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Becky Chambers (born May 3, 1985) is an American science fiction writer. She is the author of the Hugo Award-winning Wayfarers series as well as novellas including To Be Taught, If Fortunate (2019) and the Monk & Robot series, which begins with the Hugo Award-winning A Psalm for the Wild-Built (2021). She is known for her innovative worldbuilding and character-driven stories, and is a pioneer of the hopepunk genre.

Early life, family and education

Chambers was born in 1985 in Southern California and grew up in Torrance. Chambers' family included several people with an interest in various NASA space exploration efforts. Her parents are an astrobiology educator and a satellite engineer. 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.

She moved to San Francisco to study theater arts at the University of San Francisco.

Career

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 Hodder & Stoughton and Harper Voyager to pick up and republish the novel. The novel was the first book in the Wayfarers 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 has announced that the Wayfarers series has concluded.

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. The first book, A Psalm for the Wild-Built, was published in May 2021. The story introduced Dex, a travelling tea monk, and Mosscap, a sentient robot. The second book, A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, was published in July 2022 and continued the story of Dex and Mosscap.

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 alternately criticized and praised for the deliberate, character-driven pacing and lack of the propulsive plots typical of other space opera novels.

Personal life

Chambers lived in Iceland and Scotland before returning to California, where she currently resides with her wife, Berglaug Asmundardottir, in Humboldt County.