LONG BIO
C. S. E. Cooney (she/her) is a two-time World Fantasy Award-winning author: first, for Bone Swans: Stories, and most recently for Saint Death’s Daughter (on Kirkus Review’s list of Year’s Science Fiction and Best Fantasy 2022). Other work includes The Twice-Drowned Saint, Dark Breakers, Desdemona and the Deep, and poetry collection How to Flirt in Faerieland and Other Wild Rhymes, which includes her Rhysling Award-winning poem “The Sea King’s Second Bride.”
As a voice actor, Cooney has narrated over 120 audiobooks, and short fiction for podcasts such as Uncanny Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Podcastle. As singer/songwriter Brimstone Rhine, she crowdfunded for two EPs: Alecto! Alecto! and The Headless Bride, and produced one album, Corbeau Blanc, Corbeau Noir.
Her plays have been performed in several countries: most recently, March 2023, a collaborative sci-fi musical Ballads from a Distant Star at New York City’s Arts on Site. Her short fiction and poetry can be found in many speculative fiction magazines and anthologies, most recently: “A Minnow or Perhaps a Colossal Squid,” in Paula Guran’s Year’s Best Fantasy Volume 1, “Snowed In,” in Bridge To Elsewhere, and “Megaton Comics Proudly Presents: Cap and Mia, Episode One: “Captain Comeback Saves the Day!” in The Sunday Morning Transport—all in collaboration with her husband, writer and game-designer Carlos Hernandez.
Cooney and Hernandez (collectively: the Hernandooneys) co-designed a table-top roleplaying game co-designed by called Negocios Infernales. It crowdfunded on Kickstarter in under 12 hours, and is forthcoming from Outland Entertainment in 2024.
Find her here at csecooney.com, on LinkTree, at @csecooney on Twitter and IG, on Facebook at facebook.com/cscooney, on her Amazon Author Page, or at Goodreads.
MEDIUM BIO
C. S. E. Cooney (she/her) is a two-time World Fantasy Award-winning author: for her novel Saint Death’s Daughter, and for her collection Bone Swans, Stories. Other work includes The Twice-Drowned Saint, Dark Breakers, and Desdemona and the Deep. As a voice actor, Cooney has narrated over 120 audiobooks, as well as short fiction for podcasts such as Uncanny Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Tales to Terrify, and Podcastle. In March 2023, she produced her collaborative sci-fi musical, Ballads from a Distant Star, at New York City’s Arts on Site. (Find her other music at Bandcamp under Brimstone Rhine.) Forthcoming from Outland Entertainment in 2024 is the GM-less TTRPG Negocios Infernales (“the Spanish Inquisition… INTERRUPTED by aliens!”), which she co-designed with her husband, writer and game-designer Carlos Hernandez. Find her website and Substack newsetter via her Linktree or try “csecooney” on various social media platforms.
SHORT BIO
C. S. E. Cooney is a two-time World Fantasy Award-winning author, a Rhysling Award-winning poet, a game designer, an audiobook narrator, and the singer-songwriter Brimstone Rhine. Find her on social media via her LinkTree https://linktr.ee/csecooney
C.S.E. Cooney 
Hi there! The Bill Memorial Library is interested in having you do a storytelling program. (We met through Flock and I alerted the library director to your recent publication of Bone Swans.) Do you mind shooting me an email and we can talk particulars?
Thanks!
Karla
Thank you so much, Karla! I went ahead and sent you an email.
Pingback: Bone Swans, by C.S.E. Cooney | the Little Red Reviewer
Dear C.S.E,
Might you be interested in the prospect of literary representation into major trade publishing? To tell you a little bit about our literary agency, which closes more deals for authors than any other agency worldwide:
http://www.tridentmediagroup.com/
Trident Media Group (TMG) is a prominent literary agency located in New York City. TMG represents over 800 bestselling and emerging authors in a range of genres of fiction and nonfiction, many of whom have appeared on the New York Times Best Sellers Lists and have won major awards and prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the P.E.N. Faulkner Award, the P.E.N. Hemingway Award, The Booker Prize, and the L.A. Times Book Award, among others. TMG is one of the world’s leading, largest and most diversified literary agencies. For more than six consecutive years, TMG continues to rank number one for sales according to publishersmarketplace.com in North America. TMG is the only U.S. literary agency to be in the top ten in both UK fiction and UK non-fiction.
I look forward to hearing from you.
