Ann Leckie

Ann Leckie is an American author of science fiction and fantasy. Her 2013 debut novel Ancillary Justice, in part about artificial consciousness and gender blindness, won the 2014 Hugo Award for "Best Novel", as well as the Nebula Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the BSFA Award. The sequels, Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy, each won the Locus Award and were nominated for the Nebula Award. Provenance, published in 2017, is also set in the Imperial Radch universe. Leckie's first fantasy novel, The Raven Tower, was published in February 2019.

Having grown up as a science fiction fan in St. Louis, Missouri, Leckie's attempts in her youth to get her science fiction works published were unsuccessful. One of her few publications from that time was an unattributed bodice-ripper in True Confessions. After giving birth to her children in 1996 and 2000, boredom as a stay-at-home mother motivated her to sketch a first draft of what would become Ancillary Justice for National Novel Writing Month 2002. In 2005, Leckie attended the Clarion West Writers Workshop, where she studied under Octavia Butler. 

After that, she wrote Ancillary Justice over a period of six years; it was picked up by the publisher Orbit in 2012 and published the following year. Leckie has published numerous short stories in outlets, including Subterranean Magazine, Strange Horizons, and Realms of Fantasy. Her short stories have been selected for inclusion in the year's best collections, such as The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, edited by Rich Horton. She edited the science fiction and fantasy online magazine Giganotosaurus from 2010 to 2013 and is the assistant editor of the PodCastle podcast.

 She served as the secretary of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America from 2012 to 2013. Leckie's debut novel Ancillary Justice, the first book of the Imperial Radch space opera trilogy, was published to critical acclaim in October 2013 and won all of the principal English-language science fiction awards (see Ann Leckie#Awards and nominations). It follows Breq, the sole survivor of a starship destroyed by treachery and the vessel of that ship's artificial consciousness, as she attempts to avenge herself on the ruler of her empire.

The sequel, Ancillary Sword, was published in October 2014, and the conclusion, Ancillary Mercy, was published in October 2015. "Night's Slow Poison" (2014) and "She Commands Me, and I Obey" (2014) are short stories set in the same universe. In 2015, Orbit Books purchased two additional novels from Leckie. The first, Provenance (published on 3 October 2017), is set in the Imperial Radch universe. The second was to have been an unrelated science fiction novel. In April 2018, Orbit announced that Leckie's first fantasy novel, The Raven Tower, would be published in early 2019.