Interviews

KEMI ASHING-GIWA WAS BORN August 22, 2000 in Southern California. She attended Har­vard University, where she stud­ied integrative biology and as­trophysics, and is now a PhD student at Stanford University.

She began publishing short fiction with “Paper Suns” in Anathema in 2021, and in 2022 published two stories at Tor.com, “Fruiting Bodies” and “The Suf­ficient Loss Protocol,” followed by “The Puppetmaster” in 2023. SF horror novella This World Is Not ...Read More

ANN LECKIE was born March 2, 1966 in Toledo OH and grew up in St. Louis MO. She attended Washington University, graduating with a degree in music. She has worked as a wait­ress, a receptionist, a rodman on a land-surveying crew, and a recording engineer.

Leckie attended Clarion West in 2005, where she wrote her first pub­lished SF story “Hesperia and Glory” (2006). Over a dozen stories have appeared ...Read More

EMMA TÖRZS was born January 8, 1987 and grew up in Cambridge and Acton MA. After graduating college, she worked briefly in retail and restaurants before joining the MFA program at the University of Montana in Missoula, graduating in 2012. She attended the Clarion West writing workshop in 2017. In addition to writing fiction, she is also a translator, and teaches at Ma­calester College. She has lived in Minneapolis MN ...Read More

CONSTANCE ELAINE TRIMMER WILLIS was born December 31, 1945 in Denver CO and has lived in Colorado most of her life. She earned a BA in English and elementary education from the University of Northern Colorado, Greeley, in 1967, and taught el­ementary and junior high school from 1967-81. She made her first SF sale to Worlds of Fantasy with “The Secret of Santa Titicaca” (1971), and earned her first Hugo ...Read More

CHERAE LICHELLE CLARK was born August 10, 1990 in Oklaho­ma and grew up in Kansas City KS. She attended interna­tional school just outside London, England, then attended the University of Kansas as an undergrad. She earned her MFA at the University of Indiana, and was a 2012 Lambda Literary Fel­low under Dorothy Allison. Clark has worked as an English teacher, editor, and personal trainer. She lives in the UK.

Clark ...Read More

MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL was born Mary Robinette Harrison on February 8, 1969 in Raleigh NC. She attended Eastern Carolina University, major­ing in Art Education, with a minor in Theater and Speech. In 1991 she left for an internship at the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta GA and never went back. She has been a professional puppeteer ever since. Kowal spent a year and a half working in Iceland on ...Read More

RAY NAYLER was born on June 5, 1976 in Alma, Quebec. When he was three years old, his family moved to California. He attended the University of California at Santa Cruz, where he studied modern literature and developed an interest in semiotics, graduating in 1999. He lived in the Bay Area and Toronto and worked various odd jobs before joining the Peace Corps and moving to Turkmenistan in 2003. He ...Read More

CHARLIE JANE ANDERS was born in Connecticut and grew up in the small town of Mansfield. She went to Cambridge University in England, studying English and Asian literature, and spent time studying abroad in China. She has lived in Hong Kong, Boston, and other places, and currently resides in San Francisco.

Anders began publishing SF with “Fertility” (1999) and has published well over 100 stories since then in various genres, ...Read More

AYIZE JAMA-EVERETT was born in 1974 in Harlem NY. He has trav­eled widely, including in Asia, Mexico, and North Africa. He has a master’s degree in divinity, another in clinical psychology, and recently finished his MFA in literature at UC Riverside. He currently lives in Oakland CA, where he works as a therapist.

Jama-Everett began publishing with SF novel The Liminal People (2011), launching a series that continued with The ...Read More

DENISE ANGELA SHAWL was born November 2, 1955 and grew up in Kalamazoo MI. (Their cousin Delores came up with the nickname “Nisi.”) At 17, Shawl moved to Ann Arbor to attend the University of Michigan. After leaving the university, Shawl worked as a bookseller, au pair, cook, janitor, and artist’s model. Shawl settled in Seattle in 1996, worked on publicity for Clarion West, and currently serves on the workshop’s ...Read More

OSASUYI OKUNGBOWA, who writes as Suyi Davies Okungbowa, was born August 27, 1989 and grew up in Benin City, Edo, Nigeria. He earned a degree in civil engineering at the University of Benin. He earned an MFA in creative writing at the University of Arizona, and now teaches creative writing at the University of Ottawa in Ontario, Canada.

