James Tiptree, Jr.

NPR.org has an interview up with Julie Phillips, available here. Ms. Phillips is the author of a new biography of sci-fi writer James Tiptree, Jr., who was in real life a woman named Alice B. Sheldon.

Sheldon/Tiptree's identity was a secret for a decade, although she maintained an extensive correspondence with fans and other sci-fi writers, and her eventual exposure was embarrassing for a number of sci-fi luminaries who had long assumed that she was male. Ms. Sheldon was a truly strange, gifted person--like many strange, gifted people, she didn't end well--and her life story seems like it would make a fascinating subject.