Baggott, Julianna

Entry updated 27 March 2023. Tagged: Author.

(1969-    ) US poet and author who has focused on dysfunctional family-romance narratives based on her own family – including a volume of poems, The Country of Mothers (coll 2001) and The Madam (2003), which is slightly fantasticated – and tales for teenage girls. Her Bodies sequence for children – comprising The Anybodies (2004), The Nobodies (2005) and The Somebodies (2006), all as by N E Bode – similarly confronts dysfunctional families, and climaxes Underground in a fantasy New York. Other children's fantasy as by N E Bode includes The Amazing Compendium of Edward Magorium (coll 2007) and The Slippery Map (2007). Later work, under her own name, includes three further fantasies, The Ever Breath (2009), The Prince of Fenway Park (2011) and The Ever Breath (2011); and the Pure sequence, comprising to date Pure (2012), Fuse (2013) and Burn (2014), a Young Adult series set in a Dystopian Near Future where the Pure live in an armoured Keep and the Wretches starve outside while suffering a strange consequence of the nuclear Holocaust that has created this world: their bodies have been fused with objects nearby at the time of the blast. The implications of this grotesque (or perhaps empowering) condition are focused on in the second volume of the sequence, during the course of which the young protagonists – one Pure, One Wretched – are savagely torn apart; Burn sees them reunited, a difficult task given the psychological consequences of the profound branding to which they have been subject. An uncredited collaboration, The Future for Curious People (2014) with Gregory Sherl, involves an unusual form of Time Viewer; see his entry for details. The Wick (2023 chap), in a tale that evokes Keith Laumer's most favoured story type, features an Android with Amnesia who finds herself awakening into a soldier role with obligations and powers. [JC]

Julianna Baggott

born Wilmington, Delaware: 30 September 1969

works

series

Bodies

• The Anybodies (New York: HarperCollins, 2004) as by N E Bode [Bodies: illus/pb/Peter Ferguson]
• The Nobodies (New York: HarperCollins, 2005) as by N E Bode [Bodies: illus/pb/Peter Ferguson]
• The Somebodies (New York: HarperCollins, 2006) as by N E Bode [Bodies: illus/pb/Peter Ferguson]

Pure

• Pure (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2012) [Pure: hb/]
• Fuse (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2013) [Pure: hb/]
• Burn (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2014) [Pure: hb/]

individual titles (selected)

• This Country of Mothers (Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 2001) [poetry: chap: pb/]
• The Madam (New York: Atria Books, 2003) [hb/]
• The Amazing Compendium of Edward Magorium (New York: Scholastic, 2007) as by N E Bode [pb/]
• The Slippery Map (New York: HarperCollins, 2007) as by N E Bode [illus/hb/Brandon Dorman]
• The Ever Breath (New York: Delacorte Press, 2009) [hb/]
• The Prince of Fenway Park (New York: HarperCollins, 2009) [hb/]
• The Future for Curious People (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2014) with Gregory Sherl [Baggott is uncredited: pb/]
• The Wick (Portland, Oregon: Underland Press, 2023) [chap: pb/]

collections and stories

• The Virtual Swallows of Hog Island (New York: Tor.com, 2017) [story: ebook: first appeared 25 January 2017 Tor.com: na/Mark Smith]
• Ecdysis (New York: Tor.com, 2017) [story: ebook: first appeared 22 March 2017 Tor.com: na/Keith Negley]
• Mental Diplopia (New York: Tor.com, 2017) [story: ebook: first appeared 11 April 2017 Tor.com: na/Ashley Mackenzie]

links

• Julianna Baggott
• Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Picture Gallery

previous versions of this entry

• Internet Archive