Daniel José Older (Guest Editor-in-Chief and Original Fiction Editor) is the New York Times bestselling author of Salsa Nocturna and the Bone Street Rumba urban fantasy series from Penguin’s Roc Books. He is also the author of the young adult novel Shadowshaper (Scholastic, 2015), a New York Times Notable Book of 2015, which won the International Latino Book Award and was shortlisted for the Kirkus Prize in Young Readers’ Literature, the Andre Norton Award, the Locus, the Mythopoeic Award, and named one of Esquire’s 80 Books Every Person Should Read. You can find his thoughts on writing, read dispatches from his decade-long career as an NYC paramedic, and hear his music at danieljoseolder.net, on YouTube and @djolder on Twitter.
Amal El-Mohtar (Reprints Editor) is an author, editor, and critic: her short fiction has received the Locus Award, and she has twice been a finalist for the Nebula Award, while her poetry has won the Rhysling Award three times. She is the author of The Honey Month, a collection of poetry and prose written to the taste of twenty-eight different kinds of honey,and a contributor to NPR Books and the LA Times. Her fiction has appeared most recently in Lightspeed, Uncanny Magazine,and Ann VanderMeer’s Bestiary anthology, and as well asThe Starlit Wood, an anthology of original fairy tales edited by Navah Wolfe and Dominik Parisien. She divides her time and heart between Ottawa and Glasgow. Find her online at amalelmohtar.com, or on Twitter @tithenai.
Tobias Buckell (Nonfiction Editor) is a New York Times bestselling author born in the Caribbean. He grew up in Grenada and spent time in the British and US Virgin Islands, which influence much of his work. His novels and over fifty stories have been translated into eighteen different languages. His work has been nominated for awards like the Hugo, Nebula, Prometheus, and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction Author. He currently lives in Bluffton, Ohio with his wife, twin daughters, and a pair of dogs. He can be found online at TobiasBuckell.com.
I wanted to start with the idea of the origin story. Every writer has one, and it’s always interesting to hear how writers of color navigated the choppy waters of reading fantasy early on and then deciding to write it. I remember searching for myself, in that languageless sort of way we do when we’re young and don’t know the larger meaning of our search.
