Suzette Haden Elgin

Vocation

Lifestyle

Notable

Family

American writer of fantasy and sci-fi. By the late ‘60s she was widowed and re-married, the mother of five and a grad student in the Linguistics Department of the University of California San Diego. Aiming for her Ph.D., with a family and scarce money, Elgin taught high school and night and during spare hours, began writing science fiction novels to pay for school. After graduation, she continued teaching linguistics up to 1980, when she retired to the Arkansas Ozarks. Elgin’s Coyote Jones series started with her first novel, "The Communipaths." She has also published a modest amount of short stories published in sci-fi magazines and anthologies. She founded the Science Fiction Poetry Association, and was for a while editor of its newsletter, Star*Line. She later published a newsletter, "Linguistics and Science Fiction." She is a science fiction artist, poet and musician and goes to as many sci-fi conventions as she can fit into her schedule. In her spare time, Suzette runs a home-based business - the Ozark Center for Language Studies - dedicated to the two goals of reducing violence in the U.S. and getting information about linguistics out to the public. In her nonfiction writing, she had the "Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense" series and an Abbeville Press book called "The Grandmother Principles," which has a Webpage with its own monthly newsletter. With her robust family, Elgin keeps up with ten grandchildren, scattered worldwide. Link to Wikipedia biography