Kinitra’s Articles, Essays, and Lectures:

• The Safe Negro Guide to Lovecraft Country: ‘Sundown’ (2020): “Well, I’m Dr. Kinitra Brooks, a professor and horror scholar, here to be your guide into the deep universe of Lovecraft—and this shit goes deep. Like, white boys roleplaying Call of Cthulhu until 3 a.m. deep; like busty white chicks dressing up like Dejah Thoris deep. Now, I promise I won’t go that deep—I also prefer the Blacker Harlem Unbound (which we’ll dig into later)—but I have immersed myself in all things Lovecraftian so you don’t have to (and I’ll try to keep the spoilers to a minimum—but again, you should watch).” (See guides to the rest of the episodes as well: ‘Whitey’s on the Moon’, ‘Holy Ghost’, A History of Violence, ‘Strange Case’, ‘Meet Me in Daegu’, ‘I Am.’, ‘Jig-a-Bobo’, ‘Rewind 1921’, and ‘Full Circle’.)
• With ‘Black Is King,’ Beyoncé has gone all in on Black. And Beyoncé doesn’t lose. (2020): “By spotlighting this conversation and making Blackness hyper-visible in her work, Beyoncé has made a conscious decision to become virtually illegible to the majority of her White American fan base. She no longer has to play the game of mass appeal, which traditionally has meant making herself palatable to the White gaze.”

• The Conjure Woman’s Garden: Colloquium with Kinitra Brooks (2019): “Literally, rootwork became the foundation of pharmaceutical science as black women ground up roots to put in salves and steeped leaves to make healing teas. Figuratively, rootwork is an active part of the spirit work that informs black women’s epistemic agency, knowledge practices infused with traditional African religious practices that are put into action, that are used to both heal and harm as part of a system of belief. I am openly and consistently pushing back against the epistemic exclusion of black women’s knowledge practices.”

• Us Makes Us Look in the Mirror—What If We Don’t Like What We See? (2019): “The doppelgänger is such a rich horror metaphor because it points to how we define humans and the boundaries of humanity.”

• The Multiple Pasts, Presents, and Futures of Nnedi Okorafor’s Literary Nigeria (2016): “In the end, Lagoon is a love story to Nigeria and its peoples, as well as a prediction that peace and prosperity will come only when the remembrance of the old ways are merged with an acceptance of the new.”

• The Importance of Neglected Intersections: Race and Gender in Contemporary Zombie Texts and Theories (2014): “In this essay I want to explore how the horror text continues a tradition of the (non)representation of certain intersections of race and gender in Western society at large, and in zombie horror in particular. Specifically, I address the problem of how patriarchal and Eurocentric notions perpetuate multiracial representations of men juxtaposed against monoracial representations of women.”

• Maternal Inheritances: Trinity Formations and Constructing Self Identities in Stigmata and Louisiana (2012): “The idea of motherhood as a tool of resistance occupies a noted and complex place within the African American cosmology.”

• “Finding the Humanity in Horror: Black Women’s Sexual Identity in Fighting the Supernatural” (2011): “I contend that Tananarive Due and L.A. Banks rewrite and revamp history by focusing on black women’s bodies as sites of reality-changing power, and that their characters occupy multiple positions as complexly constructed lovers, and as both protector and protected.”

• Myrtle’s Medicine: “My Mama Myrt became a wife, mother, and entrepreneur—a licensed beautician—but her ancestral role as a rootworker and community healer leads the unfolding narrative of my life.”

Kinitra’s Interviews and Profiles:

• Cultureshift: Beyonce, Folklore And the Power of Pop Culture (2020): “She says she talks to her students about how traditional and African-derived spiritual practices are seen with fear, not because they’re occult practices, but because of anti-Blackness.”
• Examining the power of pop culture to shape perception, issues and trends (2020): “I don’t think we can underestimate the power of pop culture. Think of HBO’s ‘Watchmen’ and how those first scenes were of the Tulsa Massacre. Almost immediately, you had people Googling it, talking about it in social media and questioning why they hadn’t learned about it before.”

• The Conjure Is Political (2020): “I think ‘conjure’ is associated with a lot of women’s knowledge, and particularly Black women’s knowledge practices that are often easily dismissed, that a lot of times are hidden.”

• The Lemonade Reader: Black Feminists Read Beyoncé (2019): “I believe the most important takeaway is that you have to do the internal work to grow into your happiness. And it takes work, especially in a world that actively hates Black women and girls. And that Southern Black women have long been onto something in articulating and laying the pathway for their Black girl descendants to make such a journey of self-healing and self-discovery. Beyoncé has simply excelled at coalescing all of these insights into a 55-minute avant-garde film/visual album.”

