CANR

• Fevered Star (2) (Between Earth and Sky) - 2022 Gallery / Saga Press , New York, NY
• Tread of Angels - 2022 Gallery / Saga Press , New York, NY

• Rebecca Roanhorse website - https://rebeccaroanhorse.com/

  More About Me + Contact Info
  headshot

  For interview/appearances, anthologies invites, and other professional requests : sara at ktliterary dot com

  Film and TV rights inquiries: kassie at anonymouscontent dot com

  Rebecca Roanhorse is a NYTimes bestselling and Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Award-winning speculative fiction writer and the recipient of the 2018 Astounding (Campbell) Award for Best New Writer.

  Rebecca has published multiple award-winning short stories and five novels, including two in The Sixth World Series, Star Wars: Resistance Reborn, Race to the Sun for the Rick Riordan imprint, and her latest novel, the epic fantasy Black Sun. She has also written for Marvel Comics and for television, and had projects optioned by Amazon Studios, Netflix, and Paramount TV. Find her Fiction & Non-Fiction HERE.

  She lives in Northern New Mexico with her husband, daughter, and pup. She drinks a lot of black coffee. Find more at https://rebeccaroanhorse.com/ and on Twitter at @RoanhorseBex.

• Wikipedia -

  Rebecca Roanhorse
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  Rebecca Roanhorse
  Rebecca Roanhorse 2022 Texas Book Festival.jpg
  Roanhorse at the 2022 Texas Book Festival
  Born Rebecca Parish[1]
  March 14, 1971
  Conway, Arkansas[2]
  Nationality American
  Occupation(s) novelist
  lawyer
  science fiction writer
  Spouse Michael Roanhorse
  Awards John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, 2018
  Hugo Award for Best Short Story, 2018
  Nebula Award for Best Short Story, 2017[3]
  Website https://rebeccaroanhorse.com/
  Rebecca Roanhorse (born March 14, 1971)[4] is an American science fiction and fantasy writer from New Mexico. She has written short stories and science fiction novels featuring Navajo characters.[5] Her work has received Hugo and Nebula awards, among others.

  Contents
  1 Background and family
  2 Career
  3 Reception
  4 Awards and nominations
  5 Bibliography
  5.1 Novels
  5.1.1 The Sixth World series
  5.1.2 Between Earth and Sky
  5.2 Novellas
  5.3 Short stories and essays
  5.4 Marvel Comics
  6 Notes
  7 References
  8 External links
  Background and family
  Roanhorse was born Rebecca Parish[1] in Conway, Arkansas in 1971.[2] Raised in northern Texas, she has said that "being a black and Native kid in Fort Worth in the '70s and '80s was pretty limiting"; thus, she turned to reading and writing, especially science fiction, as a form of escape. Her father was an economics professor, and her mother was a high school English teacher who encouraged Rebecca's early attempts at writing stories.[6]

  She was adopted as a child by white parents. In a 2020 profile by Vulture Magazine, she said that at 7 years old she learned from looking at her birth certificate that she is "half-Black and half–Spanish Indian".[7] She reunited with her birth mother later in life, though they rarely speak. Roanhorse has said that she is of Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo and African American descent, though she is not an enrolled tribal member.[7] Members of the Ohkay Owingeh community have disputed her claim, saying she has no connection to their community.[1]

  Roanhorse graduated from Yale University and later earned her JD degree from the University of New Mexico School of Law, specializing in Federal Indian Law and lived for several years on the Navajo Nation, where she clerked at the Navajo Supreme Court before working as an attorney.[7] She currently lives in New Mexico with her husband, who is Navajo,[8] and their daughter.

  Career
  Roanhorse told The New York Times that she initially worked on "Tolkien knockoffs about white farm boys going on journeys", because she figured that is what readers wanted.[9]

  On August 19, 2020, Roanhorse was announced as a contributing writer to Marvel Comics' Marvel's Voices: Indigenous Voices #1 anthology, which was released in November 2020. She wrote a story about Echo, joined by Weshoyot Alvitre on art.[10]

  Reception
  In 2018 Roanhorse received the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. Her short story "Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience" (Apex Magazine 2017) won two major awards: the 2018 Hugo Award for Best Short Story and the 2017 Nebula Award for Best Short Story. The story also earned her nominations for the 2018 Locus Award for Best Short Story, the 2018 Theodore Sturgeon Award, and the 2018 World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction.[11]

