Joe Abercrombie | |
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Abercrombie at Eurocon in 2012
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Born |
Lancaster, England |
31 December 1974
Occupation | Novelist |
Nationality | British |
Education | Lancaster Royal Grammar School |
Alma mater | University of Manchester |
Period | 2004–present |
Genre | Fantasy |
Notable works |
The First Law Shattered Sea |
Website | |
joeabercrombie |
Joe Abercrombie (born 31 December 1974) is a British fantasy writer and film editor. He is the author of a trilogy called The First Law and other fantasy books in the same setting. In 2014 he published Half a King, the first book in his new Shattered Sea series, which won the 2015 Locus Award for best Young Adult book.
Abercrombie was born in Lancaster, England. He was educated at Lancaster Royal Grammar School and Manchester University, where he studied psychology.
Abercrombie had a job making tea at a television production company before taking up a career as a freelance film editor. As a freelance film editor, Abercrombie found himself with more free time than he previously had. With this time, he decided to reconsider a story plot he had dreamed up in his University days that had once been scrapped. The idea had started out six years prior as a result of Abercrombie's dream of "single-handedly redefining the fantasy genre". He began writing The Blade Itself in 2002, completing it in 2004. It took a year of rejection by publishing agencies before Gillian Redfearn of Gollancz accepted the book for a five-figure deal in 2005 ("a seven-figure deal if you count the pence columns"). It was published by Gollancz in 2006 and was followed in the succeeding two years by two other books in the trilogy, by the titles of Before They Are Hanged and Last Argument of Kings,respectively. In 2008, Joe Abercrombie was "a finalist for the John W. Campbell award for best new writer"; that same year Abercrombie was one of the contributors to the BBC Worlds of Fantasy series, alongside other contributors such as Michael Moorcock, Terry Pratchett and China Miéville. In 2009, Abercrombie released the novel Best Served Cold. It is set in the same world as The First Law Trilogy but is a stand-alone novel. He followed with The Heroes (2011) and Red Country (2012), both again set in the world of the First Law Trilogy. Abercrombie lives in Bath, Somerset with his wife and three children.