Pat Cadigan and Nicola Griffith have been writing bold, boundary-pushing, and award-winning SFF since the 1990s, when the genre was overwhelmingly male and pale. Pat and Nicola have each carved out celebrated careers and published on their own terms despite society’s dictates. 

Given their unique perspectives on gender, genre, and the shifting culture of SFF over several decades, I asked Pat and Nicola to reflect on what’s changed, what hasn’t, and where such fierce determination to take up space came from.

Pat Cadigan

Pat Cadigan has won the Arthur C. Clarke Award twice, for her novels Synners and Fools, and the Scribe Award three times, most recently for her novelisation of Ultraman. Her short fiction has won many awards, including a Hugo for her 2013 novelette, “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi.” A pioneer of cyberpunk, Pat works across genres, including fantasy, horror, nonfiction, and YA. 

Author of the science fiction classics Ammonite and Slow River, as well as seven other novels, Nicola Griffith has won the Nebula Award, the Tiptree Award, the World Fantasy Award, six Lambda Literary Awards, and many others. In recognition of her significant contributions to SFF, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association named her their 41st Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master in 2025.

Kerry Ryan: Where did you find the confidence to write SFF at a time when the cultural climate wasn’t just discouraging but actively hostile?

Nicola Griffith

Nicola Griffith: Psychotic self-belief! I knew from—I don’t even know how old I was—maybe as soon as I could spell my own name, that I was a dyke, and that meant I was never, ever going to be liked in that “ideal” way. Not as a nice Catholic girl. Not by my family, my church, my school, or the world in general at that time. There was no point trying to please people, because I never would, just because of who I am and the way I move through the world. It was impossible. So why bother trying? Why not aim for what I wanted? 

Pat Cadigan: I grew up below the poverty line in what people called a “bad neighbourhood.” People would take one look at me and assume I’d get pregnant at fifteen, drop out, and end up in beauty school. That was the trajectory they imagined for girls like me. 

My mother used to say, “People will see you as the child of a broken home. And if you get into trouble, they’ll blame me. So don’t screw up or I’ll kill you.” She was only half joking. But I had her as a model because we didn’t get abandoned by my father, we left him. 

So that was my example: If things aren’t going the way you want them to, that’s just how it is—and so you fight. Either you get what you want, or you discover something else that’s worth wanting. What I saw growing up was women doing whatever needed to be done and not because they had money, or men, or family support, but because that was the only option. You want something? You make it happen.

Nicola Griffith: I just never absorbed gender training. Along with my sisters I had a super-Catholic family upbringing, heavy and repeated gender training: you were meant to be modest and wear sweet dresses, sit up straight but don’t take up any space, listen respectfully, never disagree, you know, all that stuff. So I did always know what was appropriate; I just didn't give a fuck. 

Pat Cadigan: My mother said: “If you're going to be a writer, you’re going to have to be ten times better just to compete with men who are barely competent.” And later in life, the writer Mary Anne Mohanraj said to me, “Pat, you have the confidence of a mediocre white man.” I just cracked up laughing. By then I was in my sixties, and let me tell you, it took a long time to earn that kind of confidence. It didn’t come easy. I had to fight through a lot to get there. But I did get there, and I was lucky in that I always knew who I was: I was a writer. Once I understood that books came from people who wrote them, I knew I was going to be one of those people. That was it. There was no turning back. I was just that driven.

Nicola Griffith: When I was 14 or so, my English teacher Mrs. Squires told me that I wrote the best descriptive prose she’d ever seen in her life. She said, “What are you going to do when you grow up? Where are you going to go study English?” And I was like, “Oh no, I’m going to do molecular biology or microbiology," (though I only lasted a few weeks at university), and she said: “Well, just keep writing.”

And then I fell in love and, of course, the only way properly to express love to one’s beloved is poetry. So I wrote some poems, and some of those poems later became lyrics for a band I was in, and it was when I was in the band, I learned that my words could do things to people. One of the lyrics that really showed that to me was from our band’s big anthem, “Reclaim the Night.” That song is where I first really understood the power of point of view. I wrote it from the perspective of a man out looking for a woman to rape. After I performed it for the first time, some people came up to me and said, “It’s an incredible song,” but they also said, “I hated being in his head.” I was twenty-one when I wrote that and it taught me so much about perspective—how just shifting the point of view can completely change a reader or listener’s experience of a story.

And then when the band broke up, as bands always do, I was hooked on this writing thing.

Pat Cadigan: I was a theatre major in university—at least for part of the time—and I also did a couple of semesters in grad school, in the English department. But even then, I realised I wasn’t really an academic. It was time for me to get off campus and go write. By that point, I was at the University of Kansas, studying under Jim Gunn—and Jim was terrific. He wasn’t sexist at all, which was remarkable, especially considering he was of my mother’s generation, born in 1923. He treated me with real respect and taught me a lot about writing, but also a lot about how to encourage writing students. 

When I taught at places like Clarion West, I’d always remember how Jim Gunn spoke to me in a way that made me really listen. Even when he was tearing a story apart and showing me just how bad it was, I never felt crushed or defeated. He took the effort seriously, he took my ideas seriously. He was a very quiet man, but he probably influenced a huge number of students.

I also had an amazing English teacher in high school—I had her for two different years—who encouraged me like nobody’s business. She was wonderful. She’d give me good critique, but she pushed me and encouraged me to keep writing. She was like, “Well, what else are you going to do, besides be a writer?” She really seemed to understand me as a writer, which was amazing.

