Nisi Shawl

Nisi Shawl
Born 1955
Kalamazoo, Michigan
Nationality American
Ethnicity African-American
Alma mater Residential College, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Genre Speculative fiction
Notable awards 2008 James Tiptree, Jr. Award

Nisi Shawl (born 1955) is an African-American writer, editor, and journalist. She is best known as a writer of science fiction and fantasy short stories.[1]

Work

Shawl is the co-author (with Cynthia Ward) of Writing the Other: Bridging Cultural Differences for Successful Fiction, a book derived from the authors' workshop of the same name, in which participants explore techniques to help them write credible characters outside their own cultural experience. Her short stories have appeared in Asimov's SF Magazine, the Infinite Matrix, Strange Horizons, Semiotext(e) and numerous other magazines and anthologies.[1]

Among the writers who influence her work, she has named Colette and Raymond Chandler.[2]

Shawl is a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America and a 1992 graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop. She is a board member of Clarion West and one of the founders of the Carl Brandon Society. Her stories have been shortlisted for the Theodore Sturgeon Award, the Gaylactic Spectrum Award, and the Carl Brandon Society Parallax Award, and Writing the Other received special mention for the James Tiptree, Jr. Award.[3] In 2008, she won the James Tiptree, Jr. Award for Filter House.[4] In 2009 her novella "Good Boy" was nominated for a World Fantasy Award.[5]

In 2009, she donated her archive to the department of Rare Books and Special Collections at Northern Illinois University.[6]

In 2011 she was the Guest of Honor at WisCon 35.[7] In 2015, recognized as one of the "go to" teachers and mentors within the speculative fiction community on pedagogical issues of diversity, she served as guest speaker both in the "Black to the Future: An Imagination Incubabor[8]" (widely called the "The Future is Ferguson") public symposium of multicultural speculative fiction artists, academics, and creative writers, at Princeton University (held on September 14, 2015); and in the "Creating Futures Rooted in Wonder[9]" symposium of fairy tale, science fiction, and indigenous storytellers and scholars, at the University of Hawai'i (held from September 16–19, 2015), where she performed in author readings with Pacific Islander, Native Hawaiian, and other indigenous writers, as well as led creative writing workshops.

Her first novel, the neo-Victorian, Belgian-Congo-set, steampunk story Everfair,[10] will be published in 2016 by science-fiction publisher Tor Books, with a cover illustration[11] by Hong Kong artist Victo Ngai. Everfair joins with the growing movement of international speculative-fiction writers of color, including editorial efforts by Jaymee Goh of Malaysia[12] and Joyce Chg[13] of Singapore (author-anthologists behind the 2015 collection of Southeast Asian steampunk published in English, The Sea is Ours: Tales of Steampunk Southeast Asia[14]), to repurpose the science fiction trope of alternative history in critical ways that foreground issues of colonialism, globalization, and culture.

Shawl has edited several anthologies of speculative fiction, especially collections of Afrofuturist, feminist/LGBT, and African American sf/fantasy short stories, including recent homages to pioneering black/queer sf novelists Samuel R. Delany and Octavia E. Butler: Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany (2015), co-edited with Bill Campbell,[15] and Strange Matings: Science Fiction, Feminism, African American Voices, and Octavia E. Butler (2015), co-edited by Rebecca J. Holden.[16] Shawl's anthology work has been part of her longtime participation within both the feminist and the African American sf writing communities, evidenced in her editing of WisCon Chronicles Vol. 5: Writing and Racial Identity (2011, generated from America's most venerable feminist sf convention);[17] as well as in her stories' publication within women sf writers' literary experiments, such as Talking Back: Epistolary Fantasies (2006, by feminist sf publisher Aqueduct Press)[18] and within African American speculative fiction collections, notably the groundbreaking[19] Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora (2000).[20]

Personal life

Shawl was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She started attending the Residential College of the University of Michigan in 1971 at the age of 16, but did not graduate.[21] She lives in Seattle, Washington, where she reviews books for the Seattle Times as a freelance contributor.[1][2][22]

Select bibliography

Fiction

Non-fiction

References

  1. 1 2 3 Nisi Shawl: Home Page
  2. 1 2 Reflection's Edge
  3. ↑ James Tiptree, Jr: 2005. . Retrieved 2009-4-27.
  4. ↑ Tiptree Winners Announced. . Retrieved 2009-4-27.
  5. ↑ World Fantasy Convention (2010). "Award Winners and Nominees". Retrieved 4 Feb 2011.
  6. ↑ Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) Collection, Northern Illinois University
  7. ↑ WisCon main page accessed May 27, 2011
  8. ↑ "Black to the Future". Black to the Future. Retrieved 2016-04-11.
  9. ↑ "UH Manoa Campus Events Calendar". www.hawaii.edu. Retrieved 2016-04-11.
  10. ↑ "Nisi Shawl’s Everfair: Into the Heart of Steampunk". Tor.com. Retrieved 2016-04-12.
  11. ↑ "Revealing the Cover for Nisi Shawl’s Everfair". Tor.com. Retrieved 2016-04-12.
  12. ↑ "Silver Goggles". silver-goggles.blogspot.com. Retrieved 2016-04-12.
  13. ↑ "Article – "Growing Up" by Joyce Chng | Crossed Genres". crossedgenres.com. Retrieved 2016-04-12.
  14. ↑ "Southeast Asian Steampunk: An Interview with Jaymee Goh and Joyce Chng". SF Signal. Retrieved 2016-04-12.
  15. ↑ "Discover Delight, Ingenuity and Joy with Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany!". Tor.com. Retrieved 2016-04-22.
  16. ↑ "Nonfiction Book Review: Strange Matings: Science Fiction, Feminism, African American Voices, and Octavia E. Butler by Edited by Rebecca J. Holden and Nisi Shawl. Aqueduct (Pathway, dist.), $20 trade paper (328p) ISBN 978-1-61976-037-0". PublishersWeekly.com. Retrieved 2016-04-22.
  17. ↑ "The Wiscon Chronicles Volume 5". Goodreads. Retrieved 2016-04-22.
  18. ↑ http://www.fantasticfiction.com, webmaster@fantasticfiction.com -. "Talking Back by L Timmel Duchamp". www.fantasticfiction.com. Retrieved 2016-04-22.
  19. ↑ "The SF Site Featured Review: Dark Matter". www.sfsite.com. Retrieved 2016-04-22.
  20. ↑ Thomas, Sheree Renée, ed. (2000-07-18). Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora (1St Edition edition ed.). Aspect - Warner Books. ISBN 9780446525831.
  21. ↑ Autobiography
  22. ↑ Articles by Nisi Shawl, Seattle Times

External links

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