantasy awards); review of Last Summer by Susan Dunman
• Novelization of the movie The X Files: Fight the Future (1998; with Chris Carter)
• Black Light (1999/2000); the Gardiner Public Library comments that "[Hand] does for upstate New York what Stephen King has done for rural Maine in this creepy tale of a Bohemian bedroom community and artists colony;"
• Novelization of the movie "Anna and the King" (1999)
• Novelization of The X-Files: Antibodies (with Kevin J. Anderson)
• Affair of the Necklace (2001), a novelization of a movie
• Bibliomancy (2003; stories)
• Star Wars: Maze of Deception (2003)
• Mortal Love (2004)
• Saffron and Brimstone: Strange Stories (2006); her story 'Echo' in this collection won the Nebula award
• Illyria (2006), a novella
• Generation Loss (2007), a psychological thriller

A story by Hand -- 'Chip Crockett's Christmas Carol' -- is available from Scifi.com. A print article about Hand, 'Elizabeth Hand: Reflections of a Catholic School Girl,' is available from Locus magazine, Oct. 1995, and an online interview with her from 2002 is available from the same source. More info on her website.


Last Update: 07/16/2007

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