Nicola Griffith: Past Present

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

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Spotlight on The Science Fiction Outreach Project

Tell us about the mission of your non-profit, The Science Fiction Outreach Project.

We encourage literacy through the reading of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, and spread awareness of literary science fiction conventions, such as Worldcon. We achieve this by giving away thousands of books for free every year at comic conventions. These books are donated to us by fans and publishers, and many fans volunteer to help make our ...Read More

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Spotlight on Artist Alyssa Winans

ALYSSA WINANS is an illustrator, animator, and game artist working in the SF Bay area. She grew up outside Chicago, and spent much of her childhood reading and writing stories with friends. Her illustrations tend towards the surreal and fantastical, and have been used for T-shirts, posters, hats, and book covers. When not drawing, Winans spends her free time making desserts, gardening, playing games, and perusing cookbooks from the library. ...Read More

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Photo Story: Rainforest Writers Village

The annual Rainforest Writers Village retreat, hosted by Patrick Swenson and Fairwood Press, was held in person at Lake Quinault WA across three sessions in February and March 2022.

For more: www.rainforest­writers.com

 

This article and more like it in the May 2022 issue of Locus.

While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on reader donations to keep ...Read More

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Dhonielle Clayton: Future of Magic

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

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Adrian Tchaikovsky: From Star to Star

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

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Cory Doctorow: Six Weeks Is A Long Time

Greetings from the past.

I write these words six weeks before you will read them. I used to do this all the time, back in the glory days of print. Hell, I spent most of the ’90s writing a monthly guide to interesting websites, which came out two months after I submitted it.

I’ve been writing six columns per year for Locus for fourteen years and I have not missed ...Read More

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2022 International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts Report

The 42nd International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (ICFA 43) returned as an in-person event this year, held in sometimes sunny, sometimes overcast, but always muggy Or­lando FL on March 16-20, 2022, at the Orlando Airport Marriott Hotel. The theme was “Fantastic Communities”. Nisi Shawl was the guest of honor, and Farah Mendlesohn was guest scholar. Academics, writers, publishers, editors, artists, students, independent scholars, and more gathered for ...Read More

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Spotlight on: Steven Kotler

Steven Kotler is a New York Times bestselling author, an award-winning journalist, and the Executive Director of the Flow Research Collective. He is one of the world’s leading experts on human performance. He is the author of ten bestsellers (out of thirteen books total), including The Art of ImpossibleThe Future Is Faster Than You ThinkStealing Fire, The Rise of Superman, Bold and Abundance ...Read More

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Spotlight On: Odera Igbokwe, Artist

ODERA IGBOKWE (they/them and he/him) is an illustrator and painter located on the unceded and traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. Odera loves to explore storytell­ing through Afro-diasporic mythologies, Black resilience, and magical girl transformation sequences. Odera was born of Nigerian parents who immigrated to the United States, and as a result their work explores the magic of the Black imagination, and responds to the fractures ...Read More

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Premee Mohamed: Post-Apocalyptic Possibilities

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

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Spotlight on: Analog Awards for Emerging Black Voices

Tell us about the Analog Award for Emerging Black Voices. What is it, and why was it created?

It’s an award meant to make the ‘‘on-boarding process’’ for Black prospective authors – tradi­tionally under-represented in the sciences and in science fiction – a bit easier. Sometimes the biggest hurdle to breaking in is just a matter of access; there simply isn’t someone available to lay out clear steps for folks ...Read More

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Tim Pratt: By Dreams Imprisoned

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

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A Note from Kyiv

Since February 24, 2022, Ukraine has been under invasion by Russian regular forces. The Russians have destroyed houses, schools, hospitals, and infrastructure facilities, and they are targeting and killing civilians. But I say they will not be able to win – because Ukrai­nians are resisting and will continue to resist as long as they can. This is the 21st century – an­other century, another Nazism. We are calling it ‘‘Russaism’’ ...Read More

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Spotlight on: Terry Lee, Artist

TERRY LEE is a science fiction artist and former font designer for the Hallmark Co. in the region of Kansas City, Kansas. He is known for numerous covers and interior art pieces for science fiction novels and magazines, beginning in the late ’70s through the mid ’90s. He won the Chesley Award in 1988. Interview conducted by author Eric J. Hildeman.

Eric J. Hildeman: When did you first decide to ...Read More

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Spotlight on Sara A. Mueller

The Bone Orchard is a lush, Gothic-tinged fantasy. Tell us a bit about the book: the world where it takes place, and the characters who inhabit that world.

Charm’s world is ruled by an empire stretched to the brink of collapse, held together by brute force and a single person; and he dies. Boren is trying to hold itself together against the countries it had previously beaten into submission. Its ...Read More

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Maurice Broaddus: Black AF

Maurice Gerald Broaddus was born April 30, 1970 in London, England, but moved to Indiana at age six. He grew up in In­dianapolis, where he still resides with his wife and two sons and works as a middle-school teacher.

Broaddus began publishing genre work with “Since We Can Die but Once” (2006). Though he mostly wrote horror to start, he has since expanded into urban fantasy, alternate history, and science ...Read More

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Year-in-Review: 2021 Magazine Summary

Year Two in the Time of COVID: We saw sur­prising resilience this year on the magazine front. There are a number of mags for whom we expanded entries and several new additions, although there were still a few that dropped out of print and at least one false start. We asked publish­ers which Hugo Award category they qualify for or used the data from <semiprozine.org> or our best determination; the ...Read More

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Kelly Barnhill: When Women Were Dragons

Kelly Regan Barnhill was born December 7, 1973 in Minneapolis MN. She worked various jobs, including as a bartender, activist, park ranger, and teacher, and lived in Florida and the Pacific Northwest for a time before returning to Minnesota.