• The Public Medievalist Podcast, Episode 1 (and transcript) (2019): “I’m a literary scholar. It’s not necessarily what I wanted it to be, it’s are you being true to the story. I think a lot of people were like, oh you’re mad that they made Daenerys the Mad Queen, you know, they have been foreshadowing this… Yes, you know, those of us who are fans of the show, those of us who have done some of the reading and everything else, we realize that that has been foreshadowed for a long time. But … you shit the bed in the execution.”

• OutKasted Conversations: Kinitra Brooks (2019): “And I am obsessed with how black folks define their monsters while being considered monstrous and all those things that flow in between.”

• An Interview with Dr. Kinitra Brooks, Who Teaches a Class on Beyoncé (2016): “I am most interested in how black women take folklore and syncretic religious practices (so spiritual practices that mix West African religion with Christianity) in their creative fiction and use it as a place of power and subversion against the horror genre and classic readings of black women’s literature.”

• Interview with Dr. Kinitra D. Brooks, Horror Scholar (2016): “I believe horror offers many of the black women horror creators I study a sense of agency to push back against the horrific. Authors such as Chesya Burke, Kiini Ibura Salaam, and director/activist Bree Newsome use horror to examine the simultaneity of oppressions (race, gender, sexuality, and class) and offer interesting avenues for their black women protagonists to gain control and fight back against these interlocking systems of oppression.”

• When Theory Meets the Incredible: Changing Perceptions of Black Women in Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy: “Brooks came to theorize that white women were capable of rescuing themselves while maintaining their femininity, blurring gender lines by assuming forceful attitudes and still remaining sympathetic figures. Black women who took on similar roles, on the other hand, were portrayed as unnaturally strong, losing their femininity and the sympathy of the audience in the process.”

Joamette’s interviews:

• Vision 2020: Joamette Gil (2020): “As an introverted, low-income immigrant kid, escapism was my thing, and my favorite way to escape was watching Sailor Moon. The way she made me feel convinced me that, when I grew up, I wanted to make others feel the same way using characters of my own.”

• Indie Comics Spotlight: Joamette Gil Channels Power & Magic in Her Comics (2019): “So often, a “witch” was any woman embracing her authentic self, rejecting social obligations. I relate to that as a queer woman of color who always had to hear that there was “something wrong” with me, for no other reason than that I didn’t fit a certain “womanly” ideal.”

• Smash Pages Q&A: Joamette Gil on ‘Heartwood’ and More (2018): “In a lot of ways, Heartwood was also about pushing P&M Press’ boundaries: how many people can we hire, how much can we pay them, how many invites vs open submissions, how many people can I edit at a time, how well will this fund? The hypotheses across the board were ‘more, bigger,’ and I was mercifully right, hah. I eventually want to publish books by individual creators, so in addition to shining more light on less represented voices, every anthology is a chance to grow into a publisher that can do a solo creator justice.”

• Joamette Gil Summons ‘Power & Magic’ for Queer Witches Everywhere (2016): “My ‘thing’ has always been telling stories that resonate with people from marginalized communities, especially queer people of color who grew up (or currently live) in poverty, which is my own experience. Power & Magic exists because I don’t just want to resonate; I want to be materially supportive to others like me.”

Joamette’s comics:

• “Hungry” (2019): Joamette’s contribution to the Power & Magic: Immortal Souls anthology.

• “As the Roots Undo” (2017): Joamette’s contribution to Power & Magic Press’s Queer Witches Comics Anthology

• What White Americans Misunderstand About Mixed-Race Latinx Identity (2017): “Visibly mixed-race people are the norm, but Latinx people are trained to identify with nation first and race second, if at all.”

• Four Major Ways to Cope with Social Anxiety (2016): “I’ve been struggling with disruptive social anxiety and panic for at least 12 years now. These are the coping skills that have withstood the test of time for me.”

• Four Unique Struggles That Queer and Trans People of Color Have to Deal With (2016): “[W]hen LGBTQI* identities intersect with POC identities, the experience and struggles will be different from those of folks who only live on one of those streets.”

• Five Radical Ways People Do Non-Monogamy That You Need to Know About (2015): “[H]ere are five styles of non-monogamy with feminist principles at their core that the mainstream either ignores or doesn’t take seriously.”

