Farah Mendlesohn


Farah Jane Mendlesohn is a British academic historian and writer on science fiction and fantasy literature, and an active science fiction fan.

Scholarly career

Mendlesohn was born in Manchester. She joined Staffordshire University in November 2016 as Prof & Assistant Dean, Law, Policing, Forensics & Sociology. She was previously employed as Professor and Head of Department in the Department of English, Communication, Film and Media at Anglia Ruskin University. Prior to that she was Reader in Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature in the Media Department at Middlesex University. She writes on the history of American religions and British and American science fiction and fantasy. She received her D. Phil. in History from the University of York in 1997. She was the editor of Foundation - The International Review of Science Fiction from 2002 to 2007. She used to be reviews editor of Quaker Studies.

Awards and nominations

In 2005 she won the Hugo Award for Best Related Work for The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, which she edited with historian Edward James. James and Mendlesohn also edited The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature, released in 2012, and wrote A Short History of Fantasy in 2009.
Her book Rhetorics of Fantasy won the BSFA award for best non-fiction book in 2009; the book was also nominated for Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.
In 2010 she was nominated twice for the Best Related Book Hugo, for The Inter-Galactic Playground: A Critical Study of Children's and Teens' Science Fiction, and for On Joanna Russ.
In 2017, she was nominated for a World Fantasy Special Award—Professional for Children's Fantasy Literature: An Introduction.

Science fiction conventions

She is an active volunteer member of the administration for science fiction conventions. Among other events, she co-chaired ConCussion, the 2006 Eastercon, with Simon Bradshaw; and was director of program for Anticipation and the Montreal World Science Fiction Convention in 2009; She was on the convention committee of Loncon 3, the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention, until she resigned over the declaration that Jonathan Ross would be master of ceremonies for the presentation of the Hugo Awards; she remained division head for the convention's exhibits hall.

Heinlein study

In 2017, Mendlesohn announced that her forthcoming critical study of Robert Heinlein would be published by the crowdfunding publisher Unbound, and that if the funding exceeded the target any surplus would be divided between America's Blood Centers and Con or Bust. the pledges had exceeded the target by 18%. The book was published in 2019, under the title The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein.

Selected works

;As author
;As editor