Her debut novel was middle grade The Mostly True Story of Jack (2011), followed by Andre Norton Award finalist Iron Hearted Violet (2012) and The Witch’s Boy (2014). The Girl Who ...Read More

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Cory Doctorow: Vertically Challenged

Science fiction has a longstanding love-hate relationship with the tech tycoon. The literature is full of billionaire inventors, sometimes painted as system-bucking heroes, at other times as megalomanical supervillains.

From time to time, we even manage to portray one of these people in a way that hews most closely to reality: ordinary mediocrities, no better than you or I, whose success comes down to a combination of luck and a ...Read More

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Spotlight on: Olivie Blake

OLIVIE BLAKE is the pseudonym of Alexene Farol Follmuth, a lover and writer of stories. She has penned several indie SFF projects, including the webtoon Clara and the Devil with illustrator Little Chmura and the BookTok-viral Atlas series. As Alexene, her young adult rom-com My Mechanical Romance releases May 2022. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, new baby, and rescue pit bull. Find her at olivieblake.com.

 

Tell ...Read More

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The Year in Review 2021 by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro

Last year in this space I mentioned the field’s ongoing engagement with older genre history, and while there are some titles of a similar ilk in this year’s crop, there are also, it seems to me, more studies of recent fiction and contemporary trends, as well as forward-looking surveys on a diversity of aesthetic spaces. Perhaps, given the current state of world affairs, this heightened attention on futurity is less ...Read More

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The Year in Review 2021 by Graham Sleight

As Locus’s statistics keep revealing, there’s so much SF and fantasy being pub­lished these days that any one person can’t keep track of everything. What I hap­pen to have read in a given year is an emergent property of many things: whether I’ve enjoyed the author’s previous work, whether I’ve had a book recommended to me or seen it reviewed positively, what I happened to notice on a bookshop shelf ...Read More

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The Year in Review 2021 by Tim Pratt

I spent 2019 and 2020 serving on award juries, and as a result I read nothing but new SF, fantasy, and horror (in staggering quantities). This year, I eschewed all such responsibilities, and as a result my reading was more scattered, and included older books and lots of work outside the genres we’re covering here. I feel less informed about the field as a whole than I did in my ...Read More

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The Year in Review 2021 by Karen Burnham

2021 was a tumultuous year for me personally, but I’m ending it in a much better place than I began (psychologically speaking). I fervently wish the same for all of you, and I think we all hope that 2022 might, some­how, be less tumultuous than the last few years. Through it all I’m always amazed and impressed by the writers who keep writing and the editors who keep editing, through ...Read More

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The Year in Review 2021 by Ian Mond

2021 saw my reading fall off a steep cliff. To be fair, it never really recovered from last year’s lockdowns. Even as Melbourne (my city) returned to a resemblance of normality late in 2020, I felt little urge to read, feelings only exacerbated when we entered our fifth and sixth lockdown (thank you, Delta) in 2021. (Fun fact: Melbourne broke the record, held by Buenos Aires, as the city that ...Read More

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Spotlight on: Marcela Bolívar, Artist

 

MARCELA BOLÍVAR is a Colombian digital artist based in Germany. Currently, she works as an illustrator for various international publishing houses while develop­ing further her personal work. Her work aims to disengage photomontage of its technologic and automated nature, pushing the limits of photog­raphy as she merges it with a variety of pictorial expressions. The mixture of various media such as photography, painting and sculpture brings forth a world ...Read More

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The Year in Review 2021 by Colleen Mondor

Of the three dozen books I reviewed for Locus last year, there were a few that particularly stood out. Because last year was, well, such a year, I’m afraid some of them might have been overlooked, and taking advantage of my chance here to shine the spotlight a little brighter on those I think might have been missed.

Femi Fadugba’s The Upper World introduces Esso, who is having the worst ...Read More

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The Year in Review 2021 by Gabino Iglesias

Well, the world didn’t stop burning and COVID refused to go away, but 2021 was slightly better than 2020, and it was a superb year for speculative fiction. It was also a year in which I found great balance while reading outstanding work from Big Four publishers, independent presses, and self-published authors. This matters because it speaks volumes about the quality of work out there and the fantastic way in ...Read More

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The Year in Review 2021 by Arley Sorg

“As rough as the year has been for the country, it’s been a great time for reading.” As I write this, a New Year is around the corner, bringing with it the hope of better times. And yet, this opening line from last year’s “Year In Review” piece still holds true: it’s been another rough year, but the reading has been awesome!

My 2021 reading choices were anthology-heavy, mostly because ...Read More

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Spotlight on: Aspen Words

ASPEN WORDS was founded in 1976 as a literary center based in Aspen CO. A program of the Aspen Institute, their mission is to encourage writers, inspire read­ers, and connect people through the power of stories. AW’s year-round programs include Summer Words, a writing conference and liter­ary festival; Winter Words, a speaker series presenting the best of contemporary literature; the Aspen Words Literary Prize, a $35,000 an­nual award for fiction ...Read More

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