So I had some great influences that helped counteract the cultural biases women often run into. That made a huge difference.

Kerry Ryan: In 2015, Nicola analysed six major literary prizes and found that even when women won, it was for novels with male protagonists, revealing a cultural bias where the most prestigious awards rarely recognized stories by or about women.

So how have things changed since then and since you were both first published in the 1990s?

Pat Cadigan: When I was starting out, there were hardly any women science fiction writers. There were a few that had made names for themselves but there really weren’t that many. In popular anthologies like Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions, very few stories were by women. 

Kim Stanley Robinson told me that when he started to publish, his editors made him write, not as Kim Robinson, but as Kim Stanley Robinson because they were afraid readers might think he was a woman and not buy his books. And the first time I taught at Clarion West, a student told me that she’d given her boss Synners to read because she thought it was his kind of thing. When he gave it back to her, he said: “This is a woman without any femininity at all.” That’s what it was like back then. 

Nicola Griffith: I remember thinking a couple of years ago that there had been a sea change in terms of representation. There are definitely more stories about women and by women around these days. There are more stories about and by queer people, more stories by and about disabled people, people of colour, trans people, overworked and underpaid people—there’s just much more variety. 

Pat Cadigan: Once we were out of the nineties, I really began to see things shift. I remember moderating a panel and looking down at the line of writers and out of five, four of them were women and they were writing hard science fiction—space travel, technical detail, the whole deal—and not all of them were white either. And I thought wow, it’s been a long, strange trip, but things really have changed for the better.

Nicola Griffith: But I do feel though that we’re witnessing a backlash. That the pendulum has begun to swing in the other direction. Obviously, the political climate and the wave of anti-DEI sentiment sweeping America is deeply troubling. What’s just as disturbing is how people are pre-obeying: anticipating what they think those in power want, and adjusting their actions before anyone even asks. Self-censorship. That’s really disheartening.

Pat Cadigan: I’ll just say it: I blame Trump. I absolutely blame Trump for everything. I bumped my head this morning, and I blame him for that too. I still can’t quite believe that the same country that elected Barack Obama twice turned around and gave us that. So, it’s three steps forward, two steps back. Yes, there’s been real progress—you can see the difference—but regression is always possible. That’s the danger. That’s what we’ve got to watch out for. And representation matters so much. N.K. Jemisin said that without Octavia Butler she wouldn’t have thought there was a place for her in science fiction. And look at the work she’s done. What an incredible talent she is.

Kerry Ryan: You’ve both written across different genres now, so do you still feel part of the science fiction community?

Pat Cadigan: Oh yes. There has always been a lot of community in genre writing. Always. Online has changed the interface and made it easier for people to find each other, but the community has always been there. 

And of course, it’s not perfect, you know. But I remember talking to another writer—she was more in the mystery world than science fiction—and she was really nervous about going to this SFF convention we were headed to. I said, “You don’t have to be nervous. They already like you.” And that’s how it turned out. She found people who had already read her work, and the ones who hadn’t, they were eager to. You can find great support in the science fiction community, and as long as you don’t get too clubby or cliquey, you’re okay.

Nicola Griffith: : I feel very much part of the SFF community. And at the same time, genre is just a marketing label. Genre is just a tool. When I have an idea about a place or about people or a concept I want to explore, genre is just the appropriate vehicle to cross the story terrain. At the beginning of my career, I became really interested in a question: Why is it that so many people don’t see women as fully human? And the only real way to explore that idea, through a women-only world, was through science fiction. 

But when I write, I write without concern for genre. I want someone to pick up one of my new books to review and not think, Oh, it’s a new book by a sci-fi author. I’ve written nine novels and only three of them have been SFF. So I want readers to think, Oh, it’s a new Nicola Griffith novel. Where’s it set? What’s it about this time? I want it to be treated as a book by me, and shelved with my other books, not something instantly labelled and categorised and shelved in the "appropriate" section. 

As a reader I don’t give a shit about genre as a marketing category. Truly. I don’t really give a shit whether there’s a pirate on the cover, or someone in a Regency dress, or someone with a Stetson. It doesn’t matter. I just want good fiction. Having said that, SFF is my home—the people, writers, readers, critics. Science fiction people—they’re my people. SFF is where I belong. 

Kerry Ryan: Any final thoughts on the writing process?

Nicola Griffith: When I teach writing, one of the most important things I say is: You are God of your world. You. Not your agent, not your editor, not your sweetie, not your kids or your parents—you. So, make sure you’re happy with whatever leaves the house. If you're not happy with a book or a story, don’t send it anywhere until you are. If you don’t want to sign a contract, don’t sign a contract. Trusting yourself is the most important thing.

Pat Cadigan: The way I look at it is, I don’t really have problems. I have some technical difficulties, sure, but not problems. Like needing a lawyer so I don’t go to jail—that’s a problem. Technical difficulties can always be addressed, things can always be done, adjusted, changed. No defeat is final.

Anxiety and worry are hard work, so I just don’t do that. I still feel as driven as I ever was and that drive to write—that’s my life preserver, the thing that keeps me afloat. If I have that, then it’s as I said: No defeat is ever final. 

Pat and Nicola were interviewed separately and their responses edited for clarity and presented together. Thank you so much, Pat and Nicola! 

Editors: Anneke Schwob.

Copy Editors: Copy Editing Department.