  Her first novel, Trail of Lightning, is an "apocalyptic adventure" set in Dinétah, formerly the Navajo reservation in the Southwestern United States, with mostly Navajo characters. The novel received significant critical acclaim. Kirkus Reviews described the book as a "sharp, wonderfully dreamy, action-driven novel,"[12] while The Verge praised the book's representation of Native cultures, saying it "takes readers along for a fun ride."[13] It went on to win the 2019 Locus Award for Best First Novel,[14] as well as receive nominations for the 2018 Nebula Award for Best Novel,[15] the 2019 Hugo Award for Best Novel,[16] and the 2019 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel.[17]

  However, it has been criticized by Navajo/Diné and other Native authors, scholars, and activists, who have argued that, due to a lack of cultural connection, it misrepresents Navajo teachings and spirituality, disrespects Navajo sensibilities, and harms Navajo culture.[1][18] A group of Navajo writers and cultural workers condemned Trail of Lightning as an inaccurate cultural appropriation that uses an at-times mocking and derisive tone.[19] For example, they criticized the hero's use of bullets filled with corn pollen to slay the monster, which they viewed as a violent, disrespectful misuse of sacred ceremonial traditions.[7] When asked in a Reddit AMA about including Navajo cultural aspects into her works, Roanhorse said her goal was "accuracy and respect" and gave examples of what she fictionalized and what she considered off-limits.[20] "I think a lot of Native characters that we see are stuck in the past. So it was important for me to...show Native American readers and non-Native American readers that we're alive and we're thriving in our cultures", she said in 2018.[8]

  Prominent Native scholar Debbie Reese (Nambé Pueblo) initially praised Trail of Lightning, but upon hearing from Diné writers, poets and academics, she changed her mind about the book, writing that she'd "come to understand that Roanhorse had crossed the Diné’s 'lines of disclosure,' an offense that many white interlopers had committed in the past." She retracted the review and criticized Roanhorse for sharing ideas outside the culture and misusing sacred stories.[7] Critics argue that because the Indigenous community that Roanhorse has claimed does not claim her, this makes her non-Indigenous.[1] Her defenders do not question her claims of Black Indigenous heritage and have expressed concern that questions about her identity are either racist or a distraction from discussions of her work's content.[7] Others have discussed anti-Blackness within Indigenous communities and how this may impact critiques of Roanhorse.[21] At some point in 2018, when the complaints of cultural appropriation surfaced, references to the Ohkay Owingeh were removed from her official website;[1] Roanhorse has stated that she believes her mother's family descended from Ohkay Owingeh people but is "trying to be more careful" about how she discusses it.[7]