   

Fonda’s Guest Posts:

• Fonda Lee on Star Trek: TNG, the Green Bone Saga, and the Transformative Power of Fantasy Diaspora Stories (2019): “One of the things that has drawn me to science fiction over the years is the thematic exploration of diaspora. What happens when humankind takes to the stars and spreads far beyond its original homeland?”
• The Case for YA Science Fiction (2018): “But for a while, I had a frustrating front row view into the disparity between the two sides of the genre coin. While fantasy is more popular and more lucrative in the adult speculative fiction field as well, the imbalance seems to be worse in YA.”
• East Meets West: A Film-going Novelist Celebrates the Blending of Cultural Influences (2017): “It’s vital to recognize that there is a sometimes subtle but important difference between borrowing another culture’s traditions or customs for garish exploitation, and the potentially wonderful creative fruits of genuine cross-cultural inspiration.”
• Epic Fantasy: Let’s Get with the (Non-Medieval) Times (2017): “If you’re an epic fantasy fan looking for historical variety, there are plenty of novels to choose from, if you go looking for them. In fact, you could easily embark on a ‘medieval-free’ book diet and discover enough to keep you happily fed for years.”
• There’s More to Worldbuilding Than Making Magic (2017): “The vital ingredient in a fictional world is culture.”
• Women in SF&F Month: Fonda Lee (2016): “Let me begin by saying that I hold a special fury in my heart for the unrelenting gender assigning of books, media, and toys.”
• Blow-by-Blow: Writing Action and Fight Scenes—5 Tips (2015): “No matter at what point they occur in a story, fight scenes are like blocks of C-4 plastic explosive. They pack a hell of a lot of energy. They build and release tension in a powerful burst. Used properly, they rivet attention and propel your story forward. Overused, they are noisy and deadening.”

Fonda’s Interviews:

• Interview with Fonda Lee (2020): “Anden going to Espenia and navigating a culture that’s foreign to him was a really compelling storyline for me. As an Asian-American, I rarely see diaspora culture reflected in fantasy fiction. Other cultures, even fictional ones, are so often depicted as a monolith.”
• Fantasy and Science Fiction Award-Winning Author Fonda Lee On Research, Letting Ideas Age, and Getting Clear On WHY You Write (2020): “I don’t believe in writer’s block as a syndrome or as an excuse; it’s usually a signal that something is not working, either in my story, or with my own motivation or creative state of mind. I usually deal with it by backtracking and re-evaluating my manuscript for where it seems to have stalled.”
• Fonda Lee: When the Alien Invaders Win (2018): “My dad takes credit for introducing me to SF. He says when I was an infant he’d hold me on his lap in this battered yellow rocking chair, and bathe me in the glow of Star Trek original series reruns, so I must’ve been osmosing science fiction stories as a baby.”
• Interview: Fonda Lee (2018): “I’m very interested in creating worlds that feel as though they’ve been around for a long time and are now on the cusp of another chapter in history.”
• Portland author Fonda Lee builds worlds that give readers ‘things to think about’ (2018): “All alien stories are fundamentally human stories.”
• Author Interview: Fonda Lee (2017): “To me, there are two equally wrong-headed extremes when it comes to portraying women in a testosterone-dominated culture, fictional or not. One is to ignore or marginalize them completely. The other is to pretend that there is no systemic prejudice and to make them every bit as prevalent and accepted as the men. Both are unrealistic.”
• Michelle Rial and Fonda Lee: “I find it frustrating that people feel compelled to draw judgmental distinctions between ‘high art’ and ‘commercial art.’ Of course, there are differing objectives and audiences for different types of art, but I think that as creatives, we’re all just trying to express our own truth.”

Fonda’s Short Fiction:

• “I (28M) created a deepfake girlfriend and now my parents think we’re getting married” (2019): “I filled out some information about myself, put in my preferences for gender and age, and in seconds I had an AI-generated virtual girlfriend named ‘Ivy.’ ”
• “Welcome to the Legion of Six” (2019): “Call it idealism if you will, but when I joined the Legion of Six at the height of the Cold War, we really believed we had a calling. A solemn responsibility to use our powers to save the world from destruction. You know what? I think it’s just not the same for young superhumans these days.”
• “Universal Print”: “Art Strung stared at the grounded vessel, then turned in a slow, disbelieving circle. The afternoon Thedesian sun beat down on the scrubby, arid landscape: dusty, rolling purple hills dotted with copses of bushy blackish-green trees, and in the distance, piled rock formations that made Art think of enormous heaps of animal dung. I’m screwed, Strung decided. I am so going to be fired. ”

Sarah’s Short Fiction:

• Drones to Ploughshares (2020): “No one ever had to know that he noticed things he didn’t log.”

