Literary Birthday – 30 September – Nicola Griffith

Happy Birthday, Nicola Griffith, born on 30 September 1960.

Nicola Griffith Quotes

1. I will take control of your mirror neurons. I will give you tastes and textures, torments, and terrain you might never find in your real life. I will take you, sweep you off your feet, own you. For a while. For a while when you’re lost in my book you will be somewhere else, somewhen else, someone else. (Author’s Website)
2. I want to write a whole novel that invades you. I want to control what you think and feel, to put you right there, right then… I want to give you a life you’ve never had and change the one you live. (Author’s Website)
3. With So Lucky I wanted to explore how chronic illness and disability affects us—our decisions, our friends, our place in the world—without confusing that exploration with my specific personal experiences. I needed the clarity of fiction. Fiction allowed me to compress time and so intensify the experience for protagonist and reader. To build a narrative structure that helps the reader experience ableism, its internalisation, and eventual deconstruction. And, importantly, to make metaphor concrete. (Wordgathering)
4. I loved to read, and I read everything in reach. Literally. My local library as a child seemed to operate on the principle that if you could reach it you could borrow it. (Mosslit)
5. To me there’s a difference between wanting to Be a Writer and wanting to write. I wanted to write early on; pinning down a description or a moment or a feeling felt like a triumph. I didn’t decide to be a writer until I was in my twenties. Or perhaps it might be more true to say I didn’t realize I wanted to be a writer until I was in my twenties. I had a dream about being at a fancy awards dinner, and winning, and waking up knowing it was the Booker Prize, and that I would win it one day. (Mosslit)
6. I’m perfectly happy to read fast shallow books that tell me nothing new as long as they entertain and don’t actively annoy me for a couple of hours. (Mosslit)
7. Many writers use fear as the springboard for story. It can be useful. There again, hunger—for sex, power, belonging—also works pretty well. It just has to be a good, clear emotion. (Mosslit)

Nicola Griffith is a British American novelist, essayist, and teacher. She is the author of nine novels, including Hild, Spear, and Menewood. In addition to her fiction and nonfiction (New York Times, Guardian, Nature, New Scientist) she is known for her data-driven 2015 work on bias in the literary ecosystem. She was diagnosed with MS in March 1993 and is known for her disability advocacy. In 2015 she began #CripLit, an online community for disabled writers. Her awards include the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Society of Authors ADCI Literary Prize, two Washington State Book Awards, the Premio Italia, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Otherwise awards, and six Lambda Literary Awards. She was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2024. And in 2025, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association named her the 41st Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master in recognition of her significant contributions to science fiction and fantasy. She is married to writer Kelley Eskridge. Follow her on Bluesky and Instagram.

Source for photograph: Author’s Website, by Jennifer Durham

by Amanda Patterson
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