Early life

Griffith was born 30 September 1960 in Leeds, to Margaret and Eric Griffith.^[2]

Griffith's earliest surviving literary efforts include an illustrated booklet she was encouraged to create to prevent her from making trouble among her fellow nursery school students.^{[2] : 17} At age eleven she won a BBC student poetry prize and read aloud her winning work for radio broadcast.

Her early reading included the works of such novelists as Henry Treece^[3] and Rosemary Sutcliff;^[4][5] fantastic fiction including the works of E.E. Smith, Frank Herbert, and J.R.R. Tolkien; nonfiction and history — Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was a particular favorite;^[3].

By the late 1980s, Griffith had begun experiencing symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS), though her illness remained undiagnosed. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in March 1993.^[5]

While studying at Michigan State University, Griffith met and fell in love with fellow writer Kelley Eskridge.^[5] On 4 September 1993, Griffith and Eskridge announced their commitment ceremony in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution,^[6] perhaps the first same-sex commitment announcement the paper had published. Griffith and Eskridge were legally married 4 September 2013.

Griffith wanted citizenship so she could remain in the country with her wife, but because she was a lesbian, she couldn't receive citizenship through marriage, and all other pathways were closed.^[7] After much effort, Griffith received permission to live and work in the United States based on her "importance as a writer of lesbian/science fiction," making her the first out lesbian to receive a National Interest Waiver.^[5] Her immigration resulted in a new law, and she is now a dual US/UK citizen.^[8]

In 2017, after completing her thesis, entitled "Norming the Queer: Narrative Empathy via Focalized Heterotopia," Griffith received her PhD by publication from the University of East Anglia.^[8][9]

By late 1987 Griffith, made her first professional fiction sale: "Mirrors and Burnstone" to Interzone. Her debut novel, Ammonite, received several offers from publishers, including St. Martin's Press, Avon Press, and Del Rey Books.^[5] Griffith has since published nine full-length novels, a memoir, and numerous short stories and novellas.

In 2015, Griffith "founded the Literary Prize Data working group whose purpose initially was to assemble data on literary prizes in order to get a picture of how gender bias operates within the trade publishing ecosystem."^[10]

In 2015 she began #CripLit, an online community for disabled writers."^[10]

Fiction

• Ammonite, Del Rey, ISBN 0345452380 (1992)
• Slow River, Ballantine Books, ISBN 0345395379 (1995)
• So Lucky, MCD x FSG Originals, ISBN 9780374265922 (2018)
• Spear, Tordotcom, ISBN 9781250819321 (2022)

Nonfiction

• And Now We Are Going to Have a Party: Liner Notes to a Writer's Early Life, Payseur & Schmidt ISBN 9780978911416 (2007)

Anthologies

• Bending the Landscape: Fantasy, Overlook Books, ISBN 1585675768 (1997, with Stephen Pagel)
• Bending the Landscape: Science Fiction, Overlook Books, ISBN 0879517328 (1998, with Stephen Pagel)
• Bending the Landscape: Horror, Overlook Books, ISBN 1585673722 (2001, with Stephen Pagel)

Short fiction

• An Other Winter's Tale (1987)
• Mirrors and Burnstone (1988)
• The Other (1989)
• We Have Met the Alien (1990)
• The Voyage South (1990)
• Down the Path of the Sun (1990)
• Song of Bullfrogs, Cry of Geese (1991)
• Wearing My Skin (1991)
• Touching Fire (1993)
• Yaguara (1994)
• A Troll Story (2000)
• With Her Body, Aqueduct Press (2004, a collection containing Touching Fire, Songs of Bullfrogs, Cry of Geese, and Yaguara)
• It Takes Two (2009)
• Cold Wind, Tor Books, ISBN 9781466871342 (2014)^[43]

Critical studies and reviews of Griffith's work

• Holland, Cecelia (December 2013). "Locus Looks at Books : Divers Hands". Locus (635): 22. Review of Hild.