All the best,
Mark
Mark Gottlieb
Literary Agent
Trident Media Group, LLC
41 Madison Avenue, Floor 36
New York, NY 10010
(212) 333-1506
http://tridentmediagroup.com/
Thanks so much for your interest! I’ll keep you in mind. – csec
I want to buy your books, but I try to shop indy bookstores for hard copies. However, I have a lot of trouble finding authors like you and Catriona Ward. Do you, or anyone that has time to entertain this question, know why that’s happening, and how I can get around it if that’s possible?
Hi, Tracy! I don’t have much out; which books are you finding it difficult to find/buy? The indie bookstore I use is the Savoy, and I know they carry Bone Swans, Desdemona and the Deep, and The Sinister Quartet (that’s three novellas by other fine writers and my latest, short novel). Are you looking for some other book in particular?
Thanks for the response. Embarrassingly, this is largely a search fail on my part. I initially was doing a title search only of earlier out of print stuff, then I switched to author search, and unless it was ebook, I got no returns. I thought I had done a title search for Desdemona and the Deep, but I must not have spelled it correctly because it’s coming up with it in the search returns now that I’ve double checked.
Hello,
I am looking for a way to get in contact with you about using a poem of yours in my upcoming feminist scifi publication. Would be thrilled if you could email me back so I can tell you about it.
Hoping to hear from you,
Scarlett
Dear Scarlett,
I just dropped you an email! Please let me know if you receive it.
– Claire
Dear C.S.E,
Congratulations for the Nebula Nomination!
My name is Renne. I’m an editor of Science Fiction World Magazine(China). I want to introduce your story to Chinese readers by reprinting it on our magazine. Could you perhaps drop me an email so that we can talk about details? I would be honored to hear back from you.
Renne Chon
Dear C.S.E.:
Congratulations for the Nebula Nomination!
My name is Renne. I’m an editor of Science Fiction World Magazine(China). I want to introduce your story to Chinese readers by reprinting it on our magazine. Could you perhaps drop me an email so that we can talk about details? I would be honored to hear from you.
Renne Chon
Renne,
Thank you so much for this opportunity; it was such a pleasure working with you.
Warm regards,
Claire
Hi,
My name is Marcin Zwierzchowski, I’m and editor at “Nowa Fantastyka” – Polish magazine. I would like to publish “The Bone Swans…”.
Please contact me at: marcinzwierzchowski@fantastyka.pl
Best wishes,
Marcin
Thank you for your interest; I dropped you an email.
This seems as good a place as any to drop you a fan letter. I am an IP attorney, but unlike many of the posters I’m not looking for anything from you–just wanted to express my appreciation for your work. There is so much dross in sci-fi and fantasy today that I approach any new author I haven’t heard of with more than a little trepidation. I am pleased to say, however, that the Bone Swans and the collection of stories that came with it were a breath of fresh air. And each so different! As you sped off in a new direction with each story, I found myself quickly sucked in. Too many sci-fi and fantasy writers milk their universes dry of any joy or freshness, but I found myself wanting to hear more about Dora, and Beatrice, and the Milkmaid, and your other characters, even though their stories were self-contained. Keep up the good work!
Dear Mr. Grierson,
I am so pleased that Bone Swans gave you some joy; I too sometimes have extended plans for the characters beyond the scope of the story. Even if they never get written, it pleases me to imagine their lives (or afterlives) spinning out and out, having adventures and meeting friends I haven’t even yet conceived of. Thank you so much for dropping me a line, and for reading! I hope you find more gold than dross in your quest for a good read.
Warm regards,
C. S. E. Cooney
Dear Ms. Cooney..
Just a message to let you know how much I enjoyed your short story ‘Braiding the Ghosts’ in BSF&F 2011. This is of course several years old at this point, but as the saying goes, “It’s new to me.” Nashville and Knoxville are both blessed with one of the best curated used book stores in the world (McKay’s) and I often find treasures in those aisles. To speak from a personal level, I am a disabled writer and ‘outsider’ musician, and I’m often well-behind where I’d like to be, artistically. So, perhaps to make up for my own slow creative output (I tell myself it is simply for ‘research’), I read a great deal. Your incredible story reminded me of some magical concoction of Peter Pan, Doris Burn’s ‘Summerfolk’, Neil Gaimon’s ‘Graveyard’ book, and my own memories of exploring my grandmother’s antebellum attic. Except of course that its magic is unique. Your story, I’m honest enough to admit, inspired a bit of good-natured jealousy and pangs for young years wasted not knowing what I was meant to do, as well as inspiring me with your work ethic. For years I have wondered if I could be writer of stories AND poems, a musician AND painter, et cetera –all and at once. I see I can be, as you are! Thanks for the wonderful experience.
