Next SFF Author: Kate Elliott

Previous SFF Author: Phyllis Eisenstein

SFF Author: Amal El-Mohtar

Amal El-Mohtar is an author, editor and critic; her short fiction has won the Locus Award and been nominated 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; a contributor to NPR Books and the LA Times; a founding member of the Banjo Apocalypse Crinoline Troubadours; and editor of Goblin Fruit, an online quarterly dedicate to fantastical poetry. Her poetry can be found in Uncanny, Stone Telling, Mythic Delirium, and Apex, while her fiction has most recently appeared in Lightspeed, Uncanny, and Ann VanderMeer’s BESTIARY anthology. Presently she divides her time and heart between Ottawa and Glasgow. Find her online at amalelmohtar.com, or on Twitter @tithenai.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE STORIES BY AMAL EL-MOHTAR.

The Honey Month: A delicate and unusual collection inspired by honey

The Honey Month by Amal El-Mohtar

Having recently re-read Chocolat I found myself with a hankering for more of that winning combination of sugar and magic. It was lucky then that I stumbled across Amal El-Mohtar’s The Honey Month which provided just what I was after in perfect, petit-four-sized nuggets.

The Honey Month was conceived when the author received a gift of assorted honeys from a new-found friend. Finding herself inspired by the smell, taste and texture of each honey she wrote a quick review of each one,

This Is How You Lose the Time War: Great blend of style, structure, and imagination

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone

To: Reviewer

Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone are coming out with a new book — This Is How You Lose the Time War — and I was wondering when you would finally get around to reviewing it.

Reader

To: Reader

Contrary to what you apparently think, we reviewers don’t get the pages as the writers compose them.

The River Has Roots: Lush, beautiful fairy tale retelling

The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar

I use up all my superlatives whenever I review anything by Amal El-Mohtar, whose prose is always exquisite and imaginative, flowing like syrup. In the case of 2025’s The River Has Roots, the hardcopy version of El-Mohtar’s lovely, original fairy tale is enhanced by woodcut-style illustrations. The story is short, novella-length, and draws on familiar elements, but the themes of the river and music form the story’s main currents, which drew me in immediately.

Esther and Ysabel Hawthorn are sisters,

Magazine Monday: Weird Tales

Weird Tales celebrates “Uncanny Beauty” in the Summer 2010 issue (No. 356, and the most recent issue available as of this writing). The best story in the magazine, though, is one that is off-theme. “How Bria Died,” by Mike Aronovitz, is the tale of an unorthodox teacher who may well have taken his unusual teaching methods a step too far for the universe to abide. This horror story is fresh, original and written from a position of real authority: Aronovitz teaches English in a school much like the one in which his story is set.

Magazine Monday: Nebula-Nominated Short Stories

Seven short stories from six sources have been nominated for the Nebula Award. Six of them are available for free online, so by following the links in this article, you’ll be able to find them and pick the one to which you’d give the prize.

The only exception to the “available online” category is Harlan Ellison‘s story, “How Interesting: A Tiny Man,” which was pulled from the internet when the Nebula voting period ended, and which is therefore available only in the February 2010 issue of Realms of Fantasy. In my opinion,

Magazine Monday: Apex Magazine, Issues 55 and 56

The most recent two issues of Apex Magazine give us a chance to say goodbye to one editor and hello to the next, and offer an interesting contrast between two strong voices.

Issue 55 is Lynne M. Thomas’s last issue of the 26 she has edited. It is a strong issue, with stories that are beautifully angry — at disease, at societal expectations, at clichés.

The first story, “What You’ve Been Missing” by Maria Dahvana Headley, is about the losses everyone suffers when a man is stricken with Alzheimer’s Disease.

Magazine Monday: Lackington’s, Issue One

Issue One of Lackington’s begins with “A Long Foreword with a Long Title to Introduce Our Fond New Venture.” There’s a good reason for such a foreword: Lackington’s contains prose that is unlike that to be found in any other speculative fiction magazine. The magazine isn’t interested in telling stories, as such, but in beautiful prose with a speculative bent. “[Y]ou may find the odd slice-of-life vignette in these pages, or the odd meandering reflection, and you will find a lot of prose poetry, or at least prose written by those who are poetically inclined,

Magazine Monday: Uncanny Magazine, Issues One and Two

Uncanny Magazine is a new bimonthly internet publication edited by Lynn M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas. The editors have explained their mission this way:

We chose the name Uncanny because we wanted a publication that has the feel of a contemporary magazine with a history — one that evolved from a fantastic pulp. Uncanny will bring the excitement and possibilities of the past, and the sensibilities and experimentation that the best of the present offers. . . . It’s our goal that Uncanny’s pages will be filled with gorgeous prose,

Terry Weyna | Amal El-Mohtar, Ann Leckie, Christopher Barzak, Hao Jingfang, Jay Lake, Jim C. Hines, Kat Howard, Ken Liu, Maria Dahvana Headley, Max Gladstone, Neil Gaiman, Richard Bowes, Sam J. Miller, Sarah Kuhn | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

SHORTS: El-Mohtar, Miller, Cooney, Pullman, Bear, Valente

Here are some of the stories we read this week that we wanted you to know about. This week we continue focusing on 2015 Nebula-nominated short fiction, along with some other stories that caught our attention.

