Lois McMaster Bujold is an American speculative fiction writer. She is an acclaimed writer, having won the Hugo Award for best novel four times, matching Robert A. Heinlein's record. Her novella The Mountains of Mourning won both the Hugo Award and Nebula Award. In the fantasy genre, The Curse of Chalion won the Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature and was nominated for the 2002 World Fantasy Award for best novel, and both her fourth Hugo Award and second Nebula Award were for Paladin of Souls. In 2011 she was awarded the Skylark Award. She has won two Hugo Awards for Best Series, in 2017 for the Vorkosigan Saga and in 2018 for the World of the Five Gods. The Science Fiction Writers of America named her its 36th SFWA Grand Master in 2019.

The Curse of Chalion is a 2001 fantasy novel by American writer Lois McMaster Bujold. In 2002 it won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature and was nominated for the Hugo, World Fantasy, and Locus Fantasy Awards in 2002. The series that it began, World of the Five Gods, won the Hugo Award for Best Series in 2018.