As a child of many cultures and journeys, mind-bending themes like time travel, environmentalism, and social justice have always been at the forefront of my creative development. Raised at the junction of the South American, African, Caribbean, and European cultures, disrupting established tropes, timelines, and unilateral perspectives are my areas of expertise as an author. An advocate for writers of diverse backgrounds, my top 5 picks are a reflection of that will; that landscape of a thousand colors and textures. Embark on this literary journey with me. Let’s survey a world of words together.
A collection of twenty-two short stories by award-winning author N.K. Jemisin. The themes range from time travel to environmentalism and magical fantasy.
The narrative is bold, the tone unapologetically political and Jemisin’s sharp retelling of known classics (like Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas") shows how it is possible to create great science-fiction/speculative fiction in a more grounded reality… our own.
I remember my first interaction with N.K. Jemisin’s work. The Fifth Season. There was this… parallel with the conditions I was brought up in. Castes, barriers to social mobility, a persistent violence tightly intertwined with the beats of our lives. It was raw, detailed. It appealed to my insecurities, my fears, my battles.
Jemisin brought back her signature style in this collection, but this time around there is hope; there is a positive outlook, an ocean of wonderful possibilities. At the time of my reading, I could relate to this shift in narrative (my life began turning around), to a more hopeful vision that (still) had preserved the staples of Jemisin’s celebrated writing: a keen eye for details, an unparalleled world building, characters of a thousand facets; some shattered, volatile and shifty.
Three-time Hugo Award winner and NYT bestselling author N. K. Jemisin challenges and delights readers with thought-provoking narratives of destruction, rebirth, and redemption that sharply examine modern society in her first collection of short fiction, which includes never-before-seen stories.
"Marvelous and wide-ranging." -- Los Angeles Times"Gorgeous" -- NPR Books"Breathtakingly imaginative and narratively bold." -- Entertainment Weekly
Spirits haunt the flooded streets of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In a parallel universe, a utopian society watches our world, trying to learn from our mistakes. A black mother in the Jim Crow South must save her daughter from a…
As an author, I love to cross genres, to redefine the boundaries of established sci-fi norms. Nicole Givens Kurtz does just that. Kill Three Birds is a skillfully executed blend of procedural mystery, fantasy, and political drama.
The premise? An explosive investigation on the murder of local women in an alternative society of humanoid birds organized in castes. A masterclass in world building and characterization.
For many decades, science fiction has been seen, labeled as inflexible, formulaic, and overcomplicated. Nicole Givens Kurtz leads us to new territories: she aims at preserving the complexity and layers of the science fiction genre and subgenres while broadening the spectrum of its themes and narrative structures.
Sent to investigate a strange murder in a quiet remote egg, can Hawk Tasifa find the killer before she becomes the next target?
Prentice Tasifa is an investigative hawk whose been deployed from The Order to the small egg of Gould, a mountain village. A missing girl had been found dead. Hawks investigate strange and difficult situations throughout the kingdom of Aves. They can “see the unseen,” by accessing a unique ability to activate hawk-like vision, a trait they carry through their bloodlines.
When Prentice arrives in Gould, she soon discovers that there isn’t just one bird dead, but three.…
Octavia E. Butler is a pillar of science fiction literature, regardless of gender and ethnicity. Parable of the Sower holds this… special place in my heart, however. The initial proposition? A fifteen-year-old black girl develops a new religious belief system that could save her shattered world. It is centered around one watchword: change.
Being an environmentalist myself (love your planet!) and a man of faith, I found the central plot relatable, provocative, and eye-opening. A masterpiece. As an author, the first thought that crosses my mind when I sit down, ready to write, is… how can I challenge my readers? Octavia E. Butler seems to be taking the same angle, the same axial route in her works.
Is she a source of inspiration for the path I carve for myself? Absolutely.
The extraordinary, prescient NEW YORK TIMES-bestselling novel.
