What are your fall time favourite books/authors?
I don’t find my reading particularly influenced by the season I think, but some newer works that I’ve enjoyed recently include Clay Chapman McLeod’s Ghosteaters, Naben Ruthnum’s Helpmeet, Cassandra Khaw’s new collection Breakable Things, and Kelsea Yu’s Bound Feet.
Who do you think are the most interesting recent authors working in genre fiction?
Oh there are far too many to name so I’ll only drop a few: Somto Ihezue, Hannah Yang, Elaine Boey, Isabel J. Kim, Marisca Pichette, Venezia Castro, Steven Gonzalez, among others!
Do you typically read in particular genres, or do you hop around all sorts of books?
I’m a big fan of reading as broadly as possible, but I have to say my first love is very historical tinged literary fiction, memoir, with horror, fantasy, and sci-fi mixed in between!
What inspires your work, beyond the work of other authors?
Life, news articles, random historical or futuristic research I do, movies, shows, artworks, or even single words.
If you had to choose just three stories of your own, long or short, that you think would best encapsulate you as a writer, which would they be? (And where can they be read!)
Oh, that’s tricky… I’d probably say “Give Me English” in the May/June 2022 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, “Where the Grass is Always Whiter” forthcoming in Interzone Magazine, and “Tooth, Teeth, Tongue” in the February 2022 issue of The Dark Magazine.
Tell us a handful of the current must-read short story mags/journals in your opinion?
Outside of the well-known few that have been around for quite some time, I’d say Hexagon, Solarpunk Magazine, Tales From Between, The Deadlands, Tree and Stone, The Dread Machine, khoreo, Dark Matter, Haven Spec, Apparition Lit, If There’s Anyone Left, Radon Journal, Orion’s Belt—I’m sure I’m missing many other great magazines!
Is there a story you’ve read that you wish you had written?
When I first began writing, there were a lot of things I wished I had written, but now, there isn’t, because those aren’t my stories. All the ones I’ve read are stories that only those writers can write, and I have stories that only I can write.