Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough is an American fantasy and science-fiction author who won the Nebula Award for her 1988 novel The Healer's War, drawn from her own experience serving as an Army nurse in Vietnam, before becoming best known for her extensive collaborative work with Anne McCaffrey. Scarborough co-wrote the Petaybee series with McCaffrey, following the exploration of a semi-sentient colony planet, and also contributed to McCaffrey's Acorna series alongside co-author Margaret Ball, helping extend the science-fantasy adventures of an orphaned, unicorn-like alien girl raised by human spacers. Outside her collaborations, Scarborough has written extensively in her own solo series, including the Songs from the Seashell Archives fantasy books and the comic fantasy Argonia series, and has published widely across both fantasy and science fiction under her own name since the 1980s. She is noted within the genre for her versatility across tones, moving between the grounded, trauma-informed realism of The Healer's War and the lighter, more whimsical register of much of her collaborative and solo fantasy work. Based for many years in the Pacific Northwest, Scarborough has remained an active figure in speculative fiction circles and a frequent collaborator, contributing her own distinct voice to several of the shared worlds she has helped build with other authors.