  Awards and nominations
  Awards for Rebecca Roanhorse
  Year Work Award Category Result Ref.
  2017 "Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience" Nebula Award Short Story Won [22]
  2018 Hugo Award Short Story Won [23]
  Astounding Award (Best New Writer) Won [23]
  Locus Award Short Story Nominated [24]
  Theodore Sturgeon Award — Nominated [25]
  World Fantasy Award Short Fiction Nominated [26]
  2019 Trail of Lightning Compton Crook Award — Nominated [27]
  Hugo Award Novel Nominated [28][16]
  Locus Award First Novel Won [29]
  Nebula Award Novel Nominated [30]
  Crawford Award — Nominated [31]
  World Fantasy Award Novel Nominated [32]
  2020 Storm of Locusts Locus Award Fantasy Novel Nominated [33]
  "A Brief Lesson in Native American Astronomy" Locus Award Short Story Nominated [34]
  Black Sun Nebula Award Novel Nominated [35]
  2021 Alex Award — Won [36]
  Hugo Award Novel Nominated [37]
  Ignyte Award Best Novel - Adult Won [38]
  Locus Award Fantasy Novel Nominated [39]
  Lambda Literary Award LGBTQ Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror Nominated [40]
  Race to the Sun Locus Award Young Adult Book Nominated [39]
  Igynte Award Middle Grade Novel Nominated [38]
  Bibliography
  Novels
  Star Wars: Resistance Reborn (November 5, 2019)
  Race to the Sun (January 14, 2020)
  The Sixth World series
  Trail of Lightning (June 26, 2018)
  Storm of Locusts (April 23, 2019)
  Between Earth and Sky
  Black Sun (October 13, 2020)
  Fevered Star (April 19, 2022)
  Novellas
  Tread of Angels ( November 15, 2022)
  Short stories and essays
  "Native in Space" in Invisible 3: Essays and Poems on Representation in SF/F, edited by Jim Hines and Mary Anne Mohanraj (June 27, 2017)[41]
  "Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience" in Apex Magazine (August 8, 2017)[42]
  "Postcards from the Apocalypse" in Uncanny Magazine (January/February 2018)[43]
  "Thoughts on Resistance" in How I Resist: Activism and Hope for a New Generation, edited by Maureen Johnson (2018)[44]
  "Harvest" originally published in New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color, edited by Nisi Shawl (March 12, 2019)[45] and reprinted in Uncanny Magazine (2019)[46]
  "The Missing Ingredient" in Hungry Hearts: 13 Tales of Food & Love, edited by Caroline Tung Richmond and Elsie Chapman (July 7, 2019)[47]
  "A Brief Lesson in Native American Astronomy" originally published in The Mythic Dream (September 3, 2019)[48] and reprinted in Apex Magazine (October 2, 2021)[49] and The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020, edited by Diana Gabaldon and John Joseph Adams (October 6, 2020)[50]
  "Dark Vengeance" in Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Stories of Light and Dark (August 25, 2020)[51]
  "The Boys from Blood River" in Vampires Never Get Old: Tales with Fresh Bite, edited by Zoraida Córdova and Natalie C. Parker (September 22, 2020)[52]
  "Takeback Tango" in A Universe of Wishes: A We Need Diverse Books Anthology, edited by Dhonielle Clayton (December 8, 2020)[53]
  "Rez Dog Rules" in Ancestor Approved: Intertribal Stories for Kids, edited by Cynthia L. Smith (February 9, 2021)[54]
  "Wherein Abigail Fields Recalls Her First Death and, Subsequently Her Best Life" in A Phoenix First Must Burn: Sixteen Stories of Black Girl Magic, Resistance, and Hope, edited by Patrice Caldwell (March 10, 2021)[55]
  "The Demon Drum" in The Cursed Carnival and Other Calamities: New Stories About Mythic Heroes, edited by Rick Riordan (September 28, 2021)[56]
  Marvel Comics
  Marvel's Voices
  Indigenous Voices (November 18, 2020)
  Heritage (January 12, 2022)
  Phoenix Song: Echo #1–5 (October 20, 2021 – February 23, 2022)[57]

• Vulture - https://www.vulture.com/article/rebecca-roanhorse-black-sun-profile.html

  OCT. 20, 2020
  The Sci-Fi Author Reimagining Native History As Rebecca Roanhorse’s work has been praised in the literary world, it’s drawn criticism in some circles.
  By Lila Shapiro@lilapearl

  Photo-Illustration: Vulture and Photo courtesy of Rebecca Roanhorse
  This article was featured in One Great Story, New York’s reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly.

  Twenty years ago, when the fantasy novelist Rebecca Roanhorse was 29, she hired a private detective to track down her birth mother. Growing up as a biracial kid with white parents in Fort Worth, Texas, hadn’t been easy. She first became aware of her difference when she was around 7 years old and a white boy in a grocery store called her the N-word. Back at home, when she asked her mother what it meant, she pulled out a box of paperwork. From her birth certificate, Roanhorse learned that she was half-Black and half–Spanish Indian. For many years, that was all she knew. But, in her late 20s, she began to dream about meeting her birth mother. “I became obsessed with this idea that I needed to find her,” Roanhorse said.

  She was living in New York City at the time, working a job at a financial publisher that she hated. She was still nearly 15 years away from writing the books that would make her one of the country’s most celebrated and controversial Native authors. The private detective worked quickly; within 48 hours, she called Roanhorse with the news that her search had been a success. Soon after, Roanhorse flew to Arkansas and, for the first time in her life, found herself surrounded by people who resembled her. “It was strange and a little bit thrilling,” she said. Looking around the table at the restaurant, she noticed that her mother and aunt had the same long arms as she did, the same dimples when they smiled, the same laugh. But not everyone in the family was pleased that she’d tracked them down. On that first trip home, she learned she’d been a “secret baby.” Her birth father, a minister, had never learned of her existence. Neither had most of her mother’s extended family — conservative Pueblo Catholics from New Mexico. One of her aunts, a former nun, later told her, “It would be better if you went away.”

