Ellen Kushner books

Anthologies

Ellen Kushner Audiobooks

Short Stories/Novellas

Standalone Novels

The World of Riverside Reading Order

Tremontaine Reading Order

Tremontaine Collection Reading Order

Ellen Kushner is an American fantasy writer whose work helped define the subgenre known as “mannerpunk” or fantasy of manners. Her debut in the Riverside world, Swordspoint (1987), mixed the social intrigues of a Restoration-era city with the brutal reality of professional sword duels. The book was published without any overt magic, relying instead on sharp dialogue, tangled relationships, and a fully realized secondary world to carry the story.

Kushner returned to Riverside with The Privilege of the Sword (2006), which won the Locus Award, and co-wrote The Fall of the Kings (2002) with Delia Sherman. She also created the serialized prequel Tremontaine with a team of collaborating writers through Serial Box Publishing. Outside of Riverside, she won the World Fantasy Award for Thomas the Rhymer (1990), a retelling of the Scottish ballad about a man taken to the land of the Faerie Queen.

Beyond her fiction, Kushner has been an active figure in the broader fantasy community. She hosted the public radio show Sound & Spirit on WGBH in Boston for over a decade, exploring connections between culture, music, and storytelling. She has also edited and contributed to numerous anthologies, including the Bordertown shared-world series and various Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror collections.