C.J. Cherryh

C. J. Cherryh taught Latin and ancient history in Oklahoma schools before she sold a novel, and the initials were her editor Donald A. Wollheim's idea, along with the silent h on a surname that is really Cherry. The Chanur Saga is an omnibus rather than a novel: it gathers The Pride of Chanur, Chanur's Venture and The Kif Strike Back, in which a human turns up alone and unexplained at a station run by species who have never met one, and a hani merchant captain called Pyanfar takes him aboard and inherits the diplomatic wreckage. She writes aliens as though the reader has to work out the rules unaided, which is the whole method. Downbelow Station took the Hugo in 1982 and Cyteen in 1989. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named her a Grand Master in 2016.