Suzy McKee Charnas

Hugo, Nebula, and Tiptree award–winning author Suzy McKee Charnas is best known for her groundbreaking Holdfast Chronicles, a four-volume story written over the course of almost thirty years (1974-1999) which addressed the oft-controversial topics of feminist dystopia, separatist societies, war, and reintegration, and her critically acclaimed exploration of the vampire mythos, The Vampire Tapestry.

The first and second volumes of the Holdfast Chronicles, Walk to the End of the World (1974) and Motherlines (1978), each won a 1996 Retrospective James Tiptree, Jr. Award. The final volume The Conqueror’s Child (1999) won the James Tiptree, Jr. Award. The series as a whole which also included The Furies (1994) was given the 2003 Gaylactic Spectrum Hall of Fame Award. Her young adult novel The Kingdom of Kevin Malone earned the Aslan Award for Best Children’s Book of 1993. The novella “The Unicorn Tapestry,” that was part of The Vampire Tapestry, won a 1980 Nebula.

Other works included The Sorcery Hall trilogy (The Bronze King [1985], The Silver Glove [1988], and The Golden Thread [1989]), the short story collections Moonstone and the Tiger-Eye (1992), Music of the Night (2001), and STAGESTRUCK VAMPIRES AND OTHER PHANTASMS (2004), and the memoir My Father’s Ghost: The Return of My Old Man and Other Second Chances (2002),. Charnas adapted The Vampire Tapestry into the two-act play Vampire Dreams. It enjoyed runs in both San Francisco and New York, debuting as part of Springfest in San Francisco in 1990. 

Charnas died at the age of eighty-three on January 2, 2023.