Terence Keel is a professor of human biology, society, and African American studies at UCLA. His latest book is The Coroner's Silence: Death Records and the Hidden Victims of Police Violence and he…
Christopher Huang grew up in Singapore, an only child in a family tree that expands dramatically sideways at his parents' generation. He moved to Canada after his National Service, studied…
Ryan Douglass is a queer author and poet from Atlanta, Georgia. He is the New York Times bestselling author of The Taking of Jake Livingston, and his short fiction appears in All These Sunken Souls…
Tom Lutz is the author of many books on literature and culture, as well as several books of travel writing and two novels. He taught, formerly, at UC Riverside, the University of Iowa, CalArts, the…
Rosie Grant is the creator behind @GhostlyArchive on TikTok and Instagram, where she researches and re-creates recipes found on gravestones. She works at the Center for the Study of Women at UCLA and…
Kamilah Cole is the bestselling author of So Let Them Burn and This Ends in Embers. A graduate of New York University, Kamilah is usually playing Kingdom Hearts for the hundredth time, quoting early…
Brad Meltzer is the Emmy-nominated, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Lightning Rod and twelve other bestselling thrillers. He also writes nonfiction books like The JFK Conspiracy, and the…
Tod Goldberg is the New York Times bestselling author of sixteen novels, including the Gangsterland quartet: Gangsterland, a finalist for the Hammett Prize; Gangster Nation; The Low Desert, a…
World Fantasy, Locus, and Mythopoeic Award–winning author and poet Theodora Goss was born in Hungary and spent her childhood in various European countries before her family moved to the United States…
Season’s Readings everyone! As is generally true, there have been some marvelous books published in 2025, and I’m thrilled to share my favorites with you. I’ve listed these books in alphabetical order…
Speculative Fiction has a long history of using the tropes of the genre to comment on our world. Ursula K. Le Guin used The Left Hand of Darkness to examine cultural gender constructs. Using the original Star Trek television series, show creator Gene Roddenberry commented on issues like race relations...
"Fairy tales are another kind of Bible, for those who know how to read them.” 'Red as Blood and White as Bone' in Snow White Learns Witchcraft by Theodora GossTheodora Goss is an award winning-author, a professor of literature and writing at both Boston University and the Stonecoast MFA program. Her debut...
In 2018, readers discovered the first book in Anthony Horowitz’s new mystery series: The Word is Murder. In it, a wealthy woman enters a London funeral parlor in the morning to make her final arrangements. She is found in her home, murdered, six hours later. When disgraced Detective Inspector Daniel...
Ji Lin is a young woman who is working as an apprentice dressmaker by day and secretly working as a “dance instructor” at a dance-hall in the evenings to repay a family debt. Ren is eleven, but tells everyone that he is thirteen. He has lost his entire family, including...
"Milicent Patrick's final resting place is in every single Creature from the Black Lagoon T-shirt, every Metaluna Mutant toy, every VHS tape of Fantasia, every DVD of The Shape of Water. It's on the desk of every female animator and in the pen of every woman doodling a monster in...
Harry Rosenmerck, a successful Jewish Cardiologist, just walked away. He walked away from his family, his career, his life, and everything he knew and loved to start a pig farm in Israel. This sounds like the set-up for a potentially insensitive joke, but it isn’t. Harry is deadly serious, as...
We’ve all done it. We’ve all seen something extraordinary, glanced at it briefly, and then continued on toward our current destination, wherever that may be. We may be in a hurry, we may not. We may be alone, with someone else, or part of a group. But, regardless of our...
Becky Chambers has become a name to watch in Science Fiction. She published her first novel, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet in 2014 after completing it via a successful Kickstarter campaign, which was later picked up by Harper Voyager and released to a much wider readership and...
Jane Yolen has been working as an author for over 50 years. She has published over 300 titles, ranging from children’s books to speculative fiction (both fantasy and science fiction), and to nonfiction. She is also a poet, an instructor of writing and a reviewer of children’s literature.Jane Yolen’s books...
Hedy Lamarr was one of the most beautiful people to ever grace the silver screen - but that beauty was a double edged sword. While it opened doors and made her a movie star, it was often the only thing people saw. Lamarr’s beauty was so striking that people often...
