The Poison Apple Q&A with Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman on Black Gate

Photo by Elizabeth Crowens

Elizabeth Crowens interviewed both Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman in this beautifully long and involved feature for Black Gate:

You were married in 1996 and are one of the long-time couples of speculative fiction. How did the two of you meet?

Ellen: Actually, we were married many times — illegally in 1996 and legally in the State of Massachusetts in our backyard there in 2004. Jane Yolen introduced us at Boskone — not for any romantic reasons, but because Delia had taken a course in writing fantasy at the U. Mass, Amherst.

Delia: I had a short story based on a ballad and supposedly Ellen was editing an anthology.

Ellen: Then I confessed that I wasn’t doing the anthology, because I couldn’t sell it but offered to read her story, anyway. I thought it was really good, referred her to Terri Windling, and Terri ended up buying it to be made into a novel as Terri’s first Ace Fantasy special. It was based on the ballad The Famous Flower of Serving-men but Ace changed the title to Through a Brazen Mirror. Meanwhile, Delia and I kept having coffee when I came to Boskone, became friends, then I moved to Boston and we fell into each other’s arms in the summer of 1992 and never looked back.

Read the rest of the interview at Black Gate’s website: “The Poison Apple: Shared Worlds All Over the World – A Q & A with the Dynamic Duo, Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman.”