Joy Chant

1 universe Last reviewed 2026-08-26

Joy Chant, legal name Eileen Joyce Rutter, was born January 13, 1945, in London, England. She learned to read at age two and a half and began writing in her early teens, developing a passion for folklore and mythology before encountering adult fantasy at twenty. She attended college in Wales, where her father had been stationed during World War II, and worked as a Schools Librarian in London while beginning her fiction career, later settling in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, with her husband and children. Her debut novel, Red Moon and Black Mountain (1970), launched the House of Kendreth series, continued in The Grey Mane of Morning (1977) and When Voiha Wakes (1983). Her major reference work, The High Kings (1983), explores Arthurian legend and the Matter of Britain, and she has also written articles on fantasy fiction. Red Moon and Black Mountain won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award in 1972, and When Voiha Wakes won the same award in 1984, while The High Kings received the 1984 World Fantasy Special Award for Professional Work and a Hugo Award nomination. Chant is regarded as an important, if lower-profile, figure in the post-Tolkien wave of secondary-world epic fantasy of the 1970s and 1980s.

Universe(s)

Books

• Red Moon and Black Mountain (1970) · The Vandarei Trilogy Core Canon
• The Grey Mane of Morning (1977) · The Vandarei Trilogy Core Canon
• When Voiha Wakes (1983) · The Vandarei Trilogy Core Canon

Aggregate across all universes

• Total Core Canon books across all universes: 3 books
• Award recognitions across all universes: 0 (None recorded)

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