Jane Yolen
Jane Yolen is an American children's writer, novelist, poet, and science fiction writer born in New York City on February 11, 1939.
She attended the High School of Music & Art and Staples High School before going on to study at Smith College and later the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Alongside her writing, she has also worked as an editor, giving her a presence on both sides of the publishing process. Her work spans a wide range of forms and audiences, from poetry and short fiction to novels aimed at young readers and adults alike, all written in English.
Yolen has received a notable range of awards across her career. She received the Nebula Award for Best Short Story as well as the Nebula Award for Best Novelette, recognizing her work in short-form science fiction and fantasy. She also received the Locus Award for Best Young Adult Book, the World Fantasy Award for Best Collection, the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children's Literature, and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature. The Sophie Brody Medal added further recognition to her body of work. Among the most significant honors she has received is the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award, which the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America presents to writers with a long and distinguished body of work in the field.
Her short story "Sister Emily's Lightship" offers a clear example of the kind of territory she returns to across her writing — a blending of speculative fiction with literary character and imagination. Fantasy and science fiction, for both younger and adult readers, form a consistent thread running through her output, and her recognition across multiple award categories in those genres reflects how steadily she has worked within them.
Quotes by Jane Yolen
Jane Yolen's insights on:
The hard bed, the stool beside it, the stark cross on the wall, each cast shadows. Only the man in the bed seemed shadowless. He was the stillest thing in the room.
Come, Ye Women: Oh, come, ye women of the Isles, And listen to my song, For if ye be but thirteen years, Ye’ve not been women long. And if ye be threescore and ten, No longer women be, Or so say all the merry men Who count so cruel-ly. But women we be from our birth, And will be till we die. Our counte is made so differently To give the men that lie. Oh, come, ye women of the Isles, And listen to my song, For we be women all through life, Where life and love are long.
Stories,” he’d said, his voice low and almost husky, “we are made up of stories. And even the one’s that seem the most like lies can be our deepest hidden truths.
The others are all common mouths chattering, empty heads like wooden whistles blowing common tunes.
Even her powders and face paint couldn’t disguise the age lines and gripe lines that ran as deep as the railway tracks some said were bound to cross our mountain any day so.
As Mama once told me, “We called him Boy for the first two months of his life, but when his third-month birthday came around and we saw that sweet smile – especially when you were close to him, reaching out for him – we realized that he had chosen life. So we named him Chaim after your zaide, your grandfather, but also because ‘chaim’ in Hebrew means ‘life.’” I cannot imagine what my life would have been like without my twin.
I contend that good children’s stories are always about the Getting of Wisdom. That’s another way of saying, “Let your characters grow. Up.” And good stories for adults are about the Holding of Wisdom. Another way of saying, “Recognize you are grown up.
Just write. If you have to make a choice, if you say, ‘Oh well, I’m going to put the writing away until my children are grown,’ then you don’t really want to be a writer. If you want to be a writer, you do your writing... If you don’t do it, you probably don’t want to be a writer, you just want to have written and be famous – which is very different.
