Brian Attebery (born December 1951) is an American writer and emeritus professor of English and philosophy atIdaho State University. He is known for his studies offantasy literature, includingThe Fantasy Tradition in American Literature: From Irving to Le Guin (1980) andStrategies of Fantasy (1992) which won theMythopoeic Award. Attebery is also editor of theJournal of the Fantastic in the Arts, for which he received theWorld Fantasy Award in 2021. He has also won theIAFA Award for distinguished scholarship and thePilgrim Award for lifetime achievement.

Attebery was born in December 1951,^[1][2] and received a doctorate in American Civilization fromBrown University in 1979.^[3] He is professor of English atIdaho State University, and the editor of theJournal of the Fantastic in the Arts.^[1] He is known for his non-fiction works on fantasy literature, such as the 1980 bookThe Fantasy Tradition in American Literature: From Irving to Le Guin and the 1992 bookStrategies of Fantasy. Attebery suggests that fantasy is a "fuzzy set" with no easily discernible boundaries, in contrast to the genre ofscience fiction.^[4] CriticJohn Clute has praised the book as displaying "very considerable [...] critical acumen".^[4]

He retired from Idaho State University in April 2022 and was named an emeritus professor in the Department of English and Philosophy.^[5]

In 2022 Brian Attebery won theMythopoeic Award (given by theMythopoeic Society) for his bookFantasy: How It Works (OUP).^[6]

Attebery is the recipient of the 1993IAFA Award for Distinguished Scholarship, and the 2009Pilgrim Award for lifetime contribution to SF and fantasy scholarship.^[7]

He has won theMythopoeic Award andWorld Fantasy Award for individual works of nonfiction, as detailed in the following table.

• "Fairest",Strange Horizons (September 11, 2006)

• —— (1980).The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature: From Irving to Le Guin.ISBN 9780253356659.
• —— (1992).Strategies of Fantasy.ISBN 9780253310705.
• —— (2002).Decoding Gender in Science Fiction.ISBN 9780415939508.
• ——; Hollinger, Veronica (2013).Parabolas of Science Fiction.ISBN 9780819573681.
• —— (2014).Stories About Stories: Fantasy & the Remaking of Myth.ISBN 9780199316076.
• —— (2022).Fantasy: How It Works.ISBN 9780192856234.

• The Norton Book of Science Fiction: North American Science Fiction, 1960–1990 (1993) editor withUrsula K. Le Guin
• Reading Narrative Fiction (1993) editor; written bySeymour Chatman
• Le Guin: Hainish Novels and Stories, Volume 1 (2017) editor, Library of America
• Le Guin: Hainish Novels and Stories, Volume 2 (2017) editor, Library of America

• Fantasy as an Anti-Utopian Mode (1986)
• Women's Coming of Age in Fantasy (1987)
• Science Fantasy and Myth (1987)
• Tolkien, Crowley, and Postmodernism (1990)
• Fantasy and the Narrative Transaction (1992)
• Godmaking in the Heartland: The Backgrounds of Orson Scott Card's American Fantasy (1992)
• Response to John Kessel's "The Brother from Another Planet" (1993)
• Letter (NYRSF, May 1993) (1993)
• Review: Peake Studies by G. Peter Wilnnington (1994)
• The 1995 James Tiptree, Jr Memorial Award Shortlist (1995) with Ellen Kushner and Pat Murphy and Susanna J. Sturgis and Lucy Sussex
• The Politics (If Any) of Fantasy (1995)
• The Closing of the Final Frontier: Science Fiction After 1960 (1995)
• Androgyny and Difference in Science Fiction (1997)
• Science Fiction and the Gender of Knowledge (2000)
• Myth and History: Molly Gloss's Wild Life and Alan Garner's Strandloper (2001)
• "But Aren't Those Just... You Know, Metaphors?": Postmodern Figuration in the Science Fiction of James Morrow and Gwyneth Jones (2002)
• The Magazine Era: 1926–1960 (2003)
• Science Fiction, Parables, and Parabolas (2005)
• High Church versus Broad Church: Christian Myth in George MacDonald and C. S. Lewis (2005)
• The Conquest of Gernsback: Leslie F. Stone and the Subversion of Science Fiction Troupes (2006)
• Special Section (Extrapolation, Spring 2009) (2009)
• C. L. Moore (1911–87) (2009)
• The Nobies' Story (2010)
• Science Fiction Parabolas: Jazz, Geometry, and Generation Starships (2013)
• The Fantastic (2014)
• Introduction: Messages from an Alternate Reality (2020)

• Brian Attebery at theInternet Speculative Fiction Database
• Brian Attebery atThe Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

• 1951 births
• American science fiction writers
• Science fiction academics
• American science fiction critics
• Living people
• Brown University alumni
• Idaho State University faculty
• American academics of English literature
• American male novelists
• American male non-fiction writers

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use mdy dates from October 2015
• Articles with hCards