Darcie Little Badger

2 universes Last reviewed 2026-08-13

Darcie Little Badger was born Darcie Erin Ryan in 1987 and is a member of the Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas; her father was an English professor and her mother, Hermelinda Walking Woman, serves as tribal administrator. She adopted her current surname after high school in keeping with Lipan tradition. She earned a bachelor's degree in Earth Science from Princeton University in 2010, graduating cum laude, and later completed a PhD in oceanography from Texas A&M University, with her dissertation examining the genomics of Karenia brevis, the organism responsible for toxic red tide blooms. Little Badger worked as a scientific paper editor before becoming a full-time novelist after selling her debut book. Her novel Elatsoe (2020) follows an asexual Lipan Apache teenager investigating her cousin's mysterious death with the aid of supernatural abilities and her ghost dog, and was named one of the best fantasy books of all time by Time magazine. Her second novel, A Snake Falls to Earth (2021), blends near-future Texas with a fantastical parallel dimension while addressing climate change, and she later wrote the prequel Sheine Lende (2024). Her honors include a Newbery Honor, the Andre Norton Award, the Locus Award for Best First Novel, and the 2025 Lodestar Award. She also serves as Storyteller Laureate and a delegate to the National Congress of American Indians for her tribe.

Universe(s)

Books

• Elatsoe (2020) · Elatsoe Core Canon
• A Snake Falls to Earth (2021) · A Snake Falls to Earth Core Canon
• Sheine Lende (2024) · Elatsoe Core Canon

Aggregate across all universes

These are separate, unrelated universes; the totals below are plain sums of already-published per-universe facts, never a blended or averaged score across them. See each universe's own figures above.

• Total Core Canon books across all universes: 3 books
• Award recognitions across all universes: 3 (3 won)

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