'If there is one thing scarier than a dystopian novel about the future, it's one written in the past that has already begun to come true. This is what makes Parable of the Sower even more impressive than it was when first published' GLORIA STEINEM
'Unnervingly prescient and wise' YAA GYASI
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We are coming apart. We're a rope, breaking, a single strand at a time.
America is a place of chaos, where violence rules and only the rich and powerful are safe. Lauren Olamina, a young woman with the extraordinary power to…
What if an African nation had found a way to reverse the power dynamics during the colonial era? Nisi Shawl tells the story of a utopia, a community in Belgian Congo that fosters innovation and provides a safe haven for the victims and targets of slave trades.
As a creative writer, one of my main goals is to provide a more positive outlook on the African culture and its heritage through a hopeful narrative. I joined Nisi Shawl in the fight as she remains one of my biggest influences in Afrocentric storytelling.
World-class writers like Nisi Shawl shaped my pen, my prose, and the function of world building in my tales. Thank you, Mrs. Shawl.
Everfair is a wonderful Neo-Victorian alternate history novel that explores the question of what might have come of Belgium's disastrous colonisation of the Congo if the native populations had learned about steam technology a bit earlier. Fabian Socialists from Great Britian join forces with African-American missionaries to purchase land from the Belgian Congo's "owner," King Leopold II. This land, named Everfair, is set aside as a safe haven, an imaginary Utopia for native populations of the Congo as well as escaped slaves returning from America and other places where African natives were being mistreated. Shawl's speculative masterpiece manages to turn…
From Jamaican fiction writer Nalo Hopkinson, Midnight Robber is a mind-altering journey through the Caribbean culture and lush, colorful exoplanetary systems. If you are interested in crime mysteries, faction-driven subplots, and new worlds of fantastic beasts, this read is for you. An ode to the Jamaican/Caribbean culture I grew up in.
I recall my first dive into the patchwork of chaotic energies in Midnight Robber. I was tossed around, chewed by the magnificent prose of an author I truly admire. When I felt this energizing feeling, I had no other choice but to continue reading. Nalo had me. She was in control. A difficult exercise only the most talented writers can successfully conduct. I tapped out and surrendered to the greatness of her pen, admiring and grateful.
It's Carnival time and the Caribbean-colonized planet of Toussaint is celebrating with music, dance, and pageantry. Masked "Midnight Robbers" waylay revelers with brandished weapons and spellbinding words. But to you Tan-Tan, the Robber Queen is simply a favorite costume to weart at the festival -- untiel her power-coprrupted father commits an unforgivable crime.
Suddenly, both father and daughter are thrust into the brutal world of New Half-Way Tree. Here monstrous creatures from folkklore are real, and the humans are violent outcasts in the wilds. Here Tan-Tan must redeach into the heart of myth -- and become the Robber Queen herself.…
Two women, a century apart, seek to rebuild their lives after leaving their homelands. Arriving in tropical Singapore, they find romance, but also find they haven’t left behind the dangers that caused them to flee.
Haunted by the specter of terrorism after 9/11, Aislinn Givens leaves her New York career and joins her husband in Southeast Asia when he takes a job there. She acquires several paintings by a colonial-era British artist that she believes are a warning.
The artist, Elizabeth Pennington, tells her own tumultuous story through diary entries that end when World War I reaches the colony with catastrophic results. In the present, Aislinn and her husband learn that terrorism takes many shapes when they are ensnared by local political upheaval and corruption.
"Aislinn Givens leaves a settled life in Manhattan for an unsettled life in Singapore. That painting radiates mystery and longing. So does Clifford Garstang's vivid and simmering novel, The Last Bird of Paradise." –John Dalton, author of Heaven Lake and The Inverted Forest
Two women, nearly a century apart, seek to rebuild their lives when they reluctantly leave their homelands. Arriving in Singapore, they find romance in a tropical paradise, but also find they haven't left behind the dangers that caused them to flee.
In the aftermath of 9/11 and haunted by the specter of terrorism, Aislinn Givens leaves her…
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