Works by
Karen Joy Fowler
(Writer)
[February 7, 1950 - ]

As Editor

• The James Tiptree Award Anthology 4: Subversive Stories about Sex and Gender (2008), Debbie Notkin, Jeffrey D. Smith, and Karen Joy Fowler, eds.
  This fourth entry in a notable and controversial series continues to celebrate provocative fiction that explores and expands gender. Through their subversive, engaging fiction, Tiptree award–winning authors offer fascinating speculations on the ever-increasing mutability of our identities and desires. The James Tiptree, Jr. Award is an annual literary prize for speculative fiction, named for the pen name of one of science fiction’s most brilliant writers, Alice B. Sheldon. Authors selected for this series include Dorothy Allison, Ted Chiang, Joe Haldeman, Ursula K. Le Guin, Kelly Link, and Joanna Russ.

• The James Tiptree Award Anthology 3: Subversive Stories about Sex and Gender (2007), Debbie Notkin, Jeffrey D. Smith, Karen Joy Fowler, and Pat Murphy, eds.
  Returning again to the fertile ground of sex and identity, this third entry in a successful and controversial anthology series continues to celebrate thought-provoking and provocative fiction that explores and expands gender. Through their subversive, engaging stories, Tiptree Award–winning authors offer fascinating speculations on the ever-increasing mutability of our public—and private—selves. James Tiptree, Jr. was the pseudonym of Alice Bradley Sheldon, whose lasting contributions to the gender-bending genre are honored with this annual award, now in its 15th year. Previous winners of the Tiptree Award include Karen Joy Fowler, Ursula K. Le Guin, M. John Harrison, Kelly Link, Joe Haldeman, and Joanna Russ.

• The James Tiptree Award Anthology 2: Sex, the Future, & Chocolate Chip Cookies (2006), Debbie Notkin, Jeffrey D. Smith, Karen Joy Fowler, and Pat Murphy, eds.
  Following the successful debut of the series, this second serving of innovative storytelling continues to celebrate thought-provoking and provocative speculative fiction. Touching on the most fundamental of human desires—sex, love, and the need for acceptance—Tiptree Award–winning authors continually challenge and redefine social identities, simultaneously exploring and expanding gender. James Tiptree, Jr. was the pseudonym of Alice Bradley Sheldon, whose lasting contributions to the genre are honored every year with the award. This collection gathers short fiction and essays that were chosen by the Tiptree Award judges in 2004, as well as additional selections from previous years. Contributors include Raphael Carter, L. Timmel Duchamp, Carol Emshwiller, Eileen Gunn, Joe Haldeman, Nalo Hopkinson, Gwyneth Jones, Jaye Lawrence, Ursula K. Le Guin, Jonathan Lethem, Debbie Notkin, Julie Phillips, Johanna Sinsalo, and Leslie What.

• The James Tiptree Award Anthology 1: Sex, the Future, & Chocolate Chip Cookies (2005), Debbie Notkin, Jeffrey D. Smith, Karen Joy Fowler, and Pat Murphy, eds.
  This debut anthology features short fiction, novel excerpts, and essays that have won the James Tiptree, Jr. Award. Created in 1991 to honor the innovative fiction of Alice Bradley Sheldon (who wrote under the pen name James Tiptree), the Tiptree Award is presented to speculative fiction that explores and expands gender roles—and in the process touches on the most fundamental of human desires: the need for sex, for love, and for acceptance. This collection includes thought-provoking essays by Suzy McKee Charnas, Karen Joy Fowler, Ursula K. Le Guin, Pat Murphy, and Joanna Russ.

• MOTA 3: Courage (2003)
  Read tales of astonishing courage revealed in all aspects of the human condition. The authors chose to bravely reveal themselves via characters interacting with extreme weather, Alzheimer's, bigotry, whiskey, schizophrenia, intersex children, architecture, polio, a blender, and other clever and profound essentials.
  
  Fiction by: Kristina Bak, Marietta Ball, Linda S. Clare, Chris Orcutt, James A. Gilmer, Kent Patterson, Tamara Kaye Sellman, Nancy Jane Moore, Terry Hayman, James McKinty, K.Z. Perry, G. Scott Huggins, Martha Fenton, Sue Burke, E. Catherine Tobler, John Everson, Kate Mason, Michael Canfield, Leslie What.

Fiction

• Wit's End: A Novel (April 2008 release)
  What happens when your readers steal your characters?

• The Jane Austen Book Club: A Novel (2004)
  In California’s central valley, five women and one man join to discuss Jane Austen’s novels. Over the six months they get together, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suitable, and love happens. With her eye for the frailties of human behavior and her ear for the absurdities of social intercourse, Karen Joy Fowler has never been wittier nor her characters more appealing. The result is a delicious dissection of modern relationships.
  
  Dedicated Austenites will delight in unearthing the echoes of Austen that run through the novel, but most readers will simply enjoy the vision and voice that, despite two centuries of separation, unite two great writers of brilliant social comedy.

• Sister Noon (2001)
  Lizzie Hayes, a member of the San Francisco elite, is a seemingly docile, middle-aged spinster praised for her volunteer work with the Ladies Relief and Protection Society Home, or "The Brown Ark". All she needs is the spark that will liberate her from the ruling conventions. When the wealthy and well-connected, but ill-reputed Mary Ellen Pleasant shows up at the Brown Ark, Lizzie is drawn to her. It is the beautiful, but mysterious Mary Ellen, an outcast among the women of the elite because of her notorious past and her involvement in voodoo, who will eventually hold the key to unlocking Lizzie's rebellious nature.

• The Sweetheart Season: A Novel (1996)
  As a rebellious daughter of the sixties recalls the year her mother played baseball in 1947, two luminous stories begin to unfold in America's heartland, one lived and one imagined. . . .

• The War of the Roses (1991)
  Novelette.

• Sarah Canary (1991)
  The Washington Territory, 1873. The woman who appeared without warning in the forest clearing was small, dressed all in black, and of indeterminate age. Her hair was cropped and she was babbling in some incomprehensible tongue. Chin Ah Kin thought she might be a ghost-lover--an immortal sent by the gods to enchant him. His more practical uncle thought otherwise: a white woman in a Chinese railway workers' camp could only be trouble. He ordered Chin to return her to her white world. Thus begins Sarah Canary, Karen Joy Fowler's bewitching odyssey of the Old West that speaks across a hundred years of American experience. As Sarah Canary and her raging entourage move across the green landscape of the Pacific Northwest, each new encounter with America's boisterous frontier offers intriguing insights into the extravagant myths and legends of the past which have evolved into the pillars of our national heritage. Part adventure story, part history lesson, part flight of marvelous fantasy, Sarah Canary achieves that true rarity of excellence: a novel of ideas and wit that can raise tears as well as laughter.

Short Fiction

• Black Glass: Stories (1997) -- Winner 1999 World Fantasy Award for Best Collection
  A collection of stories, including "Go Back" and "The Travails."

• Full Spectrum 5 (1995)

• Letters from Home (1991), Sarah Lefanu, ed.
  Stories by Karen Joy Fowler, Pat Cadigan, and Pat Murphy.

• Peripheral Vision, Author's Choice Monthly #6 (1990)
  Five short stories.

• Artificial Things (1986, 1992)
  Twelve short stories.

See also:

• Full Spectrum 5 (1995), Janna Silverstein, Jennifer Hershey, and Tom Dupree, eds.
  See Karen Joy Fowler's "Shimabara".