Stories for Chip (63 page)

Nick Harkaway
is the author of three novels (
The Gone-Away World, Angelmaker
, and
Tigerman
), a small amount of short fiction, and the website copy for a now-defunct boutique selling burlesque lingerie. He was born in Cornwall in the seventies and retains a love of corduroy and oil paint. He was at one time the world's least talented martial artist, likes red wine, and hates shellfish—though of course not on a personal level. For many years he longed to appear brooding, Byronic, and saturnine, but has now recognized that it will never happen.

Ernest Hogan
, the author of the novels
Cortez on Jupiter, High Aztech
, and
Smoking Mirror Blues
(AKA
Tezcatlipoca Blues
) is a born-in-East-L.A. recombocultural Chicanonaut with roots in speculative fiction's New Wave and has been accused of being a cyberpunk, practicing conspiring with Afrofuturists. Watch out for his first collection of short fiction,
Pancho Villa's Flying Circus
. He blogs at mondoernesto.com, writes a biweekly column at labloga.blogspot.com, and will lecture on Ancient Chicano Sci-Fi Wisdom for a resonable fee.

Nalo Hopkinson
is a Jamaican science fiction and fantasy writer and editor. She currently lives and teaches in Riverside, California. Her novels (
Brown Girl in the Ring, Midnight Robber, The Salt Roads, The New Moon's Arms
) and short stories such as those in her collection
Skin Folk
often draw on Caribbean history and language, and its traditions of oral and written storytelling. Hopkinson has edited two fiction anthologies (
Whispers From the Cotton Tree Root: Caribbean Fabulist Fiction
and
Mojo: Conjure Stories
). She was the coeditor with Uppinder Mehan for the anthology
So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Visions of the Future
, and with Geoff Ryman for
Tesseracts 9
.

Walidah Imarisha
is a writer, educator, public scholar, and poet. Through Oregon Humanities' Conversation Project, she has toured Oregon for six years facilitating programs on Oregon Black history, alternatives to incarceration, and the history of hip-hop. Walidah is coeditor of two anthologies,
Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories From Social Justice Movements
(AK Press, Spring 2015) and the 9/11 collection
Another World Is Possible
(Subway Press, 2002). She authored the poetry book
Scars/Stars
(Drapetomedia, 2013) and the nonfiction
Angels with Dirty Faces: Dreaming Beyond Bars
(AK Press, Fall 2016). She currently teaches in Portland State University's Black Studies Department.

Alex Jennings
is an author, standup comic, actor, and nonprofit fundraiser living and working in New Orleans. He was born in Weisbaden, Germany and raised in Gaborone Botswana, Paramaribo, Surinam, Tunis, Tunisia, and Washington, DC. He has read far, FAR too many comic books.

Tenea D. Johnson
is an author, musician, and editor. Her work includes the poetry/prose collection
Starting Friction
, as well as the novels,
Smoketown
and
R/evolution
, in which William Woods first appears. Smoketown won the 2011 Carl Brandon Parallax Award, while R/evolution received an Honorable Mention that year. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in magazines and anthologies including,
Mothership: Tales of Afrofuturism and Beyond
. She's performed her musical prose pieces in venues like The Public Theater and The Knitting Factory and also coedited an edition of the annual lesbian-themed SF anthology
Heiresses of Russ
. Currently, she's working on the next book in the
R/evolution
series and putting her 36-track through its paces. Her virtual home is teneadjohnson.com. Stop by anytime.

Ellen Kushner
's cult classic “Fantasy of Manners,”
Swordspoint
, introduced readers to the city of Riverside to which she has returned in two more novels and a growing handful of short stories. She recently recorded all three novels as audiobooks for
Neil Gaiman Presents
. She has taught writing at Clarion, Odyssey, and Hollins University, and is a cofounder of the Interstitial Arts Foundation, supporting work that falls between genre categories. She lives in New York City with Delia Sherman, about twenty blocks from Samuel R. Delany, and once had the honor of riding a train through Spain with him.

