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I first discovered Patricia Anne McKillip when I was in 5th grade or so. I found a copy of The Forgotten Beasts of Eld and loved it. It was years before I found another book she had written (I lived in a very small town...no real bookstores.)
Her books have an innocence to them that I cherish. Even her villains are characters that I can relate to and care about. They do not see themselves as villains but instead are just people who are doing what they think is best or what they feel they have to do. I can understand their motives and care about them, even if I do not agree with them (they are still "the bad guy"!)
I don't have too much personal information on McKillip. All that I know is what is in the various "Author's notes" in her books. She was born in Salem, Oregon (USA) on February 29, 1948 - a leap year baby!╩ She started writing at 14, and according to the notes in the Riddlemaster trilogy, "she has been writing ever since - except for a brief detour when she thought she would be a concert pianist." The House on Parchment Street has a neat quote about how she started writing - "In a fit of boredom one day when she was fourteen, she sat down in front of a window overlooking a stately medieval church and its graveyard and produced a thirty-page fairy tale."
She went to the College of Notre Dame, Belmont, and San Jose University where she earned a BA in English. She then went on for a MA at the San Jose State University. McKillip then moved to San Francisco, then to the Catskill Mountains in NY, and now lives in Roxbury, NY (if I make sense of the author's notes in consecutive books correctly.)
She won the World Fantasy Award in 1975 for The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, the Locus Award in 1980 for Harpist in the Wind, and the Balrog award in 1985 in the short fiction category for "A Troll and Two Roses".
This quote was in Faces of Fantasy (by Patti Perret):
I write fantasy because it's there.╩ I have no other excuse for sitting down for several hours a day indulging my imagination.╩ Daydreaming. ╩ Thinking up imaginary people, impossible places.╩ Imagination is the golden-eyed monster that never sleeps.╩ It must be fed; it cannot be ignored. ╩ Making it tell the same tale over and over again makes it thin and whining; its scales begin to fall off; its fiery breath becomes a trickle of smoke.╩ It is best fed by reality, an odd diet for something nonexistent; there are few details of daily life and its broad range of emotional context that can't be transformed into food for the imagination.╩ It must be visited constantly, or else it begins to become restless and emit strange bellows at embarrassing moments; ignoring it only makes it grow larger and noisier.╩ Content, it dreams awake, and spins the fabric of tales.╩ There is really nothing to be done with such imagery except to use it:╩ in writing, in art. ╩ Those who fear the imagination condemn it:╩ something childish, they say, something monsterish, misbegotten.╩ Not all of us dream awake.╩ But those of us who do have no choice.
I have several pictures of McKillip here. ╩ Thanks go to Rebekah Jensen for these pictures, as well as several other scans she has been kind enough to provide.╩
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I started a email list on McKillip a while ago - feel free to join in.╩╩
Subscribe to McKillip
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Following is a list of her books and short stories.╩ The books and short stories are in order of publication.╩ Click on each title for more information on that book, including cover scans.
At the moment, I have only entered the text on the book jackets - not much review material.╩ One of the prime reasons is that I am terrible at writing review material. ╩ If you'd like to write a review of your favorite book (or any other on this list)and send it to me, I will add it to the appropriate page.╩ Reviews with spoilers are acceptable, but rather than include them directly there will be a link to them so no one will have a novel ruined accidently.
Novels
The Throme of the Erril of Sherill, 1973 (republished with The Harrowing of the Dragon of Hoarsbreath)
The House on Parchment Street, 1973
The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, 1974 (buy the hardback - buy the paperback)
The Night Gift, 1976
The Riddlemaster of Hed, 1976
Heir of Sea and Fire, 1977
Harpist in the Wind, 1979
