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Mary Anne Mohanraj has had what might kindly be called an eclectic career in writing and publishing. She began by publishing primarily erotica for several years, including two collections (Torn Shapes of Desire, Silence and the Word) and two choose-your-own-adventure novels (Kathryn in the City, The Classics Professor (Penguin)). Mary Anne edited two waterproof erotica anthologies for Random House (Aqua Erotica, Wet); she also co-edited Herotica 7, which, after a long time in limbo, is finally being published this year.
In 1998, Mary Anne founded and edited Clean Sheets, an online erotica magazine, and attended the Clarion West workshop in the same year. She learned a lot from both ventures, which led her to the work for which she's probably best known in SF/F circles: with a group of talented volunteer editors, in September 2000 Mary Anne founded Strange Horizons, a free online prozine, publishing new speculative fiction, poetry, articles and reviews weekly. She ran Strange Horizons for two years before handing it off to its current editors, and is tremendously proud of what they've made of it.
She has since helped found the Carl Brandon Society (supporting people of color in SF/F) and served as a Tiptree juror. Mary Anne founded and serves as executive director for the Speculative Literature Foundation, an arts organization created to promote literary quality in speculative fiction by encouraging promising new writers, assisting established writers, facilitating the work of quality magazines and small presses in the genre, and developing a greater public appreciation of speculative fiction.
In 2005, after completing an MFA and a Ph.D. in creative writing, Mary Anne published Bodies in Motion (HarperCollins), a novel-in-stories of two immigrant families from Sri Lanka, covering four generations and going back and forth between two countries. She's also written a Sri Lankan cookbook (A Taste of Serendib) and a children's book (The Poet's Journey).
Mary Anne lives just outside Chicago with her partner Kevin Whyte, their two small children Kavya and Anand, and their dog, Elinor. Her long-term sweetie, Jed Hartman, is Senior Fiction Editor at Strange Horizons. Mary Anne teaches fiction writing, Asian American literature, and colonial / post-colonial literature at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She currently has four books in the works (a mainstream novel, a space opera, a YA fantasy, and a nonfiction travelogue), and someday hopes to finish at least one of them.
Nnedi Okorafor holds a PhD in English and is a professor at Chicago State University. She resides in the suburbs of Chicago with her daughter Anyaugo.
Her first novel, Zarah the Windseeker, takes place in a highly technological world based on Nigerian myths and culture. Zarah the Windseeker was the winner of the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature, shortlisted for the Parallax Award and Kindred Award, a finalist for the Golden Duck and Garden State Teen Choice awards and nominated for a Locus Award (Best First Novel).
Her second novel, The Shadow Speaker (Hyperion Books, 2007) has characters from and takes place in the countries of Niger and Nigeria. The Shadow Speaker was a Booksense Pick for Winter 2007/08 and a finalist for the Essence Magazine Literary Award and the Andre Norton Award. It is also an NAACP Image Award nominee, a Tiptree Honor Book and a Locus Magazine Recommended Book.
Nnedi is the winner of the 2007/08 Macmillan Writer's Prize for Africa. Her winning children's book, Long Juju Man, a story about a girl's encounters with an irritating crafty ghost, was published by Macmillan in 2009. Her forthcoming young adult novel, titled Akata Witch (Fall 2010, Penguin), is about teenage albino Nigerian girl who learns that she is part of a secret magical society. Her forthcoming adult novel, Who Fears Death? (DAW Books, early 2010), is a dark, gritty novel that evenly combines the subject matter of African literature and fantasy/science fiction.
Nnedi also wrote the critical essay, "Stephen King's Super Duper Magical Negroes," which published in Strange Horizons in October 2004. The essay was the first place winner of the 2005 Strange Horizons Reader's Choice Award for non-fiction. Her short story, "The Magical Negro," originally published in Dark Matter: Reading the Bones, was a finalist for the 2005 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.
"Windseekers," a fantasy story based on Nigerian myth and culture, was a finalist in the 2002 Writers of the Future Contest and was published in the Writers of the Future Anthology XVIII. In 2001, Nnedi received an honorable mention in The Year's Best Horror and Fantasy (14th Ed.) for "The Palm Tree Bandit," (originally published in Strange Horizons).
Nnedi's latest short stories include The Albino Girl" (a bestselling Amazon Short published by Amazon.com, 2008), "Spider the Artist" (The Seeds of Change Anthology, edited by John Joseph Adams, 2008), "From the Lost Diary of Treefrog7" (Clarkesworld Magazine, 2009) and "On the Road" (Eclipse 3, forthcoming in 2009).