  Roanhorse is speaking from her home in Santa Fe, overlooking the Sun and Moon mountains. She lives there with her husband, a Diné (or Navajo) artist, and their 12-year-old daughter. She rarely speaks with her birth mother. “I’m sure some people may come home and find joy,” she said, “but that has not been my experience.” Her new book, Black Sun, is an epic set in an imaginary world inspired by the indigenous cultures of North America as they were before European explorers invaded the shores of the continent. Her work has been embraced by the literary world and often appears on lists of the best “OwnVoices” fantasy novels. (The phrase, which originated in 2015 as a Twitter hashtag and has since turned into a publicity tool, signifies that the author shares the same background or experiences as the characters they write.) And since entering the scene a few years ago, she’s already received many of the genre’s most prestigious awards. Black Sun, which was published on October 13, was one of the most eagerly anticipated titles of the fall. Some have compared it to the monumental achievements of N.K. Jemisin and George R.R. Martin. Screen adaptations of several projects are already underway.

  But within Native communities, the book’s reception has been mixed. Although Roanhorse has many Native fans who have hailed her work as groundbreaking and revelatory, she also has a number of vocal detractors. Not long after her debut, Trail of Lighting, was published, a group of Diné writers released a letter accusing her of cultural appropriation, mischaracterizing Diné spiritual beliefs, and harmful misrepresentation. They took issue with Roanhorse’s decision to write a fantasy inspired by Diné stories, since she is only Diné by marriage, and wondered why she hadn’t written about her “own tribe,” referring to the Ohkay Owingeh people of New Mexico. Some have even expressed doubts about Roanhorse’s Native ancestry and her right to tell Native stories at all.

  At a time when the publishing industry is throwing open its doors to authors who traditionally faced barriers to entry, the controversy over Roanhorse’s work reveals a fault line in the OwnVoices movement. Native identity is exceptionally complex. It consists of hundreds of cultures, each of which has its own customs. Further complicating all this is the fact that Roanhorse grew up estranged from Native communities, an outsider through no choice of her own. This complexity is reflected in her writing — both her debut and her latest work concern protagonists who are at odds with their communities. “I’m always writing outsiders,” she says. “Their journey is usually about coming home, and sometimes they wished they’d stayed away.”

  After she met her birth mother, Roanhorse blew up her life. “I had one of those moments, which I’ve had several times in my life, where I thought, What the hell am I doing here?” She was already on her second career by then. After graduating from Yale and earning a master’s degree in theology at Union Theological, she eventually found a job as a computer programmer working on Wall Street. But her work felt pointless. As she saw it, she was just helping to make “rich white dudes richer.” So she quit and moved to New Mexico to go to law school, where she studied federal and tribal law and clerked for the Navajo Nation Supreme Court. Her reunion with her birth family hadn’t gone as she’d hoped, but she thought that there were other ways she might be able to connect with her Native heritage. “I wanted to do something useful for my people,” she says.

  Not long after she began law school, she met her husband, Michael Roanhorse, an artist who makes contemporary high-end jewelry that draws inspiration from Diné traditions. After she graduated and got a job working for Legal Aid at the Navajo Nation, she and their 1-year-old daughter moved into his family’s home. For a few years, she spent her days taking on corrupt payday lenders and strategizing about environmental cases impacting Native land; at night, she returned home to a crowded trailer in the Chuska mountains, with five relatives and no running water. Roanhorse loved it. “It was like coming home,” she said. “There was family and there was community. I’d never had that easiness before, that thing you only feel when you’re among your people, where that weight of performance comes off your shoulders.”

  Roanhorse had been writing fantasy stories since she was a child, but she’d never considered it a viable career path. She didn’t finish her first novel until she was in her mid-40s. When she began work on her breakout book, Trail of Lightning, a postapocalyptic tale about a monster slayer in a world populated by Native gods, she’d been reading a lot of urban fantasy, a genre heavy with “magical” Native characters written by white authors who had no connection to the cultures they sought to portray. She wanted to write Native characters who reminded her of the people who’d become her family, to put down on the page the high desert mountains she’d fallen in love with, so she set the book in the same town where her in-laws lived. She drew on Diné stories she’d learned in law school (part of passing the bar to practice law in the Navajo Nation entails studying traditional stories).

