Those familiar with local author Nicola Griffith know that, beyond having an astute way with words, she speaks with an emphatic, take-no-prisoners clarity. Griffith plays brilliantly to this strength in her new collection \u201cShe Is Here,\u201d out Feb. 10 from PM Press.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I write, dear reader,\u201d begins Griffith\u2019s introductory essay, \u201cA Writer\u2019s Manifesto,\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t want to build a careful tale for you to discuss with a smile in a sunny place. I want to own you. I don\u2019t want to be The New Hit Series, I want to be pornography: to thrill you so hard you\u2019re ashamed but can\u2019t help yourself crawling back for more.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe Is Here\u201d is something of a grab bag collection, but it\u2019s no less enjoyable for the variety. Six nonfiction pieces \u2014 most about Griffith’s own writing career \u2014 are followed by four poems, three short stories and, finally, a novella, \u201cMany Things in Dumnet.\u201d Drawings by Griffith intersperse each section. An excellent interview conducted by Seattle author Nisi Shawl ends the work as bonus material. Considered as a whole, \u201cShe Is Here\u201d is an appropriately titled distillation of Griffith herself.<\/p>\n
Griffith grew up in Leeds, England, and moved to the U.S. after meeting her eventual wife, the writer Kelley Eskridge, at the Clarion Workshop in East Lansing, Mich. They wound up in Seattle after Griffith was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in her early 30s. The heat in Atlanta, where they had been living, had been inflaming her symptoms; when Griffith got her green card and a book advance on the same day, she decided enough was enough. She and Eskridge flew out to the Northwest and, after briefly considering Portland, relocated to the Emerald City. They\u2019ve been here since 1995.<\/p>\n
Griffith has long written queer characters in her fiction. \u201cI knew when I was four years old that I was a girl who liked other girls,\u201d she writes in this collection, \u201cand it seemed perfectly natural to me. I knew I was amazing, and that if I fancied girls then fancying girls must be amazing.\u201d As Griffith\u2019s MS progressed, however, and especially after she began using a wheelchair in 2015, she became doubly outspoken on ableism issues. \u201cDisability is one of the last great biases that most people don\u2019t even know they have,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s still the redheaded stepchild of bias. That\u2019s why I\u2019m so blatant about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
It can be difficult, in Griffith\u2019s words, to weigh \u201cblatant\u201d behavior against the critical reception of her fiction writing. Because while Griffith is indeed disabled \u2014 she affectionately calls herself \u201ca crip\u201d \u2014 she writes that she doesn\u2019t want disability or sexual preference to be the lodestone around which discussion of her novels revolves. But the commerciality of the arts world doesn\u2019t often align with an artist’s wishes.<\/p>\n
While the majority of Griffith\u2019s novels lean toward fantasy and sci-fi, she became more widely known for historical fiction in 2013 with \u201cHild,\u201d a retelling of the 7th century\u2019s Hilda of Whitby, one of the few prominent women to appear in histories of early British Christianity. That book won the 2014 Washington State Book Award and was nominated for both Nebula and Lambda awards. It also sent Griffith on a behemoth book tour, first the U.S., then the U.K., then the U.S. again for the paperback release. \u201cI just love performing,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
But the mountain of \u201cHild\u201d publicity came with downsides. Griffith learned that while she wanted conversations around “Hild” to focus on women’s lives during the English Dark Ages, critics spent just as much time talking about Griffith herself, the artist behind the curtain. \u201cIn my version of (Hild\u2019s) early life,\u201d she writes in \u201cShe Is Here,\u201d \u201cshe is not a lesbian. Yet the first review of the book begins, \u2018LGBT scifi writer Nicola Griffith\u2026\u2019 And another refers to \u2018lesbian fantasy and crime writer Nicola Griffith.\u2019 In other words, what was being reviewed was not the book at hand, but me, the author, and my previous novels.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a keenly written observation, which leads Griffith to posit the harsh truth that authors themselves bear responsibility for this commercial framework. \u201cTo sell books,\u201d Griffith writes, \u201cwe have to tell a story about them: we have to brand them. We have to build them an identity. We have to build ourselves a reputation. In so doing, we brand ourselves. That\u2019s part of what hurts: it\u2019s we who drive ourselves into the cattle chute, we who pick up the glowing iron, we who burn the label deep into our hide. We scar ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Griffith, of course, is much more than a brand, and there\u2019s much more than authorial metaphysics to \u201cShe Is Here.\u201d The Seattle crowd will enjoy the short story \u201cCold Wind,\u201d in which an ancient seductress shows up to \u201cthe women\u2019s bar\u201d on Capitol Hill, easily decoded as the real-life Wildrose Bar. Griffith isn\u2019t a regular there but recalls that the establishment offered early, hopeful glimpses of Seattle\u2019s queer scene after she and Eskridge moved to town in the ’90s.<\/p>\n
\u201cComing from the lesbian bars in Atlanta,\u201d Griffith says, \u201csome of them were huge<\/em>. And The Wildrose was just earnest. People wore flannel. I thought it was really sweet, and it was good to know there was one out here. But I also found that in Seattle, unlike in the South, I could go into almost any bar with Kelley holding hands.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the collection\u2019s longest piece, \u201cMany Things in Dumnet,\u201d takes place in an alternate ninth century and stars an adventuring bard named Anya, a shredder on the lute (\u201cHer hands moved like snakes, feinting from the wrists, then striking\u201d) who doubles as a medic in rough spots. \u201cHer being a healer is about being educated,\u201d Griffith says, \u201cand about having a prodigious memory.\u201d A traveler in Albion, Anya is marked by the locals after her early performances catch the eye of a crooked underling. It\u2019s a perfect tale for a single sitting.<\/p>\n \u201cShe Is Here\u201d will undoubtedly appeal to Griffith\u2019s fans, but it doubles as a nice gateway to her career for newcomers. It\u2019s rare that an author\u2019s fiction is offered a mere 50 pages after their reflection<\/em> on said fiction. When it works, it works. Griffith\u2019s commentary on the creative process will stick with readers long after this collection goes back on the shelf.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yakimaherald.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Those familiar with local author Nicola Griffith know that, beyond having an astute way with words, she speaks with an emphatic, take-no-prisoners clarity. Griffith plays brilliantly to this strength in her new collection \u201cShe Is Here,\u201d out Feb. 10 from PM Press. \u201cWhen I write, dear reader,\u201d begins Griffith\u2019s introductory essay, \u201cA Writer\u2019s Manifesto,\u201d \u201cI […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2276040,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[21741],"class_list":["post-2276039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Seattle-writer-Nicola-Griffith-returns-with-new-collection-\u2018She-is.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2276039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2276039"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2276039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2276041,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2276039\/revisions\/2276041"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2276040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2276039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2276039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2276039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}