Bio: ... I dabbled with English as a major in college, but quickly fell away from it -- my heart was in the creative, not the critical end of things. But an interest in wildlife and close-up photography led me on a six-week biology study tour of East Africa. Eight hundred slides of bugs; much later I also borrowed the landscape and ecology I had seen for background of my first novel. That's one of the nicest things about writing, all of a sudden nothing is wasted. Even one's failures are re-classified as raw material.

After college I worked as a pharmacy technician at the Ohio State University Hospitals, until I quit to start my family. This was a fallow time for writing, except for a Sherlock Holmes pastiche that ran about 60 pages. It was, however, a very fruitful time for reading, as my Staff card admitted me to OSU's 2 million volume main stacks, filled with wonders and obscurities.

Then my old friend Lillian, now Lillian Stewart Carl, began writing again, making her first sales. About this time it occurred to me that if she could do it, I could do it too. I was unemployed with two small children (note oxymoron) on a very straitened budget in Marion at this point, but the hobby required no initial monetary investment. I wrote a novelette for practice, then embarked on my first novel with help and encouragement from Lillian and Patricia C. Wrede, a fantasy writer from Minneapolis.

I quickly discovered that writing was far too demanding and draining to justify as a hobby, and that only serious professional recognition would satisfy me. Whatever had to be done, in terms of writing, re-writing, cutting, editorial analysis, and trying again, I was determined to learn to do. This was an immensely fruitful period in my growth as a writer, all of it invisible to the outside observer.

My first novel, Shards of Honor, was completed in 1983: the second, The Warrior's Apprentice in 1984; and the third, Ethan of Athos, in 1985. As each one came off the boards it began the painfully slow process of submission to the New York publishers. I also wrote a few short stories which I began circulating to the magazine markets. In late 1984 the third of these sold to Twilight Zone Magazine, my first professional sale. This thin proof of my professional status had to stretch until October of 1985, when all three completed novels were bought by Baen Books. They were published as original paperbacks in June, August, and December of 1986, leading the uninitiated to imagine that I wrote a book every three months.

Analog Magazine serialized my fourth novel, Falling Free, in the winter of '87 - '88; it went on to win my first Nebula. I was particularly pleased to be featured in Analog, my late father's favorite magazine -- I still have the check stub from the gift subscription my father bought me when I was 13 (a year for $4.00). "The Mountains of Mourning", also appearing in Analog, went on to win both Hugo and Nebula Awards for best novella of 1989, and The Vor Game and Barrayar won Hugos for best novel back to back in 1991 and 1992. My titles have been translated into seventeen languages (so far).

I broke into hardcover at last with The Spirit Ring in 1992, a historical fantasy, and returned to the universe and times of Miles Vorkosigan with Mirror Dance, which won the Hugo and Locus awards in 1995. My next novel was a lighter series prequel, Cetaganda, serialized in Analog starting with the September '95 issue, then released in hardcover in January '96 by Baen Books. I had my first experience as an editor, along with Roland Green, putting together the anthology Women at War, published by Tor Books in 1995. Memory had hardcover publication in October 1996, and was a Hugo and a Nebula nominee. Komarr was published in June 1998, and was the recepient of a Minnesota Book Award in the science fiction and fantasy category. A Civil Campaign, the direct sequel to Komarr, was published in September 1999, garnered my sixth Hugo nomination in the novel category, and was my fourth such Nebula nominee. Sample chapters of several of my SF titles are available at www.baen.com .

A new fantasy novel, The Curse of Chalion, saw publication in August 2001 from Avon/Eos. Sample chapters may be seen at www.eosbooks.com . A new Miles adventure, titled Diplomatic Immunity, is due for publication by Baen in May 2002.