Nancy Fulda

Nancy Fulda (née Owens) is an American science fiction writer, editor, and computer scientist. She is an alumna of Brigham Young University in the fields of artificial intelligence and machine learning. She has won multiple awards for her science fiction writing, which has been compared to that of Asimov and Clarke.

Biography

Fulda graduated in 2002 with a bachelor's degree in computer science at Brigham Young University. In 2004, she received a master's degree in the same field, focusing on artificial intelligence and machine learning.

One of her favorite science fiction short stories is Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes, and she calls it "one of the best science fiction books [she] ever read". Her first award for writing was the 1998 Vera Hinckley Mayhew Award—given out at Brigham Young University—for her short story "The Man Who Murdered Himself". This story was later formally published in 2004 for the first time in The Phobos Science Fiction Anthology Volume 3. Having this story published helped her move toward a career in writing.

Her story "That Undiscovered Country" won the Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award Grand Prize in 2011, beating "Gemini XVII" by Brad R. Torgersen and "Natural Selection" by Michael Simon. Fulda's 2012 story, "Movement" was partially inspired by her autistic son. It won the Readers' Choice Award from Asimov's Science Fiction, and was nominated for the BSFA, Hugo, and Nebula Awards.

Her writing has been compared to that of Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. She draws on her religion, life experiences, and science background when creating her stories. Because of various conversations with fellow writers, she called for tolerance and respect in the science fiction and fantasy writing field for those with religious beliefs. Fulda is active in SFWA and has addressed various topics on the SFWA site as a guest blogger: engaging in online discussions, dealing with awards season, how to create good antagonists, developing effective hooks, writing short and long stories, and carving a finished story from an unfinished idea.

Fulda created the Anthology Builder website in 2007 as a way to promote short stories through custom anthologies, though the site closed down in late 2016. She is an adjunct professor in the Computer Science department at Brigham Young University, and she has four children.

Relatives

Fulda's sister is writer Sandra Tayler; her brother-in-law is cartoonist Howard Tayler.

Awards