Nancy Kress is affectionately known as the "Queen of Novellas" since every novella she writes seems to get nominated for an award. She has won six Nebulas and two Hugos amongst many other prominent awards including the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. She began writing in 1976 but has achieved her greatest notice since the publication of her Hugo- and Nebula-winning 1991 novella Beggars in Spain, which became a novel in 1993 and was followed by a number of sequels. In addition to her novels, Kress has written numerous short stories and is a regular columnist for Writer's Digest. She is a regular at Clarion writing workshops During the winter of 2008/09, Nancy Kress was the Picador Guest Professor for Literature at the University of Leipzig's Institute for American Studies in Leipzig, Germany.