Becky Chambers (author)

Becky Chambers (born 3 May 1985) is an American science fiction writer, and the author of the Hugo-award winning "Wayfarers" series. She is known for her imaginative world-building and character-driven stories.
Career.
Chambers' family included several people with an interest in various NASA space exploration efforts, and she became fascinated with 'space' and its exploration at an early age. During her youth, after she first encountered a person who believed that such programs were unwise and that their funding would be better applied to solving Earth's problems, she began studying in detail humans’ efforts to explore the cosmos, concluding that these efforts were commendable, although the present methods of funding could be improved. This deep analysis provided much inspiration for her writing.
Chambers worked in theater management and as a freelance writer before self-publishing her first novel, "The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet" in 2014, after successfully raising funds on Kickstarter. The novel received critical acclaim and a Kitschies nomination, becoming the first self-published novel to do so. This prompted the novel to be picked up and republished by Hodder & Stoughton and Harper Voyager. The novel was the first book in the "Wayfarer" series, which includes three sequels, "A Closed and Common Orbit", in 2016, "Record of a Spaceborn Few", in 2018, and "The Galaxy and the Ground Within", in 2021. The series won the 2019 Hugo Award for Best Series. She published a novella, "To Be Taught, if Fortunate", in August 2019, with a story that was not connected to the Wayfarers books. In July 2018 it was announced that she signed a two-book deal with Tor Books, with the first book, "A Psalm for the Wild-Built", due to be published in May 2021. She has announced that the 2021 Wayfarers book would conclude that series.
Style and themes.
Her Wayfarers series novels take place in a fictional universe, governed by the Galactic Commons to which humans are relative newcomers. She has been lauded for the strong world-building in the series, including multiple unique alien races. Reviewers have cited her complex and likeable characters who drive the story. Her work has been alternatively criticized and praised for the deliberate, character-driven pacing and lack of the propulsive plots typical of other space opera novels.
Personal life.
Chambers was born in 1985 in Southern California and grew up outside Los Angeles. She moved to San Francisco to study theater arts at the University of San Francisco. She has lived in Iceland and Scotland before returning to California, where she currently resides with her wife.