About N.K. Jemisin
Country of Birth
United States
Industry
Literature
Top achievements
N.K. Jemisin is an American science-fiction writer who explores racism, oppression, and cultural conflict in her work. In 2013, Jemisin won three Hugo Awards, three years in a row. She was the first black writer to win Hugo Award for best novel and the first author to ever win three in a row.
Early life and education
Nora Keita Jemisin was born in Iowa City, Iowa, on September 19, 1972. She grew up in New York and Alabama and attended universities in Louisiana and Maryland.
In 1994, Jemisin graduated from Tulane University in Louisiana with a bachelor’s degree in psychology. Three years later, she achieved a master’s in education from the University of Maryland at College Park. She began working as a career counselor at colleges throughout Massachusetts and began writing in the evenings.
In 2004, Jemisin published her first short story, “Too Many Yesterdays, Not Enough Tomorrows,” in Ideomancer, a Canadian magazine.
Writing Career
Jemisin’s first novel, “The Killing Moon,” was published through an agent in 2012. However, she published “The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms,” the first book in the Inheritance Trilogy focusing on mortals vs. gods before that, in 2010. Jemisin wrote this trilogy with a broader audience in mind.
After the Inheritance Trilogy, Jemisin began writing the Broken Earth Trilogy. The award-winning books were popular with readers and critics. In 2016, Jemisin launched a Patreon campaign to raise funds so she could focus on her writing full-time. She was successful and could quit her job.
In 2018, Jemisin published “How Long’ Til Black Future Month?” a collection of short stories. She wrote “The City We Became” in 2020 and followed it up with “The World We Make” in 2022.
While working on her books, Jemisin wrote a bimonthly science-fiction and fantasy column for The New York Times called “Otherworldly.”
Taking a Stand
Jemisin made a powerful statement when she delivered a speech as the Guest of Honor at the 2013 Continuum in Australia. She spoke about votes for alt-right writer Theodore Beale’s potential presidency of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA.) Jemisin stated that the votes and accompanying silence about his views enabled them. The SFWA subsequently expelled Beale.
Achievements
Jemisin achieved Hugo Awards for Best Novel in 2016 for “The Fifth Season,” in 2017 for “The Obelisk Gate,” and in 2018 for “The Stone Sky,” She also won a Nebula Award for Best Novel in for “The Stone Sky” in the same year. Jemisin won her fourth Hugo Award in 2020 for Best Novelette with “Emergency Skin.”
In 2020, Jemisin received the MacArthur Fellows Program Genius Grant.
Additional facts
- N.K. Jemisin is the stand-up comedian and television host W. Kamau Bell’s first cousin, once removed.
- She was a member of a writing group in Boston called BRAWLers and a speculative fiction group called Altered Fluid.
