Ellen Klages

AmradilloCon is delighted to welcome Ellen Klages as our Special Guest!

Ellen Klages was born in Ohio, but has lived in San Francisco for more than forty years. Her first novel, The Green Glass Sea (2006), won the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction, the Lopez Award for Children’s Literature, and the New Mexico State Book Award for Young Adult Literature. It was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award, the Quills Award, and the Locus Award.

White Sands, Red Menace, the second book in the Gordon Family Saga, won the California Book Award, the New Mexico Book Award, and was a Junior Library Guild Selection.

“This novel is one of the best I’ve ever read… meaningful and heart wrenching” — Pikes Peak Library District, Caroline J, Grade 9
“Klages has a gift for opening moral dilemmas to middle-graders. First-rate historical fiction.”
Publishers Weekly, starred review

A sequel, White Sands, Red Menace (2008), won the California and New Mexico Book awards in the Young Adult category. Out of Left Field, the third book in the Gordon Family Saga, won the New York Historical Society Children’s Book Prize and the Ohioana Book Award, and was a finalist for the Golden Poppy Book Award (Middle Reader) and the Northern California Book Award.

Klages is also known for her shorter works. Her novelette Basement Magic won the Nebula Award in 2005. You can find that now in the collection Portable Childhoods (2007), which was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award. Her novella Wakulla Springs, (co-authored with Andy Duncan) was a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula awards and won the World Fantasy Award in 2014. Her novella Passing Strange (2017) won the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the Gaylactic Spectrum Award, and was a finalist for the Nebula Award, the Locus Award, the Bisexual Writers Award, and the Mythopoeic Award.

Her 2017 collection Wicked Wonders was a finalist for both the Locus Award and the World Fantasy Award. Many of her other stories have been on the final ballots for numerous awards, and have been translated into Chinese, Czech, French, German, Hungarian, Japanese, Polish, and Swedish.

“Wakulla Springs” was a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula awards
Someone in Time, a new Jonathan Strahan anthology, includes a new Ellen Klages story.

With Pat Murphy, co-authored several excellent science books for kids for the Exploratorium museum.

She is a graduate of the Second City Conservatory, the Clarion South Workshop, and served for twenty years on the Motherboard of the James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award. She lives in a small house full of strange and wondrous things: lead civilians, odd toys, postcards, and other bits of whimsy that strike her fancy.