Interviews

Alix E. Harrow was born November 9, 1989 in Idaho and grew up in Colorado and Kentucky. She went to Berea College at age 16, graduating in 2009 with a degree in history. She worked various jobs, including as a research assistant, cashier, housekeeper, instructional designer, and migrant farmworker, before earning a master’s in history at the University of Vermont. She taught history at Eastern Kentucky Univer­sity before becoming a ...Read More

Andrea Hairston was born July 9, 1952, in Pittsburgh PA, and lived there until she moved to Massachu­setts to attend Smith College at 18, where she studied physics and math before switching to theater. She did graduate work at Brown, and has taught theater in the US and Germany. She is currently the Louise Wolff Kahn 1931 Professor of Theatre and Africana Studies at Smith College, and the Artistic Director ...Read More

Sheree Renée Thomas was born September 30, 1972, in Memphis TN. Her father joined the Air Force, and her family traveled extensively. After spending 20 years in New York, she has now settled back in her hometown.

Thomas is best known for her work as an editor, including Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fic­tion from the African Diaspora (2000) and Dark Matter: Reading the Bones (2004) – both won ...Read More

Kim Stanley Robinson was born March 23, 1952 in Waukegan IL, and grew up in Orange County CA. He earned a BA in literature from UC San Diego in 1974, a master’s in English from Boston University in 1975, and a Ph.D in literature from UC San Diego in 1982. He went to Clarion in 1975. His doctoral thesis was revised and published as The Novels of Philip K. Dick ...Read More

Meg Elison was born May 10, 1982. Her military family moved frequently, living in Europe and more than a dozen US states. She left home at 14 and dropped out of high school, but later attended community college and completed her degree at the University of California, Berkeley.

Elison’s debut, feminist postapocalyptic novel The Book of the Unnamed Midwife (2014), won the Philip K. Dick Award and launched the Road ...Read More

Victor LaValle was born February 3, 1972 in Manhattan and grew up in Queens. He earned an English degree from Cornell University and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Co­lumbia University.

His debut collection was Slapboxing with Jesus: Stories. (1999). First novel The Ecstatic was published in 2002, fol­lowed by Shirley Jackson Award winner Big Machine (2009), Shirley Jackson Award finalist The Devil in Silver (2012), ...Read More

Marshall Ryan Maresca was born March 31, 1973 in Syracuse NY and grew up in upstate New York. He attended Penn State, where he got a degree in video and film production, and was active in the theater world. He settled in Austin TX, where he lives with his wife and son.

Most of Maresca‘s work is in the Maradaine world, an epic fantasy setting he has explored in four ...Read More

Naomi Katherine Kritzer was born April 23, 1973 in North Carolina and lived in Indiana and Texas before age five; she grew up in Madison WI and lived in London for a year at 13. She moved to Minnesota to attend Carleton College and remained there after graduating in 1995, settling in St. Paul. She is married with two children.

Kritzer’s first SF story was “Faust’s SASE” (1999), and she ...Read More

MARIA DAHVANA HEADLEY was born June 21, 1977 in Estacada OR. She attended NYU, where she studied dramatic writing.

Headley’s first book was memoir The Year of Yes (2006), chronicling a year in which she said “yes” to every person who asked her on a date. Story “Give Her Honey When You Hear Her Scream” (2012) was a Nebula Award finalist, and other notable short works include novella The End ...Read More

John Hornor Jacobs was born January 5, 1971 in Little Rock AR. He attended a small liberal arts college in Arkansas and the Art Institute of Dallas, where he studied computer animation and multimedia. He lived briefly in Boston and now lives in Arkansas with his family, where he is a longtime designer in the advertising field.

Debut Southern Gods appeared in 2011 and was a Stoker finalist. Horror novel ...Read More

Tochi Joshua Onyebuchi was born on October 4, 1987 in Northampton MA to Nigerian immigrant parents, and grew up in Newington and New Britain CT. He studied political science at Yale, earned a MFA in screenwriting from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and a master’s degree in global economic law from the Instituts d’études politiques in France. He attended law school at Columbia, and after graduation worked in civil ...Read More

Veronica Anne Roth was born August 19, 1988 in New York and grew up in Barrington IL. She attended Carleton College for a year, then transferred to Northwestern University, where she studied and writing. In 2011, Roth married photographer Nelson Fitch.

