Author Archives: Amal El-Mohtar

My Lightspeed column for March is now available online! In it I review Sofia Samatar’s The Winged Histories, Carlos Hernandez’ The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria, and Rose Lemberg’s Marginalia to Stone Bird. Here’s the logic of the assemblage: This month’s books contain … Continue reading →

So much has happened these past few days! Here’s some welcome poetry-related news. I wrote no poetry at all last year. Wait, that isn’t quite true; I wrote two poems for Brenda Vellino’s graduate course on The Modernist and Contemporary Long … Continue reading →

Ah, this book. This review was very hard to write. Reviews are usually relatively simple work for me; I read a book, and as I’m reading it I figure out the things it’s doing and what I want to say about … Continue reading →

I have been remiss in posting about my NPR reviews as they go up! Here are excerpts from a couple of recent ones; my review of Ken Liu’s The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories goes up at the end of this week, but … Continue reading →

Few items of post are as joyful to receive as contributor copies. To whit! Edited by Ann VanderMeer, illustrated by Ivica Stevanovic, and containing work by all these infamous creatures, it’s a gorgeous collection I’m looking forward to reading. You can … Continue reading →

“Madeleine” is a Nebula finalist for Best Short Story. Look at that ballot. Look at it. I start to vibrate with delight as I run down the list of works and names and find my story among them. I owe … Continue reading →

I started writing this on Twelfth Night. It’s now February 1st. But I treat Imbolc as my own personal New Year, so with the agony that was January firmly in the past, I want to take a good long look … Continue reading →

January has thus far been a sack of hammers to the face. I am behind on everything and can’t stop anything. So here, in lieu of anything thoughtful or reflecting, is the lengthy list of panels I’ll be on at … Continue reading →

So I have a story in Ann VanderMeer’s Bestiary anthology, about invisible grief-eating leeches called Weialalaleia. That’s not the important thing. In addition to writing stories, the contributors of the anthology were asked to write semi-fictional bios to accompany them. Those … Continue reading →

My Lightspeed column for the December issue is now online! I take a look at Catherynne M. Valente’s Radiance, Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant, and CSE Cooney’s debut collection Bone Swans.  My rationale for reviewing these wonderfully varied books together is the strong fairy tale through-line … Continue reading →