• Away with the Wolves (2019): “I can’t feel anything, really. That’s how it always is when I wake up. I can’t feel anything, because I have not yet tried to move. When I do try to move, there will be pain. There’s no telling where it will be—my hips, my shoulders, my spine, my thighs, my hands. Some days it lives in the muscles between my ribs, making every breath feel like an argument.”

• The Thing That Hides in Your Home (2019): “Knowing where it is won’t protect you from it, but that won’t stop you from reading, because some part of you believes that knowing is the same thing as safety.”

• Reynard Is Coming (2019): “Reynard used to be just like you. He thought he was clever. He thought he was above the rules. He thought he didn’t have to watch his back when he was stretching his legs and straddling the centuries.”

• An Augmented Reality (2018): “Denise was already late, even before her augmented-reality glasses decided to perform another endless system update.”

• From the Void (2018): “The way I miss Esther is a slow-spreading bruise.”

• Bread and Milk and Salt (2018): “The first time I met the boy, I was a duck.”

• The Catch (2018): “They didn’t usually come right up to vessels, not without being lured in by chum over the course of an afternoon, but there she was. Lean, chap-lipped, hungry eyed. Her hair was black — no, blacker than that — and it fanned out in the water as she smiled up at him.”

• STET (2018): “Anna, I’m concerned about subjectivity intruding into some of the analysis in this section of the text. I think the body text is fine, but I have concerns about the references. Are you alright?”

• There Are No Hands in the River (2018): “All that I wanted: to escape the ghost-rattling chains shackled to the thing at the center of me.”

• All the Stars Above the Sea (2018): “All the stars are closer now than they have ever been. If you were still beside me you’d reach up on tiptoes, fingers spread to touch the brightest one.”

• An Introduction to Pain (2018): “How badly are you hurting? Please identify your pain by weight and measure it from end to end, please rank the force and flavor of this guest that’s wedged itself into your life.”

• Anne and the Stairs (2018): “Anne told Edgar that she was barren on the day that the stairs appeared.”

• As Simple as Vanishing (2018): “When Maurice decided that he wanted to vanish that first time, all he had to do was try.”

• What Grew (2018): “Before I knew I was pregnant I would stand before the mirror and wonder why I was different why I was growing what was wrong with my too-small skin.”

• Worth Her Weight in Gold (2018): “Winslow Remington Houndstooth had a problem. The problem was Ruby.”

• The Legend of Tania and Lula (2018): Lula’s gold tooth glinted in the light of the dying sun as she stared into the barrel of Tania’s Pulsar-1500. Sand swirled in eddies around her dust-clouded boots. Her eyes watered, but she didn’t blink. The sweat that had beaded across her forehead during the hike back to the ship evaporated in the rising wind as she came to understand her situation. She would die at Tania’s hand.”

• Go Home, Go Home, Go Home (2018): “Earth’s gravity pulled at Anton’s bones like an insult.”

• Our Collection (2018): “She died in a sea of wind-swept fury, her arms spread wide to catch the waves, she died with her cheek to the wind.”

• The Nightmare Stays the Same (2018): “In the nightmare, Bess is having a fistfight. In the nightmare, she is winning.”

• Anonymous Croupier (2018): “It was a hot night. One of those nights that would feel like mid-afternoon anywhere other than Vegas, you know?”

• Single Parent (2017): “The monster in my son’s closet is so fucking scary.”

• A Lady’s Maid (2017): “Isaac hadn’t taken the news of the engagement well. Nadia reflected on this as she pressed her cheek against the cool wall of her washtub. She was strong, and Isaac Cornette was a small man, but wrestling his dead weight into the tub hadn’t been easy.”

• The Art of Asterculture (2017): “Star-wine is very difficult to make. It’s a complex and sometimes dangerous process. But one must have a hobby, and this is mine.”

• Rescue (2016): “When they went to the dog park, Malachai had to wear sweatpants to blend in with the humans that congregated there. Going to the dog park required him to use very un-demonic magic: a careful layering of glamours to make him look like a small, balding human male, rather than the top-tier demon that he was.”

• Homesick (2016): “I close my eyes, but it doesn’t really help, because it’s more the feeling than the seeing that’s the problem. I feel Moira’s dry lips scratch closed around my finger; I feel her split tongue wrap around my knuckle and slide up and down my fingernail. Then, a blessed numbness creeps up my hand, all the way to the wrist, and I don’t have to feel anything she’s doing anymore.”