Claude Lalumière
(claudepages.info) is the author of
Objects of Worship, The Door to Lost Pages
, and
Nocturnes and Other Nocturnes
. He has edited fourteen anthologies in various genres, most recently
The Exile Book of New Canadian Noir
(Exile Editions 2015), and
Superhero Universe: Tesseracts Nineteen
(forthcoming from Edge in 2016). Originally from Montreal, he currently divides his time between Vancouver, BC, and Portland, OR.

Isiah Lavender, III
, is Assistant Professor of English at Louisiana State University, where he researches and teaches courses in African American literature and science fiction. He is author/editor of
Race in American Science Fiction
(Indiana UP, 2011) and
Black and Brown Planets: the Politics of Race in Science Fiction
(UP of Mississippi 2014). His publications on science fiction include essays and reviews in journals such as
Extrapolation, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts
, and
Science Fiction Studies
. He's currently working on
Classics of Afrofuturism
and
Yellow Planets: Racial Representations of Asia in Science Fiction
.

devorah major
, a California-born granddaughter of immigrants, documented and undocumented, served as San Francisco's Third Poet Laureate (2002-2006). She has two novels published,
Brown Glass Windows
and
An Open Weave
. In addition to these and her four poetry books and four poetry chapbooks, she has two biographies for young adults and a host of short stories, essays, and individual poems published in anthologies and periodicals. She performs her work nationally and internationally with and without musicians. Her passion for writing and performing is almost equaled by her delight in teaching poetry to people of all ages, from young readers to seasoned elders.

Haralambi Markov
is a Bulgarian critic, editor, and writer of things weird and fantastic. A Clarion 2014 graduate, Markov enjoys fairy tales, obscure folkloric monsters, and inventing death rituals (for his stories, not his neighbors…usually). He blogs at
The Alternative Typewriter
and tweets as @HaralambiMarkov. His stories have appeared in
Geek Love, Tides of Possibility, Electric Velocipede
and are slated to appear in TOR.com,
The Near Now, Genius Loci,
and
Exalted
. He's currently working on outdoing his output for the past three years and procrastinating all the way.

Anil Menon
's short fiction has appeared in a variety of fiction magazines and anthologies including
Interzone, Interfictions Online, Jaggery, LCRW
, and
Strange Horizons
. His debut novel,
The Beast With Nine Billion Feet
(Zubaan Books, 2010), was short-listed for the 2010 Vodafone-Crossword award and the Carl Brandon Society's 2011 Parallax Award. Along with Vandana Singh, he has coedited
Breaking the Bow
(Zubaan Books 2012), an anthology of spec-fic stories inspired by the
Ramayana
epic. He has a forthcoming novel,
The Wolf's Postscript
(Bloomsbury, 2015). He can be reached at
[email protected]
.

Carmelo Rafala
's work has been published in various markets, including
Jupiter
,
Neon Literary Journal
, as well as the following anthologies:
The West Pier Gazette and Other Stories
(Three Legged Fox Books, 2008),
Rocket Science
(Mutation Press, 2012),
The Fourth Science Fiction Megapack
(Wildside Press, 2012) and
The Anthology of European SF
(Europa SF, 2013). His work has recently been translated into Romanian. He cur rently lives on the south coast of England with his wife and daughter.

Born into a Navy family,
Kit Reed
moved so often as a kid that she never settled down in one place, and she doesn't know whether that's A Good Thing or not. It's a very good thing in its relationship to
WHERE
, in which the entire population of a small island vanishes. As a kid she spent two years in the tidelands of South Carolina—in Beaufort and on Parris Island, both landmarks on the Inland Waterway. Her fiction covers territory variously labeled speculative fiction/science fiction/literary fiction, with stops at stations in between that include horror, dystopian SF, psychothrillers and black comedy, making her “transgenred.” The pitch line for this new novel came to her overnight: Everybody on Kraven Island is gone. Even they don't know WHERE.) Recent novels are
Son of Destruction
and, from Tor,
Enclave, The Baby Merchant
, and the ALA award-winning
Thinner Than Thou
. Her stories appear in venues ranging from
Asimov's SF
and
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
to
The Yale Review, The Kenyon Review
, and
The Norton Anthology
. Her newest collection is
The Story Until Now: A Great Big Book of Stories
, from the Wesleyan University Press. She was twice nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award and the Tiptree Award. A Guggenheim fellow, Reed is Resident Writer at Wesleyan University, and serves on the board of The Authors League Fund.

