Ru Emerson

Ru Emerson (1944-2025) was an American author of fantasy and occasional science fiction, born in Butte, Montana. Her Tales of Nedao trilogy and the six-volume Night Threads sequence, beginning with To the Haunted Mountains (1987), formed the core of her original fantasy work, alongside collaborations such as Fortress of Frost and Fire (1993) with Mercedes Lackey. She was also a prolific writer of media tie-in fiction, contributing novels based on the television series Beauty and the Beast and Xena: Warrior Princess, and the Star Trek and Greyhawk franchises. Her science fiction included the young-adult space-opera entry Voices of Chaos (1998) in the StarBridge series, co-written with Ann C. Crispin. Emerson's career spanned original epic fantasy and licensed fiction across nearly four decades.