Background
She grew up in Moscow, Idaho and throughout her childhood consumed Golden Age science fiction.
She grew up in Moscow, Idaho and throughout her childhood consumed Golden Age science fiction.
She attended Bennington College in Vermont, where she majored in Anthropology, Russian, and comparative literature and graduated in 1979. After working as an editorial assistant at West.W. Norton, she began her graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania where she obtained her Doctor of Philosophy in anthropology (1991).
Judith began writing and making up her own stories around the age of five or six. By training, she is a linguistic anthropologist and has published articles on Native American myth and translations, in particular those of the Pacific Northwest. She also worked as a research associate at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (2005).
She also has a form of synesthesia.
Her science fiction and fantasy has occasionally drawn on her anthropological background. Her first novel, "Bear Daughter" (2005) made use of this in part and was nominated for the Crawford Award.
This novel was inspired by Native American stories, but not about real Indians, past or present. lieutenant is inspired by the indigenous traditions of the north Pacific coast.
The novel is fundamentally about her own personal concerns, however she wanted to be as true as possible to worldviews that were contained in the indigenous sources.
In her acknowledgments, she thanks various cultures in their own language for their contribution. Judith"s fiction has been short listed for the Nebula, the Sturgeon, and Crawford Awards. Her short fiction has also appeared in Asimov’s, Interzone, Realms of Fantasy, and Black Gate.
A list of Judith"s short stories and other works:
“The Year of Storms” 1995
“Lord Stink” 1997
“Dream of Rain” 2000
“The Fear Gun” 2004 –the 2005 Sturgeon finalist
“The Poison Well” 2004
Chapbook, “Lord Stink and Other Stories” appeared from Small Beer Press in 2002.
Judith is a linguistic anthropologist by training and has published in a number of venues on Native American myth and translation. She specializes in oral literature, ethnohistory, and history or ethnographic research on the North West Coast, with a particular focus on the lives and work of indigenous ethnographers George Hunt and Louis Shotridge.
She has worked as a research associate at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (2005) and is now at the University of Victoria School of Environmental Studies and adjunct in its Anthropology Department (2013-2016).
She has also won a Pioneer Award (SFRA Pioneer Award ) from the Science and Fiction research Association for her 2001 essay, “Science Fiction Without the Future,” for the best critical length essay of its year. “The Window” 1999 –third place Sturgeon winner "Awakening" 2008 -nominated for a Nebula Award for Best Novella.