He began publishing SF with story “Breaking the Habit” (as Suyi ...Read More

ALEX JENNINGS was born November 30, 1979 in Germany, and lived in Botswana, the US, Suriname, and Tunisia. He settled in New Orleans 16 years ago.

Jennings studied at The Evergreen State College, where he met Octavia E. Butler, who encouraged him to apply to Clarion West. He attended the workshop in 2003, and began publishing short fiction of genre interest with “This is Mars” in 2005. His stories ...Read More

Annalee Newitz was born May 6, 1969 in Santa Monica CA, and grew up in Irvine. They attended UC Berkeley, where they completed a PhD in English and American Stud­ies in 1998; their dissertation was published as Pretend We’re Dead: Capitalist Monsters in American Pop Culture (2006). They began freelance writing in the mid-’90s, and have writ­ten full-time since 1999, mostly as a journalist focusing on technology and science. They ...Read More

SAAD Z. HOSSAIN was born April 22, 1979 in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He studied English Lit and Commerce at the University of Virginia.

His debut novel was Baghdad Immortals (2013; as Escape from Baghdad!, 2015). Other novels include Djinn City (2017) and Cyber Mage (2021). Novella The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday (2019) was an Ignyte Award finalist and has a sequel, Kundo Wakes Up, out this year. ...Read More

JULIE ELIZABETH STARINK was born April 11, 1955 in Exeter, Ontario, and lived with her family on the air force base in Centralia. She attended the University of Waterloo, where she studied biology and met future husband Roger Czerneda, married in 1976. She did her graduate studies at the University of Saskatchewan, researching fish and the evolution of reproductive communication systems, and also attended Queen’s University. After that, she ...Read More

XIRAN JAY ZHAO is in their twenties, and was born in a small town in China, immigrating to British Columbia in Canada in their early teens.

Zhao attended Simon Fraser University, graduating in 2020 with a degree in biochemical disease research. They finished school at the height of the first COVID wave, and since they were unable to find a job due to the pandemic, they focused on writing and ...Read More

CHARLES DAVID GEORGE STROSS was born October 18, 1964 in Leeds, England. Stross began writing SF at age 12, and his earliest publica­tions were articles for roleplaying game magazines in the ’70s and ’80s. He earned a bachelor’s in pharmacy in 1986, qualified as a pharmacist in 1987, then enrolled at Bradford University (1989-90) for a post-graduate conversion degree in computer science. He worked as a technical writer and programmer ...Read More

PENG SHEPHERD was born April 12, 1986 and grew up in Phoenix AZ. She graduated college early and spent some time traveling, then earned her MFA at New York University. She has lived in Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, London, Los Angeles, Washington DC, and New York.

First novel The Book of M (2018) won the Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award for Speculative Fiction in the Debut category. Second novel The Cartog­raphers ...Read More

SARAH GAILEY was born February 2, 1990 and grew up in Fremont CA. They studied theater at the American Academy for the Dramatic Arts in Los Angeles and managed a theater company in the East Bay for a few years.

Gailey began publishing work of genre interest with ‘‘Stars’’ in 2015, and made a big splash with alternate-history novella River of Teeth (2017), a Hugo and Nebula Award finalist, and ...Read More

GRADY HENDRIX was born 1972 in South Carolina. He worked in the library of the American Society for Psychical Research before becoming a professional writer, first as a journalist and critic and later as a screenwriter and novelist. He attended the Clarion Workshop in 2009.

Hendrix’s first work of genre interest was story “The Hairy Ghost” in Pseudo­pod (2008), and he’s published several stories in publications including Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, ...Read More

ZORAIDA CÓRDOVA was born June 26, 1987 in Ecuador, and moved to the US at age six, where she grew up in Hollis, Queens, New York. She is a prolific author of fiction for children, young adults, and adults.