  In July of 2016, she began querying agents. Her manuscript went out into the world just as the conversation about race in fantasy had reached a turning point. That summer, N.K. Jemisin, the author of the Broken Earth trilogy, would become the first Black writer to win fantasy’s most prestigious honor — a Hugo Award for best novel. Roanhorse’s agent, Sara Megibow, plucked the manuscript out of the slush pile in her in-box. “I read 20,000 queries a year and sign maybe three to four clients from that. I just fell in love,” Megibow told me. “It was a unique voice and truly superior writing.” Joe Monti, the editorial director of Saga Press, an imprint of Gallery Books and Simon & Schuster, was similarly impressed. He’d spent a few weeks living on the Navajo reservation when he was in college and recognized the landscape. In an anecdote that sheds light on both the scarcity of Native fantasy literature and the lack of indigenous people working within the publishing industry itself, Monti told me he’d long wanted to edit a book like this, but none had ever crossed his desk. “It was so deep on the manuscript wish list that I never thought it would happen,” he said. As soon as he finished reading it, he reached out to Megibow with an offer. “I said, ‘You’re never going to find another New York editor who has actually been to the rez,’” he recalled. Within the week, he’d offered Roanhorse a two-book deal.

  In the months leading up to publication, Roanhorse developed an active Twitter presence and became friendly with other Native writers and artists. She showed the unpublished manuscript to several of them, including a Diné graduate student who corrected the spelling and grammar of the Diné language sprinkled throughout the book. She wanted to make sure she got the story right. She also showed it to Debbie Reese, a prominent Native scholar who runs the website American Indians in Children’s Literature. Reese had a reputation for taking writers to task for misusing Native stories. She loved the book and wrote an ecstatic review for the Barnes & Noble blog. “Roanhorse lifts Indigenous readers,” she declared, “giving us a brilliant mirror that made my Indigenous heart soar.” In the trade publications, critics added to the praise, noting that she was one of the few Native writers telling indigenous fantasy stories at the time, especially in mainstream publishing. And so Roanhorse was surprised to learn in 2018, the summer the book came out, that there were people in the Native community who were unhappy with her work. After Jon Davis, the director of the M.F.A. program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, invited her to speak at the college, he heard from more than a dozen Diné writers and scholars who were caught off guard by the fact that she wasn’t an enrolled tribal member herself, and were concerned by the use of spiritual elements in Trail of Lightning. “They were disturbed,” he said. Davis said he was open to hosting the reading anyway, but he warned Roanhorse that it was likely to be an uncomfortable conversation. She decided to pass on the invitation. “I certainly don’t want to walk into some kind of ambush,” she wrote to Davis.

  A few weeks later, Reese published a retraction of her positive review. After hearing from some members of Saad Bee Hózhǫ́, a collective of Diné writers made up mostly of poets and academics, she’d changed her mind about the book. Reese, who is Nambé Pueblo, wrote that she’d come to understand that Roanhorse had crossed the Diné’s “lines of disclosure,” an offense that many white interlopers had committed in the past. In the traditions of many Native tribes, only certain people have the authority to grant others the right to tell sacred stories, and some stories are never supposed to be shared with outsiders — a measure meant, in part, to safeguard communal ideas and practices that have been assailed by hundreds of years of genocide, theft, forced assimilation, and distorted representations in the dominant culture. Some tribes have official boards or committees that review cultural output, but the Diné Nation isn’t one of them, a fact that this group felt had left them especially vulnerable. That November, they published a letter accusing her of appropriating narratives that didn’t belong to her and of misusing sacred stories. They were troubled, for example, by Roanhorse’s choice to have her monster slayer use bullets filled with corn pollen, which they perceived as a violent misuse of a peaceful ceremonial element traditionally meant to restore harmony. “Our ancestors did not fight for our land and culture so that our deities, figures of profound spiritual import, could be commodified, cheapened, and turned into superheroes,” they wrote.

  This critique didn’t disrupt Roanhorse’s career. Over the past two years, she has published a sequel to Trail of Lightning, as well as Race to the Sun, a middle-grade novel based on Diné stories for Rick Riordan’s “Own Voices” imprint, and a Star Wars book. These projects have only further incensed her critics, who feel she dismissed their complaints without listening. In recent months, the conversation has become more pointed. Native identity is a politically fraught subject, and different tribes have different rules for determining eligibility for tribal affiliation. Roanhorse is not an enrolled member of the Ohkay Owingeh tribe, and some of her critics have undertaken efforts to prove she’s not native at all. An article published this summer declared her the “Elizabeth Warren of the Sci-Fi set.”

