Yaszek, Lisa
Entry updated 4 July 2026. Tagged: Author, Critic, Editor.
(? - ) US author, critic and academic, professor of science fiction studies at the Georgia Institute of Technology School of Literature, Media and Communication, who began to publish critical work of genre interest with "Unhappy Housewife Heroines, Galactic Suburbia, and Nuclear War: A New History of Midcentury Women's Science Fiction" in Extrapolation for Spring 2003; she was an editor of that magazine and president of the Science Fiction Research Association 2009-2010. A major book-length exploration of Women SF Writers is Galactic Suburbia: Recovering Women's Science Fiction (2008), re-examining the traditionally underestimated and even belittled role of women in the post-1945 decades of sf before the rise of modern Feminism: Carol Emshwiller, Anne McCaffrey and Judith Merril are among those singled out for special attention, and there is also discussion of less celebrated but still notable authors such as Mildred Clingerman. The thesis of this work is developed and actualized in two Library of America Anthologies edited by Yaszek: The Future Is Female!: 25 Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women, from Pulp Pioneers to Ursula K Le Guin (2018) and The Future Is Female!: More Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women, Volume Two: The 1970s (2022). Similar coverage had already been devoted to pre-1945 women sf authors in the massive anthology Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction (anth 2003) edited with Patrick B Sharp, whose fiction selections begin with 1929 tales by Clare Winger Harris, Leslie F Stone – the entire novel Out of the Void (August-September 1929 Amazing; rev 1967) – and Lilith Lorraine.
Further nonfiction works of notable contemporary relevance are the Afrofuturism (which see) study Literary Afrofuturism in the Twenty-First Century (2020) with Isiah Lavender III and the Gender-related sf reference The Routledge Companion to Gender and Science Fiction (anth 2023) edited with Sonja Fritzsche, Keren Omry and Wendy Gay.
Yaszek has been honoured for her considerable achievements with the 2014 Thomas D Clareson Award and the 2024 SFRA Award for Lifetime Contributions to SF Scholarship (formerly known as the Pilgrim Award). [DRL]
Lisa Yaszek
born
works (selected)
nonfiction
- Galactic Suburbia: Recovering Women's Science Fiction (Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 2008) [nonfiction: hb/Dan O'Dair]
- Literary Afrofuturism in the Twenty-First Century (Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 2020) with Isiah Lavender III [nonfiction: hb/]
works as editor
series
The Future Is Female!
- The Future Is Female!: 25 Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women, from Pulp Pioneers to Ursula K Le Guin (New York: The Library of America, 2018) [anth: The Future Is Female!: hb/]
- The Future Is Female!: More Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women, Volume Two: The 1970s (New York: The Library of America, 2022) [anth: The Future Is Female!: hb/Karel Thole]
individual titles as editor
- Practicing Science Fiction: Critical Essays on Writing, Reading and Teaching the Genre (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Co, 2010) [nonfiction: anth: pb/Sarah Holmlund]
- Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2003) with Patrick B Sharp [anth: in the publisher's Early Classics of Science Fiction series: hb/nonpictorial]
- The Routledge Companion to Gender and Science Fiction (London: Routledge, 2023) with Sonja Fritzsche, Keren Omry and Wendy Gay [nonfiction: anth: hb/Derek Newman-Stille]
links
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