“Madeleine” by Amal El-Mohtar (2015, free on Lightspeed magazine, Kindle magazine issue), nominated for the 2015 Nebula award (short story)

Madeleine is in therapy after the death of her mother from Alzheimer’s. She and her therapist, Clarice, are discussing the loss of her mother and the odd side-effects from a clinical trial for an Alzheimer’s drug that Madeleine has taken part in.

SHORTS: Barthelme, McGuire, Hurley, Wong, Vaughn, Anders, Headley, Shawl, Bolander, Walton, El-Mohtar, Valente, Dick

Our weekly exploration of free or inexpensive short fiction available on the internet. Here are a few stories we read this week that we wanted you to know about.

“Report” by Donald Barthelme (1967, originally published in the New Yorker, free at Jessamyn.com (reprinted by permission), also collected in Sixty Stories)

“Our group is against the war. But the war goes on. I was sent to Cleveland to talk to the engineers. The engineers were meeting in Cleveland. I was supposed to persuade them not to do what they were going to do.”

“Report,” by Donald Barthelme,

Marion Deeds, Skye Walker and Tadiana Jones | Amal El-Mohtar, Carrie Vaughn, Catherynne M. Valente, Charlie Jane Anders, Jo Walton, Kameron Hurley, Maria Dahvana Headley, Nisi Shawl, Philip K. Dick, Seanan McGuire | Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 7 comments |

SHORTS: Santos, Palwick, El-Mohtar, Lechler

Our weekly exploration of free and inexpensive short fiction available on the internet. Here are a few stories we read this week that we wanted you to know about.

“In the Shade of the Pixie Tree” by Rodello Santos (March 2017, free at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, 99c Kindle magazine issue)

On a sunny springtime day, 14 year old Bekka, the apprentice of a wicker witch, has been sent to the pixie-orchard to pick some new pixies for the witch (the “unripe ones still on the trees,

SHORTS: El-Mohtar, Wilde, Zinos-Amaro & Castro, Fallon, Larson, Kingfisher, Zhang

Our weekly exploration of free and inexpensive short fiction available on the internet. Here are a few stories we’ve read that we wanted you to know about.

“Biting Tongues” by Amal El-Mohtar (2011, free at Uncanny, $3.99 Kindle magazine issue. First printed in The WisCon Chronicles (Vol 5): Writing and Racial Identity)

“Biting Tongues” is a speculative poem which slowly reveals the tenaciousness of the character or characters involved, through a progression from social expectations of their voice and bodies to their true form.

The Nebula Awards Showcase 2011: Sample the best SFF

The Nebula Awards Showcase 2011 edited by Kevin J. Anderson

The Nebula Awards are one of the great institutions in science fiction and fantasy. Each year since 1965, the members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA ) have voted for the Best Novel, Novella (40,000-17,500 words), Novelette (17,500-7,500 words), and Short Story (less than 7,500 words) in SF and fantasy. Compiling a list of the nominees and winners for all those years would get you an excellent reading list and a comprehensive cross-view of the best that can be found in the genres.

Stefan Raets´s rating: 4 | Amal El-Mohtar, Connie Willis, James Patrick Kelly, Joe Haldeman, Kage Baker, Kevin J. Anderson, Kij Johnson, Michael Bishop, N.K. Jemisin, Paolo Bacigalupi, Rachel Swirsky, Richard Bowes, Saladin Ahmed, Will McIntosh | Nebula Award, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

Women Destroy Science Fiction! The Stories: Special audiobook edition

Women Destroy Science Fiction! Lightspeed Magazine Special Issue: The Stories edited by Christie Yant, Robyn Lupo, Rachel Swirsky

Last June, Hugo-winning Lightspeed Magazine, which is edited by John Joseph Adams, devoted an entire issue (Women Destroy Science Fiction!, June 2014, issue #49) to female science fiction writers and editors. Under Christie Yant’s and Robyn Lupo’s editorial leadership, they accepted 11 original short science fiction stories and 15 original pieces of SF flash fiction. Rachel Swirsky chose and reprinted 5 stories previously published elsewhere.

Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Amal El-Mohtar, Charlie Jane Anders, Harlan Ellison, Jonathan L. Howard, Maria Dahvana Headley, Maureen McHugh, N.K. Jemisin, Rachel Swirsky, Seanan McGuire, Tina Connolly | Audio, Hugo Award, Nebula Award, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |

The New Voices of Fantasy: A diverse and worthy collection

The New Voices of Fantasy edited by Peter Beagle

This collection of nineteen fantasy short works, edited by Peter Beagle, is definitely worthwhile if you like speculative short fiction. Many of them left an impact on me, and a few are true standouts. These stories are by relatively new authors in the speculative fiction genre and are all fantasy; otherwise there’s no discernable overarching theme.

These stories have almost all been published previously over the last seven years, and several of them are Hugo or Nebula winners or nominees.

Tadiana Jones, Jana Nyman and Skye Walker´s rating: 4 | A.C. Wise, Amal El-Mohtar, Ben Loory, Brooke Bolander, Hannu Rajaniemi, JY Yang, Maria Dahvana Headley, Max Gladstone, Peter S. Beagle, Sarah Pinsker, Sofia Samatar, T. Kingfisher | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

Next SFF Author: Kate Elliott

Previous SFF Author: Phyllis Eisenstein

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