  And yet, even as Roanhorse’s critics suggested she was perpetuating the harms inflicted by white colonialism, a group of her defenders began to accuse them of doing the same thing. In The New Republic, Nick Martin, a member of the Sappony Tribe, wrote that their attacks fell into a tradition of anti-Black racism in Indian country. “What critics of this sort refuse to acknowledge, or quickly brush off, is the fact that their campaign against this one artist easily fits in a pattern of ‘vetting’ Black Native people,” he wrote. “The anti-Black sentiments that colonization baked into Indigenous governing structures are still being perpetuated by Native communities.”

  Some of the Diné writers that signed the letter accusing Roanhorse of appropriation say they have become uncomfortable with the way that the conversation has focused on Rebecca’s identity and strayed from the content of her work. “We recognize Roanhorse as a Black Indigenous author,” Jake Skeets, a Diné poet, told me. Skeets said he regretted the confrontational tone of parts of the letter, but he still felt there was an important conversation to be had about the way that traditional Diné stories should be used by contemporary writers. The danger, he said, with transforming traditional stories into a commercial fantasy novel is that these narratives then become something that can be “displaced, erased, removed, or extracted from. When we think about the American project of conquest and colonialism, indigenous people have been subject to erasure, removal, displacement, and extraction.” When I asked him whether he thought it was possible for anyone to write a work of commercial fantasy based on Navajo stories and do it well, he said he wasn’t sure. As a younger writer, Skeets also experimented with using Navajo stories in his work, but ultimately decided against it. “We have stories that are very worthy of being told, because they’re so cinematic, so epic. But there’s always the question of what a non-Navajo reader has access to, and, in my perspective, some of that has to be protected.”

  Skeets’s anxiety speaks to a debate that goes well beyond Roanhorse, or even literature, concerning the state of Native culture in America at this moment in history, exactly 400 years after the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. “There’s a rising conversation among a younger generation about what it means to be Native in the 21st century,” Charlie Scott, a Diné Ph.D. student who worked as a sensitivity reader on Race to the Sun told me. “Yes, we need to maintain the tradition and the culture. We also need to recognize that we can blend it, and that our survival is based on our ability to evolve with the time.” Scott and a number of Native writers I spoke with pointed out that the critique of Roanhorse comes primarily from Native academics, many of whom came through Ivy League institutions or M.F.A. programs and share a particular view of what Native literature should be. For Native readers who like Roanhorse’s work, her willingness to deviate from tradition is exactly what makes her books so exciting and important. It is inherently controversial, says Amy Sturgis, a scholar of Native American studies who focuses on science fiction and fantasy, because it “does something different — it says, Look ahead, look beyond, imagine differently.”

  As for Roanhorse, she understands the desire to protect Native stories, but believes that impulse can be misguided, “leaving us with only white Western narratives.” “Navajo kids read Percy Jackson in their classrooms, which is fun,” she said. “But what if there was a chance for them to read a contemporary action-adventure story featuring indigenous pantheons instead of Greek and Roman gods. Isn’t that powerful? Isn’t that affirming? Why wouldn’t we want that?”

  When Roanhorse feels anxious, she calms herself by sitting on her balcony and taking in the majestic view of the Sun and Moon mountains. On one of our calls, she held her phone up so that I could see her surroundings, two gentle peaks cloaked in juniper and ponderosa pine. “This is what I get to see when I drink my coffee in the morning,” she said. “I sound like such an old lady, but there’s a little group of crows that come by, and I’ll chat with them.” Roanhorse has been spending a lot of time out there lately. The conversation around her identity summons unwelcome thoughts about the messiness of her family history. Although she tries to tune out her critics, she is aware of the efforts that some of them have made to prove she has no Native lineage, and finds these campaigns to discredit her alternatively frustrating and depressing. “I cannot write down my bloodline in a way that will satisfy them,” she says bluntly. As far as Roanhorse knows, her mother had also grown up disconnected from tribal life, with only a vague understanding of her Native roots. It wasn’t until Roanhorse was in law school that she met a great aunt and uncle who told her that they’d grown up on the Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo. In a departure from her earlier works, the author bio that accompanies Roanhorse’s most recent book makes no reference to any Ohkay Owingeh origins. This doesn’t mean she believes her mother’s family didn’t descend from Ohkay Owingeh people; she is simply “trying to be more careful,” she said. She’d never attempted to trace the ancestry herself, partly because she’d always felt rejected by her birth family. “If my aunt and uncle somehow got it wrong … It’s just wild,” she said, “that we’re supposed to have these pure bloodlines when our whole story is genocide.”

