Lois McMaster Bujold was born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1949. She has two
brothers, eight years and six years older than she is. She has been
a voracious reader all her life, beginning with stories about
horses
(she had her own pony as a child), and discovering adult science
fiction at the age of nine. She tried several majors in
college,
including
English, which she drifted away from because she preferred
creative writing to literary criticism, and
biology - while studying
biology she went on a six-week field trip of East Africa which later
supplied some of the
landscape and wildlife for her first novel,
Shards of Honor.
After leaving college she had a job as a pharmacy technician, and then
left to start her family. She was inspired to start writing
professionally when she heard that her best friend, Lillian Stewart
Carl, had sold some stories. She was unemployed with two small
children at the time, so at first she had to write while the
children were taking naps, or go to the library to work.
Most of her books belong to the Vorkosigan Series and are listed
below. She has also written Dreamweaver's Dilemma, a collection of
short stories and essays, and The Spirit Ring, an Italianate
fantasy. Her next book, The Curse of Chalion, is an unrelated
fantasy and is scheduled to come out in July 2001.
What I like best about her Vorkosigan series is that Miles Vorkosigan changes with time and goes through a radical career change in "Memory". People who don't like the violence and the military action in her earlier books might like her new books "Komarr" and "A Civil Campaign" which are more focussed on character-centred drama and romance.