Becky Chambers is an American science-fiction writer, born in California in 1985, celebrated for warm, character-led 'found family' stories that put kindness and community at the centre of the genre.
Raised in a family steeped in space science and trained in theatre arts at the University of San Francisco, she first published The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet in 2014 after funding it through Kickstarter - one of the earliest self-published novels to be recognised by a major award, which led swiftly to mainstream editions from Hodder & Stoughton and Harper Voyager.
That novel opened the Wayfarers quartet, a gently expansive space opera following the mixed-species crew of a tunnelling ship through a richly imagined galaxy, continued in A Closed and Common Orbit, Record of a Spaceborn Few and The Galaxy, and the Ground Within. Her hopeful, solarpunk Monk & Robot novellas - A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy - and the standalone To Be Taught, If Fortunate have deepened her reputation for optimistic, humane speculative fiction.
She won the Hugo Award for Best Series for Wayfarers in 2019 and a further Hugo, for Best Novella, for A Psalm for the Wild-Built. She lives between California and Iceland, the home of her wife.
