Clarkesworld Issue 39 by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction, magazine, fantasy, short story, clarkesworld
Publisher: Wyrm Publishing
Published: 2009-12-01T05:00:00+00:00

About the Author

Marissa Lingen lives in the Minneapolis area with two large men and one small dog. She is currently working on a novel about the Tam Lin ballad, Ojibwe mythology, and hockey.

“If It Scares You, Write It: A Conversation with Nnedi Okorafor” by Jeremy L. C. Jones

Nnedi Okorafor is the award-winning author of Zahrah the Windseeker, The Shadow Seeker, and Long Juju Man. Her writing is beautiful, relentlessly weird, and utterly engrossing.

“I enjoy nonsense and weirdness,” Okorafor said. “Carnivorous hummingbirds, for example. An enormous wormlike creature moving beneath the sands who is obsessed with the number ten, not the typical numbers of seven, one, or three… ten. Spontaneous forests. Sparkling lizards that can infest a house giving it unlimited electricity but also the problem of constant static. A mosque made of glass and solar cells which blooms with fragrant periwinkle daisies on its roof at midnight every night. I love those kinds of things.”

For good reason, Okorafor’s fiction has been called “highly original” and “endlessly imaginative”. Her work has been favorably compared to that of Octavia Butler and Nalo Hopkinson for her deft blending of contemporary and traditional themes and forms. Reviews of her writing praise her courageous female characters and her breath-taking descriptions.

Okorafor is a spontaneous writer who writes with urgency, and as a result her stories read like magical evocations of living beings.

“When a story comes to me, I have to write it or it won’t let me rest,” Okorafor said. “The characters are real to me. I hear their voices. Their actions affect me. The places I write about exist. I’ve felt the sting of their sand storms and smelled their forests. The creatures really do bite, snarl, sing, spit, sting, etc. When I’m writing, I’m there and I enjoy being there.”

Okorafor’s novels Who Fears Death (DAW) and Akata Witch (Penguin) are due out in 2010. Her chapter book Iridessa and the Fire-Bellied Dragon Frog (Disney Press) is also scheduled for release next year. Her short story, “From the Lost Diary of TreeFrog7″ appeared in the May 2009 issue of Clarkesworld.

Below, Okorafor and I talk about urban grasshoppers and a girl who chooses to do it on her own.

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