• Haunted (2016): “When he came inside, he kept his shoes on. That was my first clue. She took her shoes off, and looked around like she was standing in a cathedral. He rapped his knuckles hard on a wall, and I flinched.”

• Stars (2016): “Maria can feel his voice, the vibration of it, but she cannot hear him over the ringing in her own ears. The ringing is loud, and she isn’t going to try to hear over it because she knows it would be impossible, like trying to see over the top of the horizon.”

• Bargain (2016): “Malachai worked exclusively with those humans who had found themselves at the limit of how much power they could possess. They called him to bend the rules of time and space around their whims, so that they might be even more feared and loved by the other mortals.”

• Look (2015): “Caroline raised her head a few inches to see the thing the doctor held up—a loud, purple thing, covered in white smears of vernix. She let her head drop. Her vision blurred with fatigue. The past thirty-seven hours had been pain and blood and screaming and working and waiting and then pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing. She knew the moment should be beautiful, but all she could think was ‘finished.’”

Sarah’s Articles and Essays:

• Aging, Which Is Linear (2020): “I’ve decided, with this birthday, to let some things go.”

• What Makes a Story Queer? (2019): “Magic for Liars is a book that is immensely concerned with identity, and whether or not identity is immutable.”

• Magical Accessories, Definitively Ranked (2019): “A staff is a great magical accessory… for your great-grandfather to wield. A staff tells everyone who looks at you that you’re a very powerful wizard who doesn’t know how to use email and will never be on time. It’s the rotary phone of spellcasting.”

• The Enduring Legacy of Bunnicula, a 40-Year-Old In-Joke That’s Still Hilarious (2019): “James and Deborah Howe were two struggling actors in their late twenties, married and underemployed, and they thought the idea of a vampire rabbit was funny.”

• Imposter/Abuser: Power Dynamics in Publishing (2019): “We tell ourselves that we’re not important for a lot of reasons, many of which boil down to self-protection.”

• Leave the Hookhand Murderer Alone (2019): “This story punishes the would-be-killer by taking away the device that functions as his prosthetic hand. This is a punishment that’s repeated often in media across genres: a disabled villain is separated from his adaptive device, and the audience is asked to view it as justice.”

• Whiskey, Trauma, and The Doctor (2019): “[U]ntil recently, whiskey has tasted to me like burning death.”

• Between the Coats: A Sensitivity Read Changed My Life (2018): “I thought I was writing in-genre. Fantasy stories have magic. Science fiction stories have rules that I don’t always understand because I somehow got through high school without taking a physics class. Queer stories have death.”

• Iconic Outwear of Science Fiction & Fantasy Literature, Ranked (2018): “When I was in grade school I would have given my right arm for a way to get through my day without anyone seeing me. But does this cloak really deserve to beat out all other forms of fantasy outerwear? I say no.”

• Fear No Evil: On Sorting Hats and Forest Gods (2018): “The hat does not require your input. The hat knows.”

• The White Mountains (2018): “Occam’s razor: if you’re walking among gods and something is strange, think magic, not physics.”

• Gods and Beggars (2018): “Simply put, a God disguised as a beggar isn’t testing the individual–they are testing the world that has created that individual. They are testing the health of the community.”

• Fear of the Female Voice (2017): “For millennia, Western society has insisted that female voices—just that, our voices—are a threat. We’re afraid of wolves, and we’re afraid of bears, and we’re afraid of women.”

• Harry Potter: A Beginner’s Guide to Evaluating Authority (2017): “Harry Potter is not a resistance manual. Harry Potter is a guidebook.”

• The Hubris of Icarus: Women Who Fly into the Sun (2017): “There are two kinds of hubris. There are two kinds of hope. And the sky is so wide. If she could only fly.”

• A Woman, Explaining Things (2017): “If they had the opportunity—if this new woman arrived at their front door with an extended hand, inviting them to come into the blue box with her and see a universe full of new and frightening things—I wonder what these furious people would do.”

• River Song in Hades (2017): “She loves the adventure. She loves the journey. Like Persephone, she knows that winter and death are coming for her, but she rushes at them headlong, because she knows that the path she’ll travel to get there is one to be savored.”

• Why Millennials Yearn for Magical School (2017): “We were told that a better world was waiting for us. We were told that a letter was on the way. We’ll just have to write the letter ourselves.”

• On Feasting (2017): “You are a character in a fantasy novel. Congratulations: you have been invited to a feast.”

