Carolyn Janice Cherry, this is her real name, was born on September 1, 1942, in St. Louis, Missouri.

In 1964, C.J. Cherryh received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Latin at the University of Oklahoma with a specialization in archeology, mythology, and the history of engineering. In 1965, she obtained a Master of Arts in Classical Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

After completing her studies, C.J. Cherryh became a teacher of classical subjects, but during the summer she brought her students to visit ancient ruins in various European countries.

Despite her classical studies, C.J. Cherryh liked science fiction, and she used plots taken from mythology to write stories set in the future. Typically, aspiring writers initially try to publish short stories in magazines, but Cherryh instead started writing novels from the beginning in her spare time, sending them to publishers.

After several rejections, in 1976 her novels “Gate of Ivrel” and “Brothers of Earth” were finally published. The first earned C.J. Cherryh the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

Donald A. Wollheim, the editor who bought her books, decided to add an “h” to her name because he thought Cherry sounded too much like the surname of a romance novel writer. The initials C.J. were used because, at that time,e almost all science fiction writers were men.

In the following years, C.J. Cherryh published many other novels, both fantasy and science fiction. The writer doesn’t feel tied to a specific genre, so in her case, labels don’t really matter much.

Her first novel had three sequels to form the Morgaine cycle: “Well of Shiuan” in 1978, “Fires of Azeroth” in 1979, and “Exile’s Gate” in 1988. This quadrilogy has become part of a larger fictional universe that includes many other novels, many of which can be grouped into several sub-cycles.

One of those sub-cycles includes “Downbelow Station” (1981), which won a Hugo Award as the best novel of the year. Also in 1981, C.J. Cherryh published “The Pride of Chanur”, the first of five novels of the Chanur cycle.

In 1989, C.J. Cherryh again won the Hugo Award for best novel of the year with the extraordinary “Cyteen”, a story long even by today’s standards and very complex that is part of another of the sub-cycles of the author’s main narrative universe.

C.J. Cherryh has also published several novels that are part of other narrative universes, especially the Foreigner universe, composed of several novels divided into arcs composed of a trilogy each.

C.J. Cherryh has also published several fantasy novels, especially the Fortress series, the Russian stories, and the Heroes in Hell cycle, all composed of three or more novels each.

Thanks to her classic literary education, C.J. Cherryh has a very realistic style she uses to develop stories with elements of politics, philosophy, and the sociology of gender. Often in her novels, there’s an outsider looking for the place.

C.J. Cherryh is a very prolific writer who has already written more than 60 novels. In recent years, she’s been publishing especially novels that are part of the Foreigner universe. In the coming months, two more of them, which are part of the fifth trilogy of this cycle, should be published, so her fans can rest easy because she keeps on writing.