Benjamin Rosenbaum
has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, and BSFA awards, and won Best Animated Short at SXSW. He was 17 when Sean Roberts pounded on the door saying “You gotta meet Michaela, man—her favorite book is
Dhalgren
, too!” (In 1987, goth had not yet arrived in the Northern Virginia suburbs; Michaela was, pace Sapir-Whorf, merely a fantastical kind of punk.) Last week, discussing office politics, Jamey laid claim to being “multiplex”; so yes, that whole, enduring, high school gang (Terri, Mouse…) evolved its theory of self from
Empire Star
.

Geoff Ryman
is a writer of science fiction, fantasy, and surrealistic or “slipstream” fiction. Ryman currently lectures in Creative Writing for University of Manchester's English Department. His most recent full-length novel,
The King's Last Song
, is set in Cambodia, both at the time of Angkorean emperor Jayavarman VII, and in the present period. He is currently at work on a new historical novel set in the United States before the Civil War.

Alex Smith
is a sci-fi writer, activist, dj, and musician who has, in the past two years, self-published a zine of his own stories (
Arkdust
), started a queer sci-fi reading group that focuses on marginalized people (Laser Life), and become a founding member of Metropolarity (metropolarity.net), a sci-fi activist group that puts together workshops, rituals, readings, screenings, and benefit shows highlighting afro-futurism, queer sci-fi, and the DIY nature of speculative fiction. His stories can be read here:
http://theafterv3rse.tumblr.com/
.

Michael Swanwick
has received the Nebula, Theodore Sturgeon, World Fantasy, and Hugo awards and has the pleasant distinction of having been nominated for and lost more of these same awards than any other human being. He has written nine novels, a hundred and fifty short stories, many works of flash fiction, and much nonfiction. His latest novel is
Chasing the Phoenix
, in which post-Utopian con men Darger and Surplus accidentally conquer China. He is currently at work on a new novel and more short fiction. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Marianne Porter.

Sheree Renée Thomas
writes in Tennessee between a river and a pyramid. She is the author of
Shotgun Lullabies
(Aqueduct) and editor of
Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora
and
Dark Matter: Reading the Bones
(2001 & 2005 World Fantasy Awards). A Clarion West '99 grad, Sheree's writing received Honorable Mention in Year's Best Fantasy & Horror (vol. 16-17), and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and two Rhysling Awards. Read her in
Callaloo, Mythic Delirium, Obsidian, Transition
, and in
Moment of Change, 80! Ursula Le Guin, Mojo: Conjure Stories
, and
So Long Been Dreaming.

Kai Ashante Wilson
was the 2010 Octavia Butler Scholar at Clarion, a six-week workshop for Science Fiction and Fantasy writers in San Diego, California. His stories “Super Bass” and “The Devil in America” can be read online gratis at Tor.com. His novella
The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps
is available for purchase from all fine e-book purveyors. «Légendaire.», of all the fiction the author has thus far seen published, most tightly closes the distance between conception of story and the execution thereof, and so it holds a special place in the author's heart. He hopes the reader finds enjoyment as well!

Nisi Shawl
's collection,
Filter House
, was one of two winners of the 2009 James Tiptree, Jr. Award. Her work has been published at
Strange Horizons
, in
Asimov's SF
, and in anthologies including
Dark Matter, The Moment of Change, Dark Faith 2
, and
The Other Half of the Sky
. Nisi was WisCon 35's Guest of Honor. She edited
The WisCon Chronicles 5: Writing and Racial Identity
and
Bloodchildren: Stories by the Octavia E. Butler Scholars
, and she co-edited
Strange Matings: Octavia E. Butler, Science Fiction, Feminism, and African American Voices
with Dr. Rebecca Holden. With classmate Cynthia Ward, Nisi co-authored
Writing the Other: A Practical Approach
. She is a co-founder of the Carl Brandon Society and serves on the Board of Directors of the Clarion West Writers Workshop. Her website is
www.nisishawl.com
.