Roth sold her debut novel, Divergent, while she was still an undergrad. The bestselling, young-adult SF series continued with Insurgent (2012), Allegiant (2013), and collection Four (2013), and ...Read More

Steve Rune Lundin, who writes fantasy as Steven Erikson, was born October 7, 1959 in Toronto, Canada, and grew up in Winnipeg. He trained as an anthropologist and archaeologist and is a graduate of the famed Iowa Writers’ Workshop; his thesis, a collection of linked stories, became his debut publication, A Ruin of Feathers (1991), written as Steve Lundin. He followed that with two more collections and debut novel This ...Read More

Madeline Ashby was born April 24, 1983 in Panorama City CA and grew up in Washington State, outside Seattle, before relocating to Canada in her early twenties. She graduated from Seattle University in 2005, and went on to get an M.A. from York University in Interdisciplinary Studies with a focus on ”Japanese animation, cyborg theory, and fan cultures.” She then attended the Ontario College of Art and Design University, where ...Read More

Tobias Samuel Buckell was born January 2, 1979 in Grenada in the West Indies, where he lived for the first decade of his life before relocating to the British Virgin Islands and then US Virgin Islands. He moved to Ohio in 1995 in the aftermath of Hurricane Marilyn, which destroyed the boat his family lived on. Buckell graduated from Bluffton University with an English degree in 2000. His short stories ...Read More

Chelsea Louise Polk was born September 28, 1969 in New Westminster, British Columbia. She spent her childhood there and in Surrey BC before moving to Ed­monton at age 13 and then to Calgary at 21.

She published a few pieces of short fiction beginning in the early 2000s as Chel­sea Polk. Her most recent story is “St. Valentine, St. Abigail, St. Brigid” at Tor.com (2/5/20). Polk’s debut novel Witchmark (2018) ...Read More

Sarah Bear Elizabeth Wishnevsky was born September 22, 1971, in Hartford CT. She attended the University of Connecticut, where she studied English and anthropology, though she did not take a degree. She has worked as a technical writer, stable hand, reporter, and in assorted office jobs, and has been writing full-time since 2006. She married Christopher Kindred in 2000, divorcing in 2007. She became involved with fantasy writer and firefighter ...Read More

Kate Heartfield was born January 6, 1977 in Kitchener, Ontario, and moved throughout the province with her family before settling outside Winnipeg. She spent a year after high school backpacking in Central America, then moved to Ottawa for university. She graduated with a degree in political science in 1999, then earned a master’s degree in journalism at Carleton University in 2001. She freelanced for a few years before taking a ...Read More

Authors Veronica Roth (the Divergent series) and Daryl Gregory (Spoonbenders) discuss her new bestselling book Chosen Ones, Chicago,  food, and Chicago food in a half-hour chat. The talk, originally meant to be held at Copperfield’s Books in Petaluma but canceled due to the lockdown, took place virtually, from one home office to the other. We hope you enjoy it!

Veronica Roth is the #1 New York Times  ...Read More

Tamsyn Elizabeth Muir was born March 14, 1985 in New South Wales, Australia, and relocated to New Zealand when she was nine months old; she grew up in the small town of Howick, outside Auckland, and considers herself a Kiwi. She has also lived in Waiuku and central Wellington. Muir finished school at 16 and attended university briefly before dropping out. After working in retail for two years, she earned ...Read More

Susan Carol Burke was born June 21, 1955. She grew up in Milwaukee WI and lived there for more than 40 years, spent a year and a half in Texas, and then relocated to Madrid, Spain with her husband in 1999, where they stayed for 17 years. In 2016 they returned to the US, settling in Chicago. She began writing for newspapers as a teenager, attended the University of Wisconsin ...Read More

Gareth Lyn Powell was born September 3, 1970 in Clifton, Bristol, England; he grew up in Bristol, and lives there still. He studied humanities and creative writing at the University of Glamorgan (later renamed the University of South Wales). He has taught creative writing at various universities. He worked in call centers and in marketing before turning to writing more seriously in 2008.

