Shariann Lewitt would like to say that she has traveled to Africa and Antarctica, gone scuba diving in the caldera of an ancient volcano, and been awakened by a jaguar in her tent in the Costa Rica’s Osa jungle. She would also like you to believe that she studied algebra in graduate school, did evolutionary biology (and ended up doing mostly computation because she hated field work) because she didn’t want anyone to see her faint in lab, and spent several years demonstrating against anything she didn’t like in the streets of her native Manhattan--and continues that habit now. (Well, you got to get some exercise, right?)
She can document the fact that she is the author of nine hard science fiction novels under two names, but has written another eight under three other names that span genres including fantasy and YA. Her short fiction has been published under only three names and in two genres, science fiction and fantasy, and even she isn’t sure how many stories over fifty she has sold. She is sure, though, that the story “Fieldwork” appeared in the Thirty-Fourth Best Science Fiction of the Year, edited by Gardner Dozois. That story was inspired by her own personal preference for doing science in a nice clean lab building with climate control and indoor plumbing.
When she’s not off adventuring, either in her head while seated in a coffee shop in greater Boston, or somewhere remote in the physical world, she impersonates faculty at MIT. She’d like to tell you what she does in her spare time, but she doesn’t have any.