"Well, I hope 'emerita' doesn't mean 'over the hill,' but I'm truly honored -- blown away, in fact," Engh said. "It's nice to know that somebody has noticed me."

Under the pseudonym Jane Beauclerk, Engh published her first science fiction story, "We Serve the Star of Freedom," in the July 1964 issue of the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Over the next four decades, her short fiction appeared in a wide range of markets including Universe 1, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine and Arabesques.

In 1976 Engh published her first novel, Arslan, about a future United States conquered by a third-world power,to widespread critical acclaim. She followed that with Wheel of the Winds in 1988 and Rainbow Man in 1993.

"The reason I haven't been turning out SF in recent decades is that I'm up to my neck in historical projects," Engh said. "I've been working on The Womb of God, a projected trilogy of historical novels on the life and times of the 5th-century Roman empress Galla Placidia, and--the biggest time-absorber-collaborating with my historian friend Kathy Meyer on a massive reference work to be called Femina Habilis: A Biographical Dictionary of Active Women in the Ancient Roman World from Earliest Times to 527 C.E.

"Plus, I do have a few chapters of a science fiction novel I hope to finish someday," she said.