The Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Diaz, highfalutin’ literary author though he may be, has famously mourned the fact that there will be no more Octavia Butler books. The iconic Black author, who won both a PEN Lifetime Achievement Award and a MacArthur “Genius” grant—not to mention the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Locus—died in 2006, leaving behind her nearly twenty … Read More
The Story Behind the Story: In Blackwater Woods
This month, I’m writing a spooky new YA short story, “In Blackwater Woods,” just in time for Halloween. The story has some things in common with the Netflix series Stranger Things, but I swear I wrote it before the show came out! Call it the zeitgeist–or writers of a certain age waxing nostalgic in dark fantasy. Those of you who know … Read More