Powell began publishing SF with “Morning Star” ...Read More

Nina Allan was born May 27, 1966 in Whitechapel, London, and grew up in the Midlands and West Sussex. She attended the University of Reading and the University of Exeter, and earned her master’s in literature at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. She has worked in record stores and as a bookseller.

Allan began publishing SF with “Coming Around Again” in 2002. Notable stories include British Science Fiction Association Award finalists ...Read More

Amal El-Mohtar was born December 13, 1984 in Ottawa, Canada, and grew up there, apart from two years spent in Lebanon, where her family is from. She began publishing short fiction with “The Crow’s Caw” (2006) and has published scores of stories and poems, nota­bly Hugo, Locus, and Nebula Award winner “Seasons of Glass and Iron” (2016, also a World Fantasy, Sturgeon Memorial, and Aurora Award final­ist), Nebula Award finalists ...Read More

AnnaLinden Weller, who writes fiction as Arkady Martine, was born on April 19, 1985 in New York City, and spent the first 18 years of her life there. She attended the Uni­versity of Chicago, graduating with a BA in religious studies in 2007. She earned a master’s in in classical Armenian studies at the University of Oxford in 2013, and a Ph.D. in history at Rutgers in 2014, with a ...Read More

Joseph Edward Abercrombie was born December 31, 1974 in Lancaster, England. He attended Manchester University, where he studied psychology. He worked at a TV post-production company and as a film editor before becoming a full-time writer. He was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2008.

His debut The Blade Itself (2006) was shortlisted for the Compton Crook Award for best first novel, and ...Read More

Rivers Solomon was born in 1989 and grew up in California, Indiana, Texas, and New York. They attended Stanford University, gradu­ating with a degree in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, and earned a MFA at the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin.

Debut novel An Unkindness of Ghosts was a fi­nalist for Gaylactic Spectrum and Lambda Awards, and was selected for the James Tiptree, ...Read More

Matthew Hughes was born May 27, 1949 in Liverpool, England. His family emigrated to southern Ontario, Canada when he was five years old, and then moved to Vancouver when he was 13. He attended Simon Fraser Uni­versity but left school before graduating. He has worked various jobs, but spent most of his career as a freelance writer, including nearly 40 years as a speechwriter for various Canadian politicians and corporate ...Read More

L.X. Beckett is a pen name for Alyx­andra Margaret Dellamonica, who also writes as A.M. Dellamonica and Alyx Dellamonica. Born February 25, 1968 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, they studied theater at the University of Lethbridge, and now teach creative writing at UCLA and other institutions. They are currently studying for a MFA in creative writing at the University of British Columbia. Dellamonica married author Kelly Robson in an “outlaw wedding” ...Read More

Robert Rick McCammon was born July 17, 1952 in Birmingham AL, where he has lived all his life. He received a BA in journalism from the University of Alabama in 1974, and worked on the copy desk at a lo­cal paper before becoming a full-time writer.

McCammon began his career as a horror writer, and wrote numerous acclaimed and bestselling novels as Robert R. McCammon. His debut Baal appeared in ...Read More

Phenderson Djèlí Clark is the pen name of Dexter Gabriel, born June 11, 1971 in Queens NY to immigrant parents from Trinidad and Tobago. His family sent him to live in Trinidad with his grand­parents when he was a baby, and he returned to the US when he was eight. He lived in Staten Island and Brooklyn until moving to Houston TX when he was 12. He got his BA ...Read More

Sarah Pinsker was born in New York and lived in various places in the US (including Illinois and Texas) before her family settled in Toronto, Canada when she was 14. She returned to the US for college and has remained here since.

Her first professional sale was “20 Ways the Desert Could Kill You” in 2012. She followed that with Sturgeon Award winning “In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind” (2013), ...Read More