Gregory Purvis aka James Edgar Purvis
Dear Mr. Purvis,
Thank you so much for your letter! I am sorry it took me so long to reply!
I too am often very far behind where I want to be. I have a bit of background in voice training, but was never trained as what I’d consider a “legitimate musician.” I have very simple tunes in my head; if I have a strength, it’s in lyrics. I am frustrated by not being able to do all the things I want to do–not only well, or competently, but brilliantly! But I suppose that forces me into collaboration, which I think is a kind of magic in and of itself, though a different kind of hard work.
I remember the day I came up with the idea of “Braiding the Ghosts.” I wanted it to be a short story, but like so many of my “short” stories, it grew long and longer. I submitted it many times, with many rejection slips. Finally Mike Allen accepted it, though with a great deal of fine edits. A great editor is worth his weight in saffron! I was so honored to fall under his aegis.
I hope you continue to explore and research, and most of all–to create. Like Sondheim writes in “Sunday in the Park with George”: “Anything you do, let it come from you.
Then it will be new.
Give us more to see…”
Claire Suzanne Elizabeth Cooney
Dear Ms. Cooney: I am Robert Rodriquez. We spoke on the radio show. I am interested in reviewing your collection “Bone Swans”, and I have ballad books to send you and information on ballad resources. My telephone number is (212) 862-3526 any evening between 7pm and midnight. My email address is RodriquezRobert81@yahoo.com Thank You. Robert
Hi, Robert! Sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you. If you want to review a copy of Bone Swans, you might apply to my publisher Mike Allen at Mythic Delirium (mythicdelirium.com) for an electronic copy, or wait until the Audio Book version comes out at the end of February through Tantor Media, which will be available both on CD and on Audible as a download. The “Ballads from the Distant Stars” project is not something I’m working on currently, but would appreciate book titles so I can add to my library when the time comes. I’m not much one for phone calls! Take care and thank you for your interest!
C.S.E.,
“Bone Swans” is highlighted today on eBookDaily.com:
http://ebookdaily.com/bargain-kindle-books/2017-03-10/B00XV5QVUE
-Ofer
HAIR TRIGGER would like to have permission to reprint your story “Glass Eyes” (from issue 29) in the 40th Anniversary issue of Hair Trigger 40.
May we have your permission? C Jacobs, Managing Editor
Hi, Cora!
MY GOODNESS I WROTE THAT A LONG TIME AGO. Gosh, will there be a CAVEAT? But sure thing–I shall send you an email, and you can tell me more about what that entails. Thanks for reaching out — C. S. E. Cooney
Pingback: “Dogstar Men” – C. S. E. Cooney | Novel Niche: A Place for Books
Hi there! Thank you again for the wonderful narration on my Stormy Day series. Can you drop me an email sometime about picking up those characters again and doing book #5?
Hi back, Ms. Pepper: I have written to you via your email admin provided on your website. I hope the information helps! I loved narrating your books; they cracked me up! – Claire
Dear Ms. Cooney,
I’m hoping to get in touch with you regarding a forthcoming anthology of poetry about spaceflight; my co-editor and I are interested in including your wonderful poem “Dogstar Men.” I would be happy to provide full details by email.
Thank you, Julie
Thank you for thinking of me, Julie! Please find me at csecooney @ gmail dot com
Pingback: Nightmares Unearthed: A Contemporary Horror Reading – Free Online Event 3/27/21 – Archives of a Horror Fiend
Dear Ms. Cooney,
First, I wanted to say that your work is immersive, evocative, creative, beautiful, and everything I want out of speculative fiction. I recommend it at the drop of a hat. Thank you for producing such wonderful art for the world!
If you have the time, I have a quick questions for you. In the introduction to Bone Swans, Gene Wolfe mentions that, “there is a select type of student, rare but invaluable, who will certainly succeed if not run down by a truck… I have had two of those, and Claire is one.”
Any idea who the other one was?
Alas, if I ever did, I have forgotten. I bet Gene had more than two, at that—I don’t think he was above literary hyperbole for the sake of a friend. He had so many students and correspondents over the years that “the other” might be whoever the “one” wasn’t. But, saying that, I also wonder if his daughter Teri might know. I knew him for only 20 tears, and that is hardly anything in the grand course of his generous life.
