Before we dive into this month’s column, we’re pleased to announce that Andrew Wolter, Lauren Candia and Michael Gonzales recently joined the Diverse Works Inclusion Committee. We’d also like to bid a fond farewell to exiting committee members Tom Calen and Ari Drew – we thank them for their invaluable service, and we also extend gratitude to our newest DWIC members for stepping up.

The Seers Table!

Kate Maruyama, Diverse Works Inclusion Committee Member

Happy New Year! One of my New Year’s resolutions is to step outside my reading comfort zones (I tend to go to the same authors over and over) and read someone I haven’t heard of before.

My recommendation for this month:

Nalo Hopkinson is thought of as a science fiction and fantasy author, but I find that the tone in much of her work is steeped in horror, that sort of creepiness that sneaks up on you, gets inside you and follows you home. Hopkinson was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1960. She began reading at the age of three and writing in the genre around 1993. She attended the Clarion Science Fiction Writing Workshop in 1995. In 1997 she won the Warner Aspect First Novel Contest for her novel Brown Girl in the Ring, which Warner Aspect published in 1998. She says, “I’ve written and published nine books of fiction and a number of short stories, and I’ve won some literary awards.”

She lives in Southern California in the U.S. and is a professor of Creative Writing at the University of California Riverside where she’s a member of a faculty research cluster in Science Fiction.

Follow her on Twitter @nalohopkinson.

Or learn more on nalohopkinson.com.

Linda Addison recommends:

Master Imaginationist and Instagram photographer Crystal Connor is the Chief Imagineer working for the Department of Sleep Prevention’s Nightmare Division. A Washington State native, she loves anything to do with monsters, bad guys (as in evil-geniuses and super-villains.  Not “those” kind her mother warned her about), rogue scientific experiments, jewelry, sky-high high-heeled shoes, and unreasonably priced handbags.

Conner has published several books, including … And They All Lived Happily Ever After!: A Smorgashboard of Atrocities (Audible – Unabridged); her collection, fourteen short stories of horror, science fiction, and fantasy; 65,306 words of terror by a single author with a dark imagination.

Look for her story in the upcoming anthology Sycorax’s Daughter (Cedar Grove Publishing, 2017).

Follow her blog at http://wordsmithcrystalconnor.blogspot.com/p/crystal-who.html.

Award-winning author Crystal M. Romero, no relation to George A. Romero, writes Lesbian Speculative Fiction (aka: Horror). She’s a graduate of San Jose State University, Her first novel, The Veil of Sorrow, printed under the name Crystal Michallet-Romero went on to win a Golden Crown Literary Society Award for Speculative Fiction and was nominated for a Gaylactic Spectrum Award.

Crystal fell in love with the zombie genre at a young age. She enjoys both film and television shows depicting post-zombie-apocalypse worlds. Despite this, Valley of the Dead is her first foray into the zombie genre. When not writing, Crystal enjoys relaxing with a good book, especially mysteries, thrillers, horror, dystopic, and post-apocalyptic novels.

You can follow Crystal on Twitter at  https://twitter.com/Crstl_M_Romero and her Web site.

Janet Holden recommends:

S.J. Kincaid originally wanted to be an astronaut, but a dearth of mathematical skills turned her interest to science fiction instead. Her debut novel, Insignia, was shortlisted for the Waterstones prize. Its sequels, Vortex and Catalyst, have received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews and Booklist. Her next book, The Diabolic, came out in the Fall of 2016. She’s chronically restless and has lived in California, Alabama, New Hampshire, Oregon, Chicago, and Scotland with no signs of staying in one place anytime soon.

You can visit her online at http://wwsjkincaid.com or follow her on Twitter (@sjkincaidbooks).

Latest novel: The Diabolic. Red Queen meets The Hunger Games in this epic novel about what happens when the galaxy’s most deadly weapon masquerades as a senator’s daughter and a hostage of the galactic court. A Diabolic is ruthless. A Diabolic is powerful. A Diabolic has a single task: Kill in order to protect the person you’ve been created for.

Kate Jonez recommends:

Livia Llewellyn is an award-nominated writer of horror, dark fantasy and erotica, whose fiction has appeared in ChiZine, Subterranean, Apex Magazine, Postscripts, Nightmare Magazine, as well as numerous anthologies. Engines of Desire: Tales of Love & Other Horrors received a 2011 Shirley Jackson Award nomination for Best Collection, “Omphalos” received a 2011 SJA for Best Novelette, and “Furnace” received a 2013 SJA nomination for Best Short Fiction. You can find her online at liviallewellyn.com.

“Furnace Horror fiction has long celebrated and explored the twin engines driving human existence. Call them what you like: Sex and Death, Love and Destruction, Temptation and Terror. While many may strive to reach the extremes, few authors manage to find the beauty that rests in the liminal space between these polar forces, the shuddering ecstasy encased within the shock. And then there’s Livia Llewellyn, an author praised for her dark, stirring, evocative prose and disturbing, personal narratives. Lush, layered, multifaceted, and elegant, the thirteen tales comprising Furnace showcase why Livia Llewellyn has been lauded by scholars and fans of weird fiction alike, and why she has been nominated multiple times for the Shirley Jackson Award and included in year’s best anthologies. These are exquisite stories, of beauty and cruelty, of pleasure and pain, of hunger, and of sharp teeth sinking into tender flesh.”