Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers: Magical Tales of Love and Seduction

A Biography of Terri Windling

TERRI WINDLING IS AN AWARD-WINNING writer and editor of fantasy, an essayist on the mythic arts, and a visual artist. She is the author or editor of bestselling books such as The Wood Wife, The Armless Maiden, the Snow White, Blood Red series, and the Bordertown series. She also contributed to The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales and other nonfiction works on folklore and fantasy literature.

Windling was raised in New Jersey and Pennyslvania, and moved to New York City after attending Antioch College in Ohio. She got a job as an editorial assistant at Ace Books at a time, she found, when the field of fantasy was a wide-open, upstart genre. Windling worked as an editor in New York throughout the 1980s, while also establishing the Endicott Studio for Mythic Arts in Boston in 1986. In 1990, she began to divide her time between a winter home in Tucson, Arizona, and a summer home in Devon, England. It was at this point that she began to focus on her own writing and painting, while continuing to edit part-time. She has written or edited over forty books, including adult and young adult fiction, anthologies, essays, and children’s books. She has frequently co-edited anthologies with renowned editor Ellen Datlow, including the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror series, in which she published such important writers as Gabriel García Márquez, Haruki Murakami, Stephen King, A. S. Byatt, Emma Bull, Charles de Lint, Louise Erdrich, Neil Gaiman, and Ursula K. Le Guin, among many others. She serves as an editorial consultant for Tor Books and works widely with other major book publishers. Windling is also founder and was the co-editor of the Journal of Mythic Arts from 1997 to 2008.

Windling has received multiple awards in the field of fantasy literature, including the Science Fiction Writers of America’s Solstice Award for outstanding contributions to the speculative fiction field, nine World Fantasy awards, the Mythopoeic Award, and the Bram Stoker Award. She was nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award and made the short list for the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, among others.

Windling is also a visual artist whose mythically themed work has been exhibited in museums and galleries in the United States, Great Britain, and France.

Windling currently resides in a small village on the edge of Dartmoor in Devon, England, with her husband, Howard Gayton, and their daughter, Victoria Windling-Gayton.

Terri Windling was born in December 1958 to a young single mother. To escape her often volatile home life, Windling found solace in fairy tales and fantasy. This picture was taken in Pitman, New Jersey.

Windling was in her early twenties when she began working as an editor and anthologist. Here she attends the World Fantasy Convention in 1982, when she won her first of nine World Fantasy awards. (Photograph courtesy of Beth Gwinn.)

Windling at the Fourth Street Fantasy Convention in Minneapolis in 1987, where she was the Editor Guest of Honor. (Photograph courtesy of Beth Gwinn.)

From 1990 to 2008, Windling divided her time between a winter home in Tucson, Arizona, and a summer home in Devon, England. Here, she is photographed with Ellen Datlow at the World Fantasy Convention in Tucson in 1991. (Photograph courtesy of Beth Gwinn.)

In Tuscon, Windling lived surrounded by the Rincon Mountains. Here, she is pictured on a desert path in the foothills, in autumn 1996. This was the setting for her novel The Wood Wife, published that same year, which won the Mythopoeic Award. (Photograph courtesy of Carol Amos.)

Windling’s summer home was a 400-year-old cottage in a small village on Dartmoor in Devon, England. (Photograph courtesy of Alan Lee.)

In 2008, Windling married the English dramatist Howard Gayton and settled in Devon, England, fulltime. (Photograph courtesy of Ellen Kushner.)

Windling’s husband is a theater director, performer, and founder of Ophaboom Theatre, specializing in Commedia dell'Arte. The couple is pictured here in Devon. (Photograph courtesy of K. Marchant.)

Windling and Howard Gayton celebrate their wedding anniversary by following the old Devon marriage custom of “jumping the broom.” This picture of Terri, with their beloved dog, Tilly, was taken in their garden in Devon in September 2011. (Photograph courtesy of Howard Gayton.)

Windling’s paintings are inspired by myth, folklore, and fairy tales from around the world. This painting is based on “Little Red Riding Hood.”

A portrait of Windling and her dog, Tilly, created by her friend and neighbor, the book illustrator David Wyatt.

A portrait of Windling by writer and photographer Augusten Burroughs, taken in New York City in 2012.