Córdova attended National Book Foundation writ­ing camps in high school and began writing novels in college. After graduation she was an intern at a literary agency.

Her debut novel The Vicious ...Read More

Leslye Penelope James Reaves, who writes as L. Penelope and Leslye Penelope, was born April 18, 1978 in the Bronx in New York. Her family moved around when she was young, living in Washington DC and New Jersey before settling in Maryland when she was nine. She attended Howard University in Washington DC, where she studied film and computer science, and went to graduate school at Cal State Hayward ...Read More

Suzanne Palmer was born in 1968, just outside Boston MA. She studied at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, earning a Bach­elor of Fine Arts in studio art focused on sculpture. She began writing fiction seriously in 2001, and attended the Viable Paradise workshop in 2005.

She began publishing SF with “The Ins and Outs of Intergalactic Diplomacy” (2005). “The Secret Life of Bots” (2017) is a Hugo Award winner, ...Read More

Nadia Afifi was born May 13, 1984 in the US, but grew up in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain before returning to the States for college, where she studied journal­ism and business. She now works as a program manage­ment officer for the Department of Veterans’ Affairs.

After publishing a couple of stories in ‘zines, she began producing work of genre interest with “Exhibit K” (2019) in Abyss & Apex, and has ...Read More

Daniel James Abraham was born November 14, 1969 in Albuquerque NM and attended University of New Mexico, where he earned a degree in biology. After graduating in 1996, he spent a few months in New York working at a bookstore, then returned to New Mexico and spent ten years in tech support. He now writes full time.

He is probably best known as half of “James S.A. Corey,” the pseudonym ...Read More

Violet Castro was born July 14, 1979 and grew up in San Antonio TX. She moved to Philadelphia PA to attend Drexel University, where she earned a BS in political science and history. Fifteen years ago, she moved to the UK, and resides there with her family, though she returns to the US often to visit family.

Castro self-published debut vampire novel Maria the Wanted and the Legacy of the ...Read More

Nicola Jane Griffith was born September 30, 1960 in Leeds, Yorkshire, England. She went to college to study science but dropped out after a few months and moved to Hull, where she played in a band. She has also worked as a women’s self-defense instructor, and teaches writing. She attended Clarion in 1988, where she met fellow writer Kelley Eskridge. They were mar­ried in 1993, though the marriage wasn’t legally ...Read More

Dhonielle Clayton was born May 26, 1983 in Olney MD and grew up “right in the shadows of DC.” Clayton graduated from Wake Forest University in 2005, earned her MA from Hollins Univer­sity in 2008, and her MFA in creative writing from The New School in 2012. She has worked as a children’s librarian.

Clayton writes SF, fantasy, and contemporary works for children and young adults. Her first fantasy novel ...Read More

Adrian Czajkowsk, who writes as ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY, was born June 4, 1972 in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire, England. He attended the University of Reading, where he studied zoology and psychology. He worked as a legal executive until becoming a full-time writer in late 2018.

Tchaikovsky began publishing with fantasy novel Empire in Black and Gold (2008), first in the ten-book Shadows of the Apt series, concluded with Seal of the ...Read More

PREMEE MOHAMED is an Indo-Caribbean scientist and writer, born 1981 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. She attended the University of Edmonton, where she earned degrees in molecular genetics and land reclama­tion. She currently works as a reclamation and remedia­tion policy specialist in Alberta.

Mohamed began publishing genre fiction in 2015 with “The Adventurer’s Wife” and has published more than 40 stories since, including novella The Apple-Tree Throne (2018). In 2021 she ...Read More

Timothy Aaron Pratt was born December 12, 1976. He traveled with his mother as a child, living in Missouri, Texas, Louisiana, and West Vir­ginia before settling back in Goldsboro. Pratt went to Appa­lachian State University in Boone NC, graduating with a BA in English in 1999, and attended the Clarion Writers Work­shop that summer. He worked as an advertising copywriter briefly before moving to Santa Cruz CA in 2000. In ...Read More