  When Roanhorse speaks about her personal life from a legal and historical perspective, you can imagine her in a courtroom, confidently arguing on behalf of a client. But when the conversation turns toward the fracturing of her own family, she becomes overwhelmed. “This is all so violent,” she said, removing her glasses and wiping her eyes. Going back as far as the 1700s, “blood quantum” laws written by white legislators limited who could legally identify themselves as Native; in the 19th and 20th centuries, state and local governments widely adopted these restrictions, and many tribes still use them today to determine who can become an enrolled citizen. “They were used to breed Natives out of existence,” Roanhorse said. “I understand the history.” She paused. “But wow. Using the tools of the master to go after your own people, to say, ‘You’re not one of us’ … I’m not sure that’s where we want to be as a people.”

  One morning, Roanhorse shows me around her Pueblo Revival house. In a black sweater and red lipstick, she leads me through an eclectic collection of Native art that reflects both traditional and contemporary styles — painted pottery that was gifted to her after she gave a reading at the Acoma Pueblo outside of Albuquerque, a poster of a painting of a can of mutton stew by the Diné artist Ryan Singer (his take on Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans). She paused in front of a large canvas of a Navajo god that looked like something out of a superhero comic, brightly colored and bold, by the Diné and Chemehuevi artist Ryan Huna Smith. “This is one of my favorite works,” she says, with a low laugh, her dimples showing. “Some of my critics are like, We don’t do that with our gods.” Her voice turns flutelike, gently offering a retort. “‘Yes, you do all the time!’ This is a contemporary interpretation, clearly.” As she reflects on why the painting moves her, it’s clear she is also talking about her own work and, in a deeper sense, herself. “I love these pop-cultural interpretations of traditional stories,” she says. “It keeps us looking to the future. It says, Hey, we’re part of the culture too. We’re not stuck in the 1800s. We’ve adapted to so much in order to survive. This is just one more way we adapt.”

• Nebula Awards, Science Fictions & Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. website - https://nebulas.sfwa.org/nominees/rebecca-roanhorse/

  Rebecca Roanhorse
  Past Nominations and Wins
  2020
  Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse, published by Saga and Solaris. Nominated for Best Novel in 2020
  2018
  Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse, published by Saga Press. Nominated for Best Novel in 2018
  2017
  “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™” by Rebecca Roanhorse, published by Apex Magazine. Winner, Best Short Story in 2017
  No image found

  Rebecca Roanhorse
  Rebecca Roanhorse is a speculative fiction writer living in Northern New Mexico with her husband, daughter, and pug. Her debut novel Trail of Lightning (Book One of the Sixth World series) is available June 2018 from Saga Press, and her children’s book Race to the Sun is coming in 2019 from Rick Riordan Presents. Her short story “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience (TM)” is a 2017 Nebula Finalist. Her nonfiction can be found in Invisible 3: Essays and Poems on Representation in SF/F, Strange Horizons, and Uncanny Magazine. Follow her on Twitter @roanhorsebex or find out more at rebeccaroanhorse.com.

• Publishers Weekly - https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/profiles/article/84204-rebecca-roanhorse-s-genre-bending-new-novel.html

  Rebecca Roanhorse's Genre-bending New Novel
  By Dhonielle Clayton | Aug 28, 2020
  Comments Click Here

  photo credit: stephen land photography
  Rebecca Roanhorse

  It’s a bright summer Friday, and Rebecca Roanhorse sits out on her balcony overlooking the Sun and Moon Mountains in Santa Fe, N.Mex. The majestic and ancient lands below have become a deep part of the worldbuilding in her latest book, Black Sun (Saga Press, Oct.), which kicks off her new Between the Earth and Sky trilogy. Drawn from the diverse and varied civilizations of the pre-Columbian Americas, her new secondary world fantasy celebrates cultures she was desperate to see on the page as a writer of Black and Native descent.

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  “Unfortunately, epic fantasy all seems to be set in mythical worlds inspired by Europe,” Roanhorse says. “We’ve read that a million times.” So she makes it her mission to create fantasy landscapes that draw from new and startling creative wells.

