Clare Winger Harris (January 18, 1891 – October 26, 1968[1]) was a pioneering science fiction writer whose short stories were published during the 1920s.

[2][5] Her father, Frank Stover Winger, was an electrical contractor who also wrote science fiction; in 1917, he published a novel called The Wizard of the Island; or, The Vindication of Prof. Waldinger.

[1] Winger graduated in 1910 from Lake View High School in Chicago and attended Smith College without completing her degree.

[1] She lived alone and didn't have a lot of money, sometimes working as a switchboard operator to bring in extra income.

[2] Harris debuted as a writer in 1923 with a novel, a piece of historical fiction entitled Persephone of Eleusis: A Romance of Ancient Greece.

Harris published her first short story, "A Runaway World," in the July 1926 issue of Weird Tales.

Harris's story, "The Fate of the Poseidonia" (a space opera about Martians who steal Earth's water),[3] placed third.

[4][10] Her absence from the pulps was noted—a fan wrote in to Amazing Stories in late 1930 to ask, “What happened to Clare Winger Harris?

"[19] As Jane Donawerth wrote in Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century, among the important aspects of Harris's contributions is that "she was a woman writer in a genre generally written by men, she wrote stories that included portraits of feminine strength, and she offered visions of a science that was not solely the province of privileged white men.

"[24][25][26] Lupoff also wrote that "[w]hile today's reader may find her prose creaky and old-fashioned, the stories positively teem with still-fresh and provocative ideas.

[27] Harris's stories have also been reprinted in a number of other anthologies in recent decades, including two books from Wesleyan University Press: 2016's Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction[28] and 2006's Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the 20th Century, with the later including a critical essay about Harris.

In 2018, her work was featured at the Pasadena History Museum as part of an exhibit titled "Dreaming the Universe: The Intersection of Science, Fiction, & Southern California.