Today’s guest is Diane Duane! She was a finalist for the Astounding Award for Best New Writer in 1980 and 1981 after the publication of her first novel, The Door Into Fire. Since then, she has written more stories and novels, including those set in her Middle Kingdoms and Young Wizards universes as well as in established universes like X-Men, Spider-Man, and Star Trek; comics and graphic novels; and scripts, including work on the TV shows Star Trek: The Next […]

Today’s guest is speculative fiction writer Alexis Henderson! Her first published novel, The Year of the Witching, combines the horrors of mysterious witches in a spooky forest with the atrocities occurring in a puritanical society—and kept me riveted, even when I was having difficulty focusing in 2020! The Year of the Witching was also a Goodreads Choice Awards finalist in both the Best Horror and Best Debut Novel categories last year. Writing Dark Fiction: An Exercise In Self-Acceptance I often […]

Today’s guest is speculative fiction author and editor Leona Wisoker! Her short fiction has been published in Cats in Space, Galactic Creatures, Sha’Daa: Inked, and other anthologies, and will soon be in Abyss & Apex as well. She is also the author of the stories and novels in Children of the Desert, a science fantasy series beginning with Secrets of the Sands. The last novel in the series, Servants of the Sands, was recently rereleased as two print volumes with […]

Today’s guest is H. M. Long! Her recently released Viking-inspired epic fantasy debut novel, Hall of Smoke, follows a warrior-priestess who is trying to set things right after having failed her goddess—and discovers there’s far more to her world and its deities than she’d been taught. A standalone sequel, Temple of No God, is scheduled for release in January 2022. Creativity in Crisis Hannah (H. M.) Long It’s March 2020. I’m hip-deep in drafting my second book on contract and editing […]

Today’s guest is E. Lily Yu! She received the Astounding Award for Best New Writer in 2012, and her story “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees” was a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards for Best Short Story that same year. Her short fiction has been published in numerous magazines, including Tor.com, Lightspeed, and Uncanny, and been selected for several “best of” anthologies. On Fragile Waves, her first novel, was released earlier this year. FOUR […]

Women in SF&F Month 2021 is now underway; thank you so much to all of last week’s guests! There will be more guest posts Monday–Friday, following the schedule at the end. But first, here’s what’s been posted so far this month in case you missed any of last week’s essays. All of the guest posts from April 2021 can be found here, and last week’s guest posts were: “The Things I Love” — R.S.A. Garcia (Lex Talionis, “The Sun from […]