  Getting publishing to open up to those broadened fantasy horizons hasn’t been easy. “I came to the publishing industry very naively, not understanding anything about the business or what it was like to be a writer,” she says.

  A voracious bibliophile since she was a kid, Roanhorse grew up reading the science fiction and fantasy during what she calls a “challenging” childhood in Fort Worth, Tex., and the genre became her happy place. She started drawing acclaim for her writing at a young age, winning her first poetry contest in third grade. She transformed a seventh grade science project on the planets into an emo-tragic short story about an astronaut on a suicide mission into the sun. “I think I got a B+ on that, which was pretty disappointing because I thought it was A+ work. I don’t think I was supposed to turn it into a fictional narrative,” she says with a laugh. “But I’ve been writing ever since.”

  She spent her middle and high school years spinning more tales only for herself, while thinking about the fantasy books she was reading.

  “It was all white boys on quests,” she muses, recalling the epic fantasies she read during that time. “I’d dropped out of reading it because it stopped speaking to me. There were no people who looked like me, and nothing that I really related to,” she says, adding that she felt “disconnected” from the worlds of these novels. But once she found urban fantasy, she saw a genre where, she felt, there might be space for Native characters.

  She encountered many half-Native characters in popular urban fantasy series, but noticed how those characters were divorced from their heritages. “They didn’t interact with the heroes and gods and monsters of Native cultures,” she explains. She says she started thinking: “Wouldn’t it be great if there was a story where a character was very Native? Very attached to her culture and surrounded by brown people, and in a world that I knew?”

  She’d been practicing Indian law and living in the Navajo nation with her husband and daughter when she started thinking about writing more seriously. It was at this point that she began working on what would become her debut fantasy, the Locus-winning and Hugo-nominated novel Trail of Lightning (Saga Press), which was published in 2018, when Roanhorse was in her 40s.

  “So I just decided to write it. I wrote it purely for myself and for the joy of writing, and to keep myself sane while being a lawyer,” she says. “I didn’t even know people like me could be writers. An editor asked me why I waited so long to start writing, and I said ‘I didn’t know that I could be a science fiction and fantasy writer.’ I didn’t come to see people like Octavia Butler and N.K. Jemisin until later, so I didn’t see anyone writing this genre that looked like me. So I didn’t even know it was an option.”

  It wasn’t until she joined a National Novel Writing Month group that she found the courage to try to get published. A motley crew including a romance novelist, a science writer, and a self-help expert, the group adored her work and encouraged her to get it published, which Roanhorse says was a major motivator.

  She entered #DVPit, a biannual Twitter pitching event for authors and illustrators who self-identify as members of historically marginalized groups, but none of the agents who requested her manuscript were a good match. That’s when she started querying, eventually connecting with agent Sara Megibow. “She picked five clients out of the 30,000 queries she gets a year,” Roanhorse says. “And she picked me.”

  Barreling through the concrete ceiling of the white-dominated publishing industry, Roanhorse’s debut sold within a week, and it went on to win a Locus and received nominations for several science fiction awards.

  In many ways, Roanhorse is carving a path for others while reshaping the canon with her trailblazing stories. In 2018, Roanhorse received the Astounding Award for Best New Writer (formerly the John W. Campbell Award). Her short story “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™”—published in Apex magazine in 2017—won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story and the 2017 Nebula Award for Best Short Story. It also earned her several prestigious nominations for the Locus Award for Best Short Story, the 2018 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and the 2018 World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story.

  Her most ambitious work yet, Black Sun is a lush tale about the intertwined fates of a man born to be the vessel of a god, a seafaring outcast, and a powerful priest. It’s set against the backdrop of Tova, a holy city on the planet Meridian. An epic adventure filled with giant crows, assassins, mermaids, astronomer priests, god-made storms, matriarchal clans, and more, it draws from the beauty and complexity of the pre-colonization cultures of the Americas.

  It infuriates Roanhorse that these ancient civilizations don’t get acknowledged for their profound accomplishments.“Pre-Columbian cultures, pre-conflict cultures were rich and complex and sophisticated, particularly in their astronomy, architecture, and culture,” she says, as she gazes out at the desert. “There’s a pervasive idea—even to this day—that they were primitive.”

  In this new trilogy, Roanhorse seeks to use fantasy landscapes to unearth the beauty of those cultures, from the maritime Mayan ports to the architecture of Machu Picchu to the mound builders of Cahokia. She wanted to put a world on the page that she wