DAPHNE TONGE is the founder and CEO of Illumicrate, the UK’s first specialist book subscription box. She is also the founder and MD of Daphne Press, a science fiction and fantasy publisher. She’s judged for book prizes and is an event chair. Previously, she was an award-winning book blogger. She lives in London, but is Chinese-Filipino born and was raised in Manila.
Tell us about your book subscription box service, ...Read More
Read more
Her imagination, creativity, and thirst for learning have been near-constant companions, but artist/illustrator CHRISTINE MITZUK didn’t initially consider working as an artist. Her career started after college while working as a production artist and graphic designer at a few design and marketing firms for about seven years. She gained insight into client work and procedures to help a project flow along. As a freelance artist she uses several of these ...Read More
Read more
VIRGINIA LEE is an artist, illustrator and sculptor based on Dartmoor, England where she was raised in a creative household immersed in myth and fantasy art. She has illustrated several books for children, including the Greek myth of Persephone and the Russian fairy tale ‘‘The Frog Bride’’. She provided illustrations for “The Enchanted Lenormand Oracle”, StoryWorld cards, and The Secret Histories: Mermaids and Hobgoblins books. She also worked as a ...Read More
Read more
M. M. OLIVAS is an alumna of the 2022 Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop and the 2023 Under the Volcano Writers Residency. Her short fiction has appeared in several publications, including Uncanny Magazine, Weird Horror Magazine, Apex, and Bourbon Penn. As a trans, first-generation Chicana, she explores the intersection of queer and diasporic experiences in her fiction. She currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area, earning her ...Read More
Read more
Tell us about your magazine, The Deadlands. When was it founded, and who’s on the publishing team?
The Deadlands is spec-fic/literary zine all about death. It launched in May 2021. In late 2020 I (Sean Markey) brought the idea to E. Catherine Tobler (Elise), whom I knew from when she was the editor in chief of Shimmer, which had closed down a few years before. The publisher of Shimmer, Beth ...Read More
Read more
MICAELA ALCAINO is a book cover designer and illustrator who relocated from her home in Sydney, Australia to London, UK in 2013. Her career has been marked by significant achievements, including being named one of The Bookseller’s Rising Stars in 2021 and winning the prestigious Designer of the Year title at the British Book Awards in 2022, with a subsequent nomination this year in 2024. She was also a finalist ...Read More
Read more
CHRIS MCGRATH was born in the Bronx and has lived in and around NYC his whole life. At an early age he became interested in art, especially science fiction and fantasy. After graduating from The School of Visual Arts in NYC, Chris gave guitar lessons for several years before beginning his career in 2001. Since then he has done covers for #1 New York Times best selling authors such as: ...Read More
Read more
What is the mission statement of your organization?
We are Authors Against Book Bans.
We stand united against the deeply unconstitutional movement to limit the freedom to read. We unequivocally support the availability of diverse voices on our library shelves, in our schools, and in our culture. We pledge to band together against the oppression of literature, to speak when our voices are silenced, to go where our bodies are ...Read More
Read more
WANG JINKANG (1948—), a Chinese science fiction writer, senior engineer, and multiple Yinhe Award winner. He spent several years in a countryside commune, before being sent to work in an iron foundry and a diesel engine plant. This unique experience sparked his interest in science and engineering, and in 1978, he entered Xi’an Jiaotong University for further studies. Later, he became a petroleum engineer in Nanyang Oilfield. At the age ...Read More
Read more
Raya Golden has a unique and stylized vision and brings her work into the world using a variety of mediums ranging from watercolors to digital multimedia. In 2014 she did a comic based on George R.R. Martin’s story ‘‘The Meathouse Man’’. It was nominated for a Hugo Award for best graphic novel. In 2015 she released her first full length graphic novel, Starport, an adaptation of a 1994 TV ...Read More
Read more
LINDSAY ELLIS is an author, media critic, and Hugo-nominated video essayist. She also was the co-host of the PBS digital series “It’s Lit!”. After earning her bachelor’s in Cinema Studies from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, she earned her MFA in Film and Television Production from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts with a focus in documentary and screenwriting. She lives in Long Beach, CA. Apostles of Mercy is her ...Read More
Read more
Sara Felix is a Hugo Award winning mixed media artist who creates with inks, acrylics, resin and sometimes clay. She is an editor for the Hugo Award winning fanzine Journey Planet and has been also nominated for her work for the past few years. She has designed two Hugo Award bases, one with Vincent Villafranca in 2018 and one on her own in 2016, and has created four Lodestar ...Read More
Read more
Richard A. Kirk is an author, illustrator, and visual artist. He is the author of novels The Lost Machine and Necessary Monsters, and illustrated collection Magpie’s Ladder. Illustrated novel Tailor of Echoes was published in early 2022. He has illustrated works by Clive Barker, Christopher Golden, Frank Herbert, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Thomas Ligotti, China Miéville, the rock band Korn, and others. Kirk’s artwork is exhibited and collected internationally. ...Read More
Read more
You’re the publishing director for the SF/F imprint at Quercus in the UK (formerly known as Jo Fletcher Books). We understand you’re relaunching with a new vision and name. Tell us about it.
I was very lucky when I started at Quercus; Jo Fletcher Books was 11 years old and well-established, and had a reputation for being particularly strong in epic fantasy, having launched authors like Sebastien de Castell, Peter ...Read More
Read more
Manzi Jackson is a contemporary visual Artist based in Kigali, Rwanda.
He dabbles in surrealist and magical concepts, displayed in his ability to portray the full magical breadth of his subjects with breathtaking, colorful technique.
He’s currently focusing on a body of portrait and figurative works depicting dreamy energy that draws us into a rich and vibrant realm.
His use of flower-draped muses in astronaut suits are characterized in a ...Read More
Read more
Artist/writer Winona Nelson was born in 1983 and grew up in Duluth MN. She has drawn all her life and began painting digitally as a teenager. She studied classical realism and art for the entertainment industry at the Safehouse Atelier in San Francisco.
Winona is a queer, Two Spirit Indigenous person, and her fine art often focuses on the stories and history of her tribe, the Ojibwe of Minnesota, and ...Read More
Read more
Tell us about your project. When was it founded, and who’s involved in running it?
The Sunday Morning Transport was founded in August 2021, and we published our first story in January 2023. Julian Yap is editor in chief, Fran Wilde is managing editor, and our copyediting, proofreading, and social media team is Kaitlin Severini (our copyeditor), Ryan T. Jenkins (copyedits and proofing), Delia Davis (year one proofreader) and Christine ...Read More
Read more
When I give presentations to aspiring writers – particularly presentations on writing and selling short stories – I’m always careful to emphasize that short stories are no longer the apprenticeship into the novel world that they once were. I know plenty of folks who have sold science fiction and fantasy novels without ever having bothered with shorts.
That said, short fiction did kind of function as a proving and learning ...Read More
Read more
Tell us about your magazine, Omenana. When was it founded, and who’s on the publishing team? What is your mission?
Omenana was cofounded in 2014 by Chiagozie Fred Nwonwu (AKA Mazi Nwonwu) and Chinelo Onwualu. Presently, Omenana’s publishing team comprises Mazi Nwonwu, managing editor; Iquo DianaAbasi, editor; Godson Okeiyi, graphic artist; Sunny Efemena, illustrator; and Chinaza, editorial assistant.
Omenana’s mission is to develop the writing and reading of speculative ...Read More
Read more
I have always loved short stories. I don’t remember a time when I ‘‘discovered’’ them. For me, there was nothing to find. They were always there; in school textbooks, homework assignments, in the anthologies I would randomly pick off the shelf at the library. There was never any question either of what I would start writing when I decided to learn story craft. In those early days, reaching the end ...Read More
Read more
Tell us about your magazine, khōréō. When was it founded, and who’s on the publishing team? What is your mission?
In 2020, khōréō was founded with a specific-yet-broad mission: publishing speculative fiction by immigrant and diaspora writers. Our team currently relies on volunteers, with the idea that many hands make light work; on the editorial side, we have Aleksandra Hill as the founder, outgoing editor-in-chief, and publisher; Zhui Ning Chang ...Read More
Read more
Lavie Tidhar was born and raised on a kibbutz in Israel. He has traveled extensively since he was a teenager, living in South Africa, the UK, Laos, and the small island nation of Vanuatu.
Tidhar advocates bringing international SF to a wider audience, and has edited The Apex Book of World SF (2009), The Apex Book of World SF 2 (2012), and The Apex Book of World SF 3 ...Read More
Read more
Lauren Raye Snow is an award-winning artist and illustrator from San Antonio, Texas, whose work explores uncanny, ambivalent visions, both dreadful and cathartic. She has art directed four Nebula Conferences, painted queer saints and monsters, and most recently has been nominated for a World Fantasy Award. Her work has been featured in Apex Magazine, Mermaids Monthly, New Gothic Review, and Infected By Art – but the really juicy stuff is ...Read More
Read more
Yume Kitasei is a debut writer of speculative fiction. She is half-Japanese and half-American and grew up in a space between two cultures—the same space where her stories reside. Her stories have appeared in publications including New England Review, Catapult, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Baltimore Review. Visit her online at yumekitasei.com.
Tell us about your new novel, The Deep Sky — the world where it takes place, and the characters who ...Read More
Read more
LIZ KERIN is an author, playwright, screenwriter, and graduate of the Rita and Burton Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. She is also the author of The Phantom Forest (2019). She lives in Southern California.
Tell us about your new novel, Night’s Edge — the world where it takes place, and the characters who live in that world.
Night’s Edge takes place in a ...Read More
Read more
Eli John is an illustrator working from a studio in the Pendle Forest, Witch Country, UK. This melancholy landscape is a worthy setting as John works predominantly within the horror genre, inspired by supernatural and weird fiction, ghost stories and gothic literature, creating dark visions of sublime beauty and unsettling psychological landscapes. He has worked for renowned publisher’s worldwide, illustrating work by authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, M.R. James, ...Read More
Read more
Ed Binkley has created fantasy artwork for three decades. He received the First Place Grand Prize in Infected by Art Volume 10 as well as the Body of Work award. His work is published in numerous issues of Spectrum: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art where he won Gold and Silver awards, and he was a finalist in the Beautiful Bizarre Art Award competition in 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022. ...Read More
Read more
RR Haywood is a caffeine-befuddled, dog-owning, beard-keeping Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Amazon, and Audible multiple bestselling author with over two million books sold worldwide. He lives in England on the Isle of Wight with his German Shepherd dogs, (and two Herring gulls called Oscar and Veronica that come for breakfast every morning).
Hello to the famous Locus Mag and all your gorgeous readers! My name is Rich. ...Read More
Read more
Eli Minaya is an illustrator and fine artist based in Virginia. His early creative journey began as a graffiti artist, which over time transformed into a career as an illustrator in publishing and gaming; with clients such as Tor Books and Amazon Publishing, as well as fantasy art with clients such as Wizards of the Coast and Image Comics. In his studio, he pushes the boundaries of collage art in ...Read More
Read more
Tell us about your web video series About the Authors TV. How did it come about, and what inspired you to launch it?
I consider it a lightning bolt from beyond. Like so many authors, I was stranded at home over ...Read More
Read more
Tell us about the Portolan Project. What’s the mission?
The Portolan Project’s mission is to provide creative writing and literature educational resources to speculative fiction writers and readers, especially those facing barriers to access.
We interview authors and other experts in the field on aspects of writing craft, post the interviews on our site and YouTube channel, and then use excerpts from the interviews to create free writing lessons (our ...Read More
Read more
Author and editor adrienne maree brown grows healing ideas in public through her multigenre writing, her music, and her podcasts. Informed by 25 years of movement facilitation, somatics, Octavia E. Butler scholarship and her work as a doula, adrienne has nurtured Emergent Strategy, Pleasure Activism, Radical Imagination, and Transformative Justice as ideas and practices for transformation. She is the author/editor of seven published texts and the founder of the Emergent ...Read More
Read more 
This is a perilous time for independent media. As a small independent nonprofit with no endowment, we rely on the support and generosity of readers to support our work.
Please consider making a tax-deductible donation today?
Every contribution helps pay our writers, editors, and artists, sustain the magazine and website, and allows us to continue to share our content without a paywall. Even a small contribution goes a long way toward keeping Locus going and you in the know about the SFF world. Thank you for your help!
