Lois McMaster Bujold was born in Ohio in 1949. She developed a passion for science fiction at the age of nine and having identified the techniques of the genre, started developing her own style. After a spell as a biologist she turned to writing full time. The author of over twenty works of fiction and non-fiction, her first three novels, Shards of Honour, The Warrior's Apprentice and Ethan of Athos were all published in 1986. Lois has remarked that her plots are often predicated on "the worst possible thing you could do" to a character. She writes with an apparently effortless fluidity of both style and story. Her work repeatedly shifts focus from the successes, exploits and glory of war to their human cost. For Bujold, characterization is the paramount concern and her plots depend both on character and the novums of technology. She humanizes but does not idealize her casts of characters and accomplishes a feat rare in any form of fiction in developing that of her central protagonist, Miles Vorkosigan, throughout the series. We witness him progressively changing and maturing in each successive story. On one hand Lois McMaster Bujold has been compared to Ursula Le Guin by female critics for her strong feminist stance, which she deftly subsumes, rather than overtly preaches in her work; on the other she has been praised by male critics for "writing like a man". Bujold herself, though acknowledging both viewpoints, says she would rather call herself "a human beingist". Lois won the Nebula Award for Falling Free and The Mountains of Mourning and the Hugo Award for The Vor Game, Barrayar, Mirror Dance and The Mountains of Mourning. She was nominated for the John W Campbell Award in 1987. She lives in Minneapolis and has two children.