Terri Windling

In May 2016, Windling gave the fourth annual Tolkien Lecture at Pembroke College, Oxford, speaking on the topic of fantasy literature in the post-Tolkien era.

Windling is the founder of the Endicott Studio, an organization dedicated to myth-inspired arts, and was the co-editor with Midori Snyder of The Journal of Mythic Arts from 1987 until it ceased publication in 2008. She also sits on the board of the Mythic Imagination Institute. Windling married Howard Gayton, the British dramatist and co-founder of the influential Commedia dell'arte troupe, the Ophaboom Theatre Company, in September 2008, and lives in Devon, England.

With Ellen Datlow, Windling edited 16 volumes of Year's Best Fantasy and Horror (1986–2003), an anthology that reached beyond the boundaries of genre fantasy to incorporate magic realism, surrealism, poetry, and other forms of magical literature. Datlow and Windling also edited the Snow White, Blood Red series of literary fairy tales for adult readers, as well as many anthologies of myth & fairy tale inspired fiction for younger readers, such as The Green Man, The Faery Reel, and The Wolf at the Door. Windling also created and edited the Borderland series for teenage readers, and The Armless Maiden, a fiction collection for adult survivors of child abuse like herself.

In the American publishing field, Windling has been one of the primary creative forces behind the mythic fiction resurgence that began in the early 1980s, through her work as an innovative editor for the Ace and Tor Books fantasy lines and as the editor of more than thirty anthologies of magical fiction. She created the Fairy Tale Series of novels that reinterpret classic fairy tales (below). She is also recognized as one of the founders of urban fantasy, having published and promoted the first novels of Charles de Lint, Emma Bull, and other pioneers of the genre.

Terri Windling (born December 3, 1958 in Fort Dix, New Jersey) is an American editor, artist, essayist, and the author of books for both children and adults. She has won nine World Fantasy Awards, the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, and the Bram Stoker Award, and her collection The Armless Maiden appeared on the short-list for the James Tiptree, Jr. Award. In 2010 Windling received the SFWA Solstice Award, which honors "individuals with a significant impact on the speculative fiction field". Her work has been translated into French, German, Spanish, Italian, Czech, Lithuanian, Turkish, Russian, Japanese, and Korean.