Phyllis Eisenstein


Phyllis Eisenstein is an American author of science fiction and fantasy short stories and novels whose work has been nominated for both the Hugo Award and Nebula Award.

Biography

Eisenstein was born in 1946 in Chicago, Illinois and has lived there most of her life. While attending college at the University of Chicago, she met her future husband Alex at a weekly gathering of Chicago's science fiction fandom. In 1966, shortly after attending Tricon, the 24th World Science Fiction Convention, they were married. She continued college until Alex entered the U. S. Air Force and, following basic training, was posted to Germany; they lived there for three years and then returned to Chicago upon his honorable discharge from the service.
Eisenstein had her first two science fiction stories published in 1971, the first in collaboration with husband Alex. After establishing herself as a professional writer, she returned to college and finished her education, earning a 1981 B.A. degree in anthropology from the University of Illinois.
She has published six novels and more than forty shorter works of varying lengths in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror fiction; Eisenstein also wrote a popular non-fiction book on the treatment of arthritis. Her stories have appeared in both anthologies and in every major science fiction and fantasy print media magazine; these include The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Galaxy Science Fiction, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Amazing Stories, Weird Tales, and others.
Eisenstein's stories have been nominated twice for science fiction's Hugo Award and three times for SFWA's Nebula Award.
Her 1978 short story "Lost and Found" was adapted for television in 1986, airing on the mid-1980s series The New Twilight Zone; the screenplay was written by the show's then story editor George R. R. Martin. She is an old friend of Martin and convinced him to include dragons in his international best-selling fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire. Martin then dedicated the third novel in the series, A Storm of Swords, to Eisenstein.
Eisenstein has spent much of her adult life teaching writing; this began by assisting author Roger Zelazny at the Indiana University Writers Conference in 1977. She has taught writing at the Clarion Science Fiction Writer's Workshop at Michigan State University, Oakton Community College of Skokie, Illinois, and the Writer's Digest School. For twenty years she was a member of the part-time faculty of Columbia College Chicago, teaching courses in general science fiction, popular fiction writing, fantasy, and advanced science fiction writing. In 1999 Eisenstein received an "Excellence in Teaching" Award from this institution; in 2009 she retired from CCC to devote more time to her professional writing career.
Beginning in 2000, Eisenstein worked full-time in Chicago's very competitive advertising business; she was the executive manager of copy editors at Chicago's largest advertising agency until she retired in 2015.
The completed novel, The City in Stone, the last volume of her "Book of Elementals" fantasy trilogy, was left unpublished when Meisha Merlin Publishing, a well-established fantasy and science fiction publisher, suddenly ceased operations in 2007; the novel remains unpublished, while the first two novels in the series are currently out-of-print.
Eisenstein has since completed The Walker Between Worlds, the first novel in a new series called "The Masks of Power". The first eight chapters from that in-progress novel, comprising 38,000 words, was first published in 2007 as a limited edition trade paperback from KaCSFFS Press, a genre small press, for her Author Guest of Honorship at ConQuesT 37.

Published works

Book Series