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Virginia KiddVirginia Kidd was born in Pennsylvania, in the USA on June 2, 1921. She was the youngest daughter of a printer. She attended the Berlitz School of Languages and was fluent in Latin, French, German, Italian and Spanish. Ms. Kidd successfully worked as a free-lance writer, ghost writer, and proofreader. Then, in 1965, she formally established the Virginia Kidd Literary Agency in her home, Arrowhead, near the banks of the Delaware River, in Milford, Pennsylvania. She was the first female literary agent in the genre of speculative fiction, and over the next 3 decades represented some of the fields most important authors, including Ursula K. LeGuin, Anne McCaffrey, Gene Wolfe, R.A. Lafferty, Alan Dean Foster, and many others. She was one of the founding members of the former Vanguard Amateur Press Association (official tyrant, 1948), a Futurian, and a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America. She was the author of many published poems, and a handful of short stories. "Kangaroo Court," published in 1966 in Damon Knights Orbit 1, was particularly well received. (It was also published under the title, "Flowering Season." She edited or co-edited several anthologies of speculative fiction, including Saving Worlds (with Roger Elwood, 1973,) The Best of Judith Merril (1976), Millennial Women (1978), Interfaces (1980) and Edges (1980) (the latter two with Ursula K. Le Guin). Less well-known about Virginia Kidd: She had polio at the age of 2, and was paralyzed for a year from the chest down. She self-published a "little" magazine called Kinesis, devoted solely to poetry. She was an almost unbeatable Scrabble player (she preferred to stipulate that vocabulary from all languages was allowed). She was an environmentalist and an animal rights activist (via financial contributions and letter writing) at least since the 1960s. Her love of classical and operatic music, rock and roll, and fine films, influenced many. She was a gourmet and a gourmand. Virginia Kidd was often described in the press as a feminist. In fact, she refused to be pigeonholed, except by her own hand. She was also passionate in her championing of good writing: "How can one believe there is a female or male writing style? As an elitist, I hold that with regard to writing that is worth reading and having written, there is style and style only. Im talking about literature. There is also a kind of prefab or ersatz writing that has no style at all, is not memorable, and is bought by the nonthinking to assist them in passing their thoughtless time. Such writing can be distinguished by what sex it is aimed at - that for women gushes, that for men is too hearty - but it cannot be distinguished by the gender of the writer. It may be the stuff of best sellers, but it is not art." Kidd was married twice, first to Jack Emden, an operatic singer, (married 1943-1947), and later to the noted science fiction writer James Blish (married 1947-1963). External Links * Family Genealogical Record
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