Sherwood Smith


Sherwood Smith is an American fantasy and science fiction writer for young adults and adults. Smith is a Nebula Award finalist and a longtime writing group organizer and participant.
Smith's works include the YA novel Crown Duel. Smith also collaborated with Dave Trowbridge in writing the Exordium series and with Andre Norton in writing two of the books in the Solar Queen universe.
In 2001, her short story "Mom and Dad at the Home Front" was a finalist for the Nebula Award for Best Short Story. Smith's children's books have made it on many library Best Books lists. Her Wren's War was an Anne Spencer Lindbergh Honor Book, and it and The Spy Princess were Mythopoeic Fantasy Award finalists.

Biography

Sherwood Smith was born May 28, 1951 in Glendale, California. On her website, Smith describes herself as a middle-aged woman who has been married for over thirty years. Besides writing, she taught part-time at a K-8 school, though she is now retired. She has "two kids, rescue dogs, and a house full of books."
Smith began making books out of taped paper towels when she was five years old. When she was 8, she started writing about another world, Sartorias-deles, though she soon switched to making comic books of her stories, which she found to be easier. Although she first tried to send out her novels when she was 13, nothing sold. However, some of the novels Smith first wrote as a teen, including Wren to the Rescue, were sold after she learned to rewrite.
In the years it took her to learn to rewrite, Smith "went to college, lived in Europe, came back to get masters in History, worked in Hollywood, got married, started a family and became a teacher." She received her degrees from the University of Southern California in 1973 and the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1977. In 2010 she became a member of Book View Cafe.
Smith currently resides in California.

Partial bibliography

Smith has co-written The Change Series with Rachel Manija Brown.

Books written under other pseudonyms

Smith has written some of the books in the Planet Builders series as Robyn Tallis. She has also written four books in the Nowhere High series as Jesse Maguire and one book in the Horror High series as Nicholas Adams.

Novels

Wren Books

Sartorias-deles is the name of the fictitious world that is the setting for many of the books by Sherwood Smith. It is one of four inhabited planets in the Erhal system. According to Smith, humans first arrived on Sartorias-deles through world gates untold millennia ago. Occasionally, still more humans arrive. However, in non-canon commentaries the author informs readers that most of the early human history on Sartorias-deles has been lost since the so-called Fall of Sartor approximately 4,000 years before the events of the books such as Senrid. Smith does indeed appear to intend these humans be portrayed as having been Terrans prior to their immigration to the Erhal system. For example, in numerous references throughout the stories, they appear to have brought with them several domesticated animal species, including cattle, horses, and dogs, as well as many foods such as coffee, rice, the tomato, and concepts such as the seven-day week.
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