MEET THE AUTHOR: OUT OF THIS WORLD
A Night of Queer Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction
Thursday, Jul 2 / 7pm
Calamus Auditorium at Gay City
With authors Astrid Amara, Matthew Buscemi, Kim Fielding, Laylah Hunter and Nisi Shawl

Gay City and Gay Romance Northwest are partnering together for a special Gay City Meet the Author event which will boldly explore star systems and fantasy realms while spotlighting LGBTQ main characters and relationships.

Join us on Thursday, July 2 at 7pm for an out-and-proud and out-of-this-world evening of readings by writers Astrid Amara, Matthew Buscemi, Kim Fielding, Laylah Hunter and Nisi Shawl. From Lambda Literary-nominated fantasies to powerful and thought-provoking science fiction stories, each author takes the reader on an exciting, imaginative journey.

ABOUT THE PANELISTS

Astrid Amara lives in Bellingham, Washington with her husband, four dogs, two goats, and one horse. She’s a graduate of Western Washington University, a former Peace Corps Volunteer, and a bureaucrat by day. She is an active volunteer for greyhound adoption and, when not doing anything with animals or writing, can usually be found sleeping, because she is also extremely lazy. She is the author of multiple novels, including the recent science fiction romance work Song of the Navigator. Her fantasy epic The Archer’s Heart was a finalist for the 2008 Lambda Literary Award

Matthew Buscemi is the author of three speculative fiction novels and one short story collection. He is also the founder of Fuzzy Hedgehog Press. He grew up in Illinois, but left to explore the world. He has taught English in Japan and Thailand, and has studied linguistics in Hawaii. Nowadays he lives with his partner in Seattle, Washington, where he types code by day and prose by night. He dreams of exploring the multiverse himself, but until humanity gets around to inventing a means of interdimensional travel, his imagination will suffice.

Kim Fielding grew up in Oregon but has lived the past two decades exiled to the boring part of California with her husband and two daughters. She is a university professor by day and a writer all the time. She has written over two dozen novels, novellas, and short stories, including the Rainbow Award-winning gay fantasy novel, Brute. Her work spans many genres–contemporary, fantasy, paranormal, and historical—and she’s very pleased when people call her eclectic.

Laylah Hunter is a third-gendered butch queer who writes true stories about imaginary people in worlds that never were. Most of hir work deals with queer characters, erotic themes, and the search for happy endings in unfavorable circumstances. Hir mild-mannered alter ego lives in Seattle, at the mercy of the requisite cats and cultivating the requisite caffeine habit, and dreams of a day when telling stories will pay all the bills. Hir works include multiple short stories and the fantasy novel Gabriel’s City.

Nisi Shawl has published dozens of short stories, is a graduate of and currently serves on the board of Clarion West, lectured at Stanford and Duke Universities, helped found the Carl Brandon Society (an organization focusing on the presence of nonwhites in the fantastic genres), and contributed to The Encyclopedia of Themes in Science Fiction and Fantasy and to Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy. In 2009 her story collection Filter House received the James Tiptree, Jr. Award. It was nominated for a World Fantasy Award that year also, as was “Good Boy,” a story original to the collection.