I spent so much time answering your second question, I forgot to thank you for the first enormous compliment! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!
Pingback: 30 QUEER BOOKS TO READ IN 2022 AND 2023 – OUT OF THE CLOSET – L E O S T H E T I C S
Pingback: Reading Challenges I’m Doing in 2023 – bookforager
Dear CSE Cooney,
I have been meaning to reach out to you regarding an audiobook narration project. Would be super cool if you could be available for one. Please let me know via email. We can discuss your rates and pricing etc.
Hey, Theo! You can email me at csecooney (at) gmail (dot) com, if you like. Thank you! – csec
Oooh I love Bonus Cuts & Special Features as much as parenthetical asides and footnotes 💞💞💞
Of course you do, Mama! You hear every draft!
I don’t know if you know this, but you commented on the About section rather than the specific blog. I see all things anyway so it doesn’t much matter to me!
Claire, I know about your work b/c of your dad, who brags on you always on FB (as I’m sure you’re well aware). Fantasy is not my primary genre as I write contemporary women’s fiction myself, but I enjoyed Bone Swans and I just finished Saint Death’s Daughter–holy moly, woman, that was a great read on a lot of levels, not the least of which was that it felt like the kind of character-driven fiction I write, too. I could list out everything I loved, but I just wanted to reach out quickly and congratulate you on the award and on the book!
-Kathleen Basi
Hallo, Kathleen! Thank you so much for reaching out, AND for reading outside your preferred genre! That’s huge! I myself read a lot of romances and mysteries, some horror, but not a lot of contemporary literature—just because there’s just so much! But if you have something out that I should read, please let me know! Again, thank you for reading!! And for the congratulations!
Dear Claire,
I am a French publisher and I would like to talk about the French rights for one of your books. Please, email me, I would be honored 🙂
Best,
x.
Dear CSE Cooney,
I attended the CWA Writer’s conference last year and had the pleasure to meet Lea Grover. In the course of conversation, she mentioned that she has a friend who has published plenty of stories in the same genre as myself and that I should check out your work.
I thoroughly enjoyed “Desdemona and the Deep” and have “Saint Death’s Daughter” on my to-be-read list. Your prose is really fun to read and the characters were so unique, ranging from human characters like Chaz and non-human like Farklewhit.
My debut novel, “Curse of Flame”, is coming out later this year and I would love to send you the manuscript for a potential blurb. The release date is being nailed down, but it won’t be any sooner than September 2024. and I would be honored to earn your endorsement of my work with a blurb.
In my story, Olivia rejected her magic after she was nearly sacrificed to the primeval elements for the power they offer. In the years since, she dedicated herself to the family farm, surrounded by wind-blown ruins, and will assume ownership within days. Her magic is a distant memory until a mysterious war relic afflicts her with a fiery curse that will kill her within weeks. Thrust out of her familiar world, Olivia’s problems have only begun. Faldir, a ruthless cultist, pursues the same relic. If she claims it, she will wreak havoc across their world. As the curse pushes Olivia to the brink, she must unleash her untamed magic to stop Faldir, even if it might fuel the curse that is killing her.
Your endorsement would mean a great deal to me and would help introduce my work to readers. I would be looking for a six month turnaround, so no sooner than September.
Sincerely,
Jacob Von Tobel
Hi, Jacob! I adore Lea! Congratulations on your novel! Thank you for reading DESDEMONA!
Right now I’ve just done six months of blurbing one or two novels a month. Both my husband and I have been talking about both of us “just saying no to blurbs” for, like, the NEXT six months (as much as we can), so we can do some other kinds of reading.
I also have about three other deadlines for writing, and a few other blurbs already promised, so I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed. 🙂 It’s not always like this, but it is this year.
I love reading for blurbs, and it’s part of awesome community building… it does, for me, however, sometimes create a sort of ongoing anxiety, like I’m not allowed to read anything else until I get THAT reading done and also write something wonderful about it.
I’d love to get an ARC of your book and see if I have time for it. And if I don’t get to it in time to write a blurb, maybe I can get to it in time to make some happy noise about it when it comes out!
Thank you for writing! Please send me an e-ARC at csecooney @ gmail dot com!
– Claire
Thanks for the response! I will certainly pass along an ARC copy and I appreciate the offer!
Feel free to reach out anytime and I hope you get some time to relax with some good books!
Best
Jacob