Ellen Kushner is an American writer of fantasy novels, and the host of the radio program Sound & Spirit, produced by WGBH in Boston and distributed by Public Radio International.

Kushner was born in Washington, DC and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. She lives in New York City with her wife and sometime collaborator, Delia Sherman (they were married in 1996).

Kushner's first books were four Choose Your Own Adventure gamebooks, after which her first novel, Swordspoint was published in 1987. Swordspoint and its sequel (co-authored by Sherman) The Fall of the Kings (2002), are mannerpunk novels set in a nameless imaginary capital city and its raffish district of Riverside, where swordsmen-for-hire ply their trade. She has written another sequel set 18 years after Swordspoint, called The Privilege of the Sword, which was published in July 2006. A hardcover first of The Privilege of the Sword was published in late August 2006 by Small Beer Press.

Kushner's second novel, Thomas the Rhymer, won the World Fantasy Award and the Mythopoeic Award in 1991. She has also published short stories and poetry in various anthologies, including The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror and The Borderland Series of urban fantasy anthologies for teenage readers.

In 2002, she released a CD of her story "The Golden Dreydl: A Klezmer Nutcracker," which uses music from Pyotr Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker" to tell a Hanukkah story. The music on the CD is performed by Shirim Klezmer Orchestra. "The Golden Dreydl" won a Gracie Award from American Women in Radio and Television.

With Delia Sherman and others, she is actively involved in the Interstitial art movement. She is also a member of the Endicott Studio.

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