Carol Emshwiller

Carol Emshwiller (April 12, 1921 – February 2, 2019) was a writer of avant garde short stories and science fiction who lived in the USA.

Quotes

I don't know where my "meanings" come from. I just try to write a good well formed story. I guess the meaning is just part of me and pops out by itself.

Don't put anything important in your stories you don't use all through. To me, this is what's fun for the writer and fun, too, in reading.

I'm a firm believer that your ideas come from the writing itself. I never have any until I start to write. And my mind is on structure most of the time (and on linking). I used to say that kept my conscious mind busy so my subconscious mind could work on more important things.

Emshwiller's readers know her to be a major fabulist, a marvelous magical realist, one of the strongest, most complex, most consistently feminist voices in fiction. But her books, mostly published by a good small press in San Francisco, Mercury House, don't get wide attention. Part of the problem may well be her calm originality. Most reviewers prefer pigeons that fit in holes and rabbits that redux. Emshwiller's like a wild mixture of Italo Calvino (intellectual games) and Grace Paley (perfect honesty) and Fay Weldon (outrageous wit) and Jorge Luis Borges (pure luminosity), but no—her voice is perfectly her own. She isn't like anybody. She's different.
- Ursula Le Guin review (2001)

The first thing that Carol Emshwiller said to us when she began teaching in the final week of the 2000 Clarion West Writers Workshop was, "Practice doesn't make perfect. Practice makes permanent." This was the first clue I had to the importance Carol places on precision and refinement.
- Patrick Weekes Interview (2001)

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Carol Emshwiller