Tamsyn Muir is a New Zealand author of science fiction, fantasy and horror, celebrated for the wild, funny, gothic invention of her Locked Tomb series.
Born in Australia in 1985 but raised in New Zealand from infancy, she trained and worked as an educator, and is a graduate of the Clarion writing workshop; she now lives in Oxford, in England. Her fiction is famous for its irreverent voice, its baroque imagination and its deep streak of grief and devotion.
The Locked Tomb opens with Gideon the Ninth, a genre-defying blend she cheerfully sums up as 'necromancers in space' - a locked-room mystery in a decaying, bone-strewn empire, narrated by a foul-mouthed swordswoman - and continues through Harrow the Ninth and Nona the Ninth toward a concluding Alecto the Ninth. The series has become a phenomenon, its intricate plotting and internet-fluent humour inspiring devoted readers.
Gideon the Ninth won the Locus Award for Best First Novel and the Crawford Award, and was a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. Openly lesbian, Muir married a classics scholar she met through online fandom.
