RIP: Author Tanith Lee
Debi Moore
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We have some rather sad news to share today as word has come that fantasy/horror novelist Tanith Lee has passed away at the all too young age of 67. Lee, who couldn’t read until she was 8 but started writing when she was 9 and went on to compose more than 90 science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels, died this past May 24, 2015, at her home in East Sussex, England.
Per The New York Times, the cause of death was breast cancer, said her husband, John Kaiine, an artist and writer, who is her only immediate survivor.
In 1980 Lee was the first female recipient of the British Fantasy Award for best novel, Death’s Master, and last month she received the Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers Association. She wrote erotic Gothic chillers for adults and modern myths for children, and she reinterpreted fairy tales with even more frightful twists.
“Writers tell stories better, because they’ve had more practice, but everyone has a book in them,” Lee said in a 1998 interview. “We need the expressive arts, the ancient scribes, the storytellers, the priests. And that’s where I put myself: as a storyteller. Not necessarily a high priestess, but certainly the storyteller. And I would love to be the storyteller of the tribe!”
A farewell to Lee’s readers appeared on her website shortly after she died: “Though we come and go, and pass into the shadows, where we leave behind us stories told — on paper, on the wings of butterflies, on the wind, on the hearts of others — there we are remembered, there we work magic and great change — passing on the fire like a torch — forever and forever. Till the sky falls, and all things are flawless and need no words at all.”
Our condolences to Tanith’s friends and family members. And farewell to one of the best storytellers of her generation!
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