Lucy Jane Bledsoe is a novelist and science writer. When she's not writing, she's sea kayaking in Alaska, backpacking in the Rockies, or backcountry skiing in the Sierras. When she's not kayaking, hiking, or skiing, she's reading.

In 2009, her short fiction won the Sherwood Anderson Prize for Fiction, the Arts & Letters First Prize in Fiction, and the International Arts Movement First Prize in Fiction.  See a couple of her prize-winning stories here on her Red Room page.

Bledsoe's newest novel, BITING THE APPLE, came out in Fall 2007. She is the author of three other novels: SWEAT: STORIES AND A NOVELLA, WORKING PARTS, and THIS WILD SILENCE. She is also the author of five novels for children: THE BIG BIKE RACE, TRACKS IN THE SNOW (winner of the Parents Choice Gold Award), COUGAR CANYON, HOOP GIRLZ (one of BOOKLIST'S "Top Ten Youth Sports Books" for 2002), and THE ANTARCTIC SCOOP. Her novels have been translated into Japanese, Spanish, and German, and her stories into Dutch and Chinese.

Her fiction has won a California Arts Council Individual Fellowship in Literature, an American Library Association Award for Literature, and has been a three-time finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. She's also won a PEN Syndicated Fiction Award, a National Endowment for the Humanities Youthgrant, a Barbara Deming Memorial Money for Women grant, a Puffin Foundation grant, and two National Science Foundation Artists & Writers in Antarctica Fellowships.

Bledsoe has traveled to Antarctica three times. The first two times she went as a recipient of the National Science Foundation's Artists & Writers in Antarctica fellowship, living and working at McMurdo Station, Palmer Station, and Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, as well as in field camps in the Transantarctic mountains. She spent time with scientists studying penguins, seals, global warming, and the Big Bang.

Her Antarctic books include THE ICE CAVE: A WOMAN'S ADVENTURES FROM THE MOJAVE TO THE ANTARCTIC and HOW TO SURVIVE IN ANTARCTICA.

Bledsoe's work has been widely published in anthologies and periodicals, such as MS., NEWSDAY, FICTION INTERNATIONAL, ZYZZYVA, BLOOM, LODESTAR QUARTERLY, WIG MAGAZINE, GIRLFRIENDS, BLITHE HOUSE QUARTERLY, CALIFORNIA WILD, and NORTHWEST LITERARY FORUM.

Her science writing includes CD-ROM scripts for NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC and The George Lucas Education Foundation, as well as curriculum for the SETI Institute's Voyages Through Time project.

Lucy Jane Bledsoe is the editor of several anthologies, including GODDESSES WE AIN'T: TENDERLOIN WOMEN WRITERS (Freedom Voices Press, 1992) and three collections of writings by newly literate adults.