Nicola Griffith was born in Yorkshire, England, the fourth of five sisters. The youngest, Helena, died in a police-chase in Australia in 1988, and one of her older sisters, Carolyn, died in 2001. Griffith has stated in interviews that grief and rage over her sisters' deaths have played a large part in the writing process for her novels. In March of 1993 she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

Griffith lives with her partner, writer Kelley Eskridge, in Seattle, in the United States.

Nicola Griffith published her first novel Ammonite in 1993. It won both the James Tiptree, Jr. Award and the Lambda Award. Her second novel, Slow River (1994), won the Nebula Award, for best novel, and another Lambda.

Together with Stephen Pagel, Griffith has edited a series of three anthologies, Bending the Landscape: Fantasy (1997), Bending the Landscape: Science Fiction (1998) and Bending the Landscape: Horror (2001). These explore gay and lesbian issues in fantastic settings.

The Blue Place (1998), Stay (2002), and Always (2007) are crime novels. Her collection of stories, With Her Body (2004) is science fiction and fantasy. Her most recent work, And Now We Are Going to Have a Party: Liner Notes to a Writer's Early Life (2007) won the Lambda Literary Award in the Women's Memoir/Biography category. It is a multi-media memoir, a "do-it-yourself Nicola Griffith home assembly kit." Griffith is currently working on an historical novel.

Novels

• Ammonite (1993)
• Slow River (1995)
• The Blue Place (1998)
• Stay (2002)
• Always (2007)

Anthologies

• Bending the Landscape: Fantasy (1997, with Stephen Pagel)
• Bending the Landscape: Science Fiction (1998, with Stephen Pagel)
• Bending the Landscape: Horror (2001, with Stephen Pagel)

Short fiction

• An Other Winter's Tale (1987)
• Mirrors and Burnstone (1988)
• The Other (1989)
• We Have Met the Alien (1990)
• The Voyage South (1990)
• Down the Path of the Sun (1990)
• Song of Bullfrogs, Cry of Geese (1991)
• Wearing My Skin (1991)
• Touching Fire (1993)
• Yaguara (1994)
• A Troll Story (2000)
• With Her Body (2004, a collection containing Touching Fire, Songs of Bullfrogs, Cry of Geese, and Yaguara)