In the 80s Vinge became very busy with movie novelizations, producing book versions of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Lady Halcon/Ladyhawke, Willow: A Novel, Santa Claus: The Movie, and a number of others. Another book that same year, Legacy, followed up her earlier The Outcasts of Heaven's Belt. Based loosely on a story by Hans Christian Andersen (as her earlier 'Tin Soldier' had also been) it would later be followed by two sequels, and a prequel set in the same universe. In that same year, 1980, she broke new ground as a writer with a Hugo and a Locus Award for her full-length novel The Snow Queen. In December of 1979 the Vinges divorced and a year later Joan married James Frenkel, an editor and publisher. The titular novelette won her the Hugo Award. And yet another collection, Eyes of Amber And Other Stories, was published in 1979. A collection of her short fiction, Fireship, appeared that same year. Her first novel, The Outcasts of Heaven's Belt appeared in 1978.

Additional stories were published in Analog, Asimov's Science Fiction, Galileo and even Omni. She sold her first story, a novelette entitled 'Tin Soldier' in 1974 for publication in Orbit 14, an anthology. In January of 1972 she married science fiction writer and mathematician Vernor Vinge, and the following year began her own serious efforts to write science fiction. After graduation she worked as a salvage archaeologist in San Diego County. She eventually switched majors to anthropology, earning her B.A. When Vinge began college her original intent was to major in art, but she quickly became disillusioned with her teachers and felt more and more discouraged as artist. She developed an great love for the work of Andre Norton, whom she credits as her earliest influence in the genre. She began drawing when she was 8 years old, and she discovered science fiction stories in junior high. She developed an early interest in astronomy and outer space when her father bought the family a telescope. Her father, Seymour Dennison, was an aircraft engineer and her mother, Carol, an executive secretary. She was born Joan Carol Dennison in 1948 in Baltimore, Maryland.

She holds a degree in anthropology, and is the ex-wife of science fiction author Vernor Vinge. She is the winner of two Hugo Awards and holds the distinction of being the first author to have a children's science fiction book, Star Wars Return of the Jedi Storybook, place number one on the New York Times Bestseller list. Vinge is the author of numerous film adaptations and well as 'hard' science fiction short stories, various children's books, and at least ten science fiction novels.

Ladyhawke by Joan D. Vinge