Hotel Bonaventure , Montréal, Québéc, November 4-7, 2021

Author GoH - Nisi Shawl

Nisi Shawl – Author Guest of Honour


Nisi Shawl wrote the 2016 Nebula finalist and James Tiptree, Jr. Honor novel Everfair, an alternate history in which the Congo overthrows King Leopold II’s genocidal regime.  In 2005, with Cynthia Ward, she co-wrote Writing the Other: A Practical Approach, now the standard text on diverse character representation in the imaginative genres, and the basis of her online and in-person classes of the same name. She’s a founder of the inclusivity-focused Carl Brandon Society and has served on the Clarion West Writers Workshop’s board of directors for over twenty years.

Shawl’s dozens of acclaimed stories have appeared in Analog and Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazines, among other publications. Many are collected in her 2009 Tiptree Award winner Filter House (2008, Aqueduct), and in two more recent volumes: Exploring Dark Fiction #3: A Primer to Nisi Shawl (2018, Dark Moon) and Talk Like a Man (2019, PM Press). Her “Everfair-adjacent” story “Vulcanization” appears in Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2017, and her short story “Black Betty” was selected by LeVar Burton for inclusion in his live podcast series LeVar Burton Reads.


Shawl edited New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color (2019, Solaris), and has edited and co-edited several other anthologies, such as Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany; and Strange Matings: Science Fiction, Feminism, African American Voices, and Octavia E. Butler; both finalists for the Locus Award.  She contributes reviews and columns to The Seattle Times, Ms. Magazine, The Washington Post, Tor.com, and The Seattle Review of Books. She has lectured at Duke University, Spelman College, the University of Hawaii Manoa, and elsewhere.


Shawl’s next book, a Middle Grade historical fantasy titled Speculation, is due out in 2020 from Lee & Low. Currently she is finishing a draft of Kinning, a sequel to Everfair.