Jane Yolen obit

Jane Yolen (1939–2026)

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Author Jane Yolen, 87, died peacefully in her home, surrounded by family, in Hatfield MA on June 11, 2026.

Jane Hyatt Yolen was born February 11, 1939 in New York City NY. She graduated Smith College with a BA in 1960, at which time she was already writing poetry and articles, and received a master’s in education from the University of Massachusetts in 1978. Between degrees, in 1962, she married David W. Stemple, and they were married for 44 years before he died of cancer in 2006. She gained attention as a writer through children’s book Pirates in Petticoats (1963), published on her 22nd birthday and went on to write over 450 books and a monumental oeuvre of short fiction and poetry. From 1986 to 1988, she was president of the Science Fiction Writers Association and later was named a Damon Knight Grand Master. She ran her own young adult fiction imprint at Harcourt Brace from 1990 to 1996, and she was on the board of directors for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators for over 25 years. She lived in Western Massachusetts and had a house in Scotland which she would visit for a part of the year.

Yolen’s more than 40 novels were mostly aimed at young adults and children, and she produced many series: To name a few, the Mythopoeic Award-winning Young Merlin trilogy included Passager (1996), Hobby (1996), and Merlin (1997); the Great Alta series included Sister Light, Sister Dark (1988), White Jenna (1989), and The One-Armed Queen (1998); the Pit Dragon series included with Dragon’s Blood (1982), Heart’s Blood (1984), A Sending of Dragons (1987), and Dragon’s Heart (2009); and the Seelie Wars series, written with her son Adam, was The Hostage Prince (2013), The Last Changeling (2014), and The Seelie King’s War (2016). She also wrote standalones The Devil’s Arithmetic (1988), which was nominated for a Nebula Award and a World Fantasy Award; adult fantasy Briar Rose (1992), which won a Mythopoeic Award and was nominated for Locus, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards; and Locus Award winner Pay the Piper (2005), among many others.

Her poetry was nominated for 13 Asimov’s Readers’ Poll Awards, of which four won: “Angels Fly Because They Take Themselves Lightly” (1991), “A Street Away” (2019), “Ode to Cassini” (2020), and “Mars Rover, Curiosity” (2021). Her poetry and short fiction was published frequently in Asimov’s, as well as in Eye to the Telescope, Sycorax, Shoreline of Infinity, Strange Horizons, Star*Line, and more, plus many anthologies and more than 60 of her own collections and chapbooks. Among the more notable collections are Locus Award nominee Sister Emily’s Lightship and Other Stories (2000) and World Fantasy Award winner The Emerald Circus (2017). “Sister Emily’s Lightship” (1998) is one of her two works to have won a Nebula Award, along with novelette “Lost Girl” (1999). She also edited over a dozen anthologies, including Things That Go Bump in the Night (1989) with Martin H. Greenberg and Mirror, Mirror (2000) with her daughter Heidi.

Yolen collected multiple lifetime achievement awards, including NESFA’s Skylark Award in 1990, the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2009, the Rhysling Award for Grand Master Poet in 2010, and the SFWA Grand Master Award in 2017.

She is survived by her children Adam, Heidi, and Jason, and a community that loved her.