• Finding Facts: American Identity Is Based on Alternate History (2017): “It’s the story told in my American History textbook, and it’s one of the most comprehensive works of fiction I’ve ever read.”

• The Ecology of Alt-History, Or: The Hippos, the Hippos, the Hippos Are on Fire (2017): “The water hyacinth was a problem, and the meat shortage was a problem, and for a time—for a brief, glorious time—America saw a solution. We were going to fight an invasive species with the power of our big, important brains. We were going to get ourselves some hippos.”

• Storytelling Through Costume: The Woman in White (2017): “In a blood-soaked world where survival is dependent upon grit and determination, the woman in white is spotless. She is radiant. She is pure.”

• Storytelling Through Costume: The Badass Black Tank Top Walks the Line (2017): “She can wield a flamethrower the size of a Prius while biting out the word “fuck” and lighting a cigar, her boot firmly planted on the jugular of the man she just finished beating up for calling her a girl.”

• Storytelling Through Costume: The Allure of the Red Dress (2017): “But the red dress isn’t just a costume; it’s an archetype. When we see the red dress, we already have an idea of what we can expect from the woman inside of it. She’s not bad; she’s just drawn that way.”

• Mentally Ill Women Belong in Your Stories, Too (2016): “[R]egardless of the treatment mentally-ill women receive at the hands of literary authors, we are seen. We exist, and we participate in the world, and we hurt and heal and struggle and live. But we are not invited into space. We are not invited to attend on the Faerie Queen. We don’t attend Hogwarts or fly TIE fighters.”

• Why We Write About Witches (2016): “When we write witches, we are writing about our expectations of women, and what we hope—and fear—they would do if they had access to power.”

• Do Better: Sexual Violence in SFF (2016): “I want to be furious that SFF writers seem to have an easier time imagining faster-than-light travel than they do imagining a world in which sexual assault isn’t a constant threat.”

• In Defense of Villainesses (2016): “We love her and we hate her in equal measure. We feel that way because she revels in being all the things that we are told we aren’t allowed to be.”

• Dissociation Is Scary. Dissociation Is Safety. (2016): “And when I’m in the little dark room of memory, surrounded by words that remind me who can hurt whom, the only thing to do is to grope around in the blackness, trying to find a doorknob.”

• The Harry Potter Series Is Actually One Long Story About PTSD: “When you read Harry Potter through the lens of trauma psychology, what you start to realize is that these books explore the aftermath of trauma in a surprisingly deep and compelling way.”

Sarah’s Interviews:

• Q&A: Sarah Gailey, Author of ‘The Echo Wife’ (2021): “Our personalities and identities are shaped by so many factors — I wanted to examine the paths we choose and the paths we avoid, the way we define ourselves and the way we allow others to define us.”

• Q&A: Sarah Gailey, Author of When We Were Magic (2020): “I’m proud to have written something that, as I was writing it, reminded me that things can be good even when they’re messy and hard.”

• Talks at Google (2019): On bringing fantasy and noir together in Magic for Liars, “I was really able to answer them with each other. They fit together like puzzle pieces.”

• Spotlight On: Sarah Gailey (2019): “Some characters grow best in haunted houses, and others grow best in spaceships, and still others will only be able to put down roots in the house next door to mine.”

• Interview with an Author: Sarah Gailey (2019): “I would definitely be into theoretical magic. It’s dangerous and ambitious and will kill you if you do it wrong, which is totally my jam. Also, it’s hard to explain at cocktail parties, which seems to be a central theme in all of my interests.”

• Author Interview: Sarah Gailey (2017): “Fortunately, like any good writer, I happen to have a close relationship with an explosives expert.”

• Sarah Gailey Talks Heists, Hope, Feral Hippos, and Defiantly Joyful Characters (2017): “River of Teeth imagines that Broussard’s dream came true, and that hippos came to America…and immediately did what hippos do—which is to say, whatever the hell they want because you try telling a hippo it has to stay behind a fence.”

• Sarah Gailey on Sexual Violence in SFF (2017): “Everybody’s argument is, ‘Oh, we need to reflect real life.’ But really when you look at genre fiction, that’s not what we’re about. We’re not writing in order to reflect real life; we’re writing to paint new worlds and new social norms.”

• Hugo Award Winner Sarah Gailey on Self-Care, Self-Imposed Deadlines, and Where Ideas Come From: “If I can get outside with a good book and some fresh fruit and maybe a glass of wine, I’m the happiest I can be.”