'Discovering the book inside you'

 

“For me, writing is more a process of ‘discovering’ the book than planning it.” – Lois McMaster Bujold

 

Few authors have been as successful in “speculative” fiction as McMaster Bujold, who even eclipsed the great Robert Heinlein in both her use of speculative fiction and her awards and honors for those uses.   Born in Columbus, Ohio on Nov. 2, 1949 she now lives and writes in Minneapolis.

 

One of the most acclaimed writers in her field, Bujold has won Science Fiction’s Hugo Award for best novel four times.  Her novel Paladin of Souls and her novella The Mountains of Mourning “doubled,” winning both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. And, in the fantasy genre, her Curse of Chalion won the Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature and was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for best novel.  The Chalion series was named 2018's "Best Series" by the Hugos.  Since 2021 she has concentrated on a series of novellas, the most recent being 2025’s Testimony of Mute Things.

 

“Escapist literature gets a bad rap,” she said.  “But I think escape is important for a lot of people in a lot of places.”