author
Clare Winger Harris
1891–1968
A pioneer of early science fiction, she helped open magazine SF to women writers under their own names. Her stories mixed bold inventions with lively adventure and often gave women unusually active roles for the era.
2 Audiobooks
Persephone of Eleusis: A Romance of Ancient Greece
by Clare Winger Harris
The artificial man
by Clare Winger Harris
About the author
Born in Freeport, Illinois, in 1891, Clare Winger Harris became one of the earliest women to publish science fiction under her own name in the pulp magazines of the 1920s. Her work appeared in magazines such as Amazing Stories and Science Wonder Quarterly, where she wrote imaginative tales about artificial life, space travel, strange technologies, and social change.
What still makes her stand out is the way her fiction often placed women near the center of the action. Even within the limits of early pulp storytelling, she experimented with female viewpoints and capable heroines, which helped set her apart from many of her contemporaries.
Harris published most actively in the late 1920s and is now remembered as an important early voice in American science fiction. She died in Pasadena, California, in 1968, but her reputation has grown over time as readers and scholars have looked back at the women who helped shape the genre's beginnings.