Juliet E. McKenna (born 1965) is a British fantasy author. Her novels mostly form part of series, five series as of 2022.

Biography

McKenna was born in Lincolnshire in 1965, and studied Greek and Roman history and literature at St Hilda's College, Oxford. After college McKenna had a career in personnel management before a changing to work in book-selling. She also fitted in becoming a mother around her writing. McKenna is one of the British boom of fantasy writers. McKenna also writes historical murder mysteries as "J. M. Alvey'. As well as her various novel series McKenna writes articles and reviews for magazines. She has worked as a judge for various awards such as the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2013, the 2011 James White Award and the World Fantasy Awards in 2018. McKenna is also a contributing editor for the Irish anthology magazine Albedo One. In 2013 McKenna was the chair of the British National Science Fiction Convention, EightSquaredCon. She was also one of the authors, along with others such as Sarah Ash and Mark Chadbourn, behind The Write Fantastic, which was an initiative by a group of fantasy authors to promote the fantasy genre, and to display the scope of current fantasy writing. McKenna joined forces with a group of micro business owners to form EU VAT ACTION resolve the VAT issue caused by the EU VAT regulations which came into force on 1 January 2015. She spent considerable time working with businesses and experts in the UK and EU to create a way that small businesses online could work with the VAT regulations. She regularly attends fantasy conventions and hosted FantasyCon 2015's awards night, gives talks, and teaches creative writing courses.

Critical reception

Financial Times reviewer James Lovegrove described McKenna's 2012 She-who-thinks-for-herself, as "a cunning, funny... feminist rewrite" of H. Rider Haggard's She: A History of Adventure.

Awards

Novels

The Tales of Einarinn

The Aldabreshin Compass

The Chronicles of the Lescari Revolution

The Hadrumal Crisis

The Green Man

Standalone novels

As J.M. Alvey

Other fiction

Short stories

Short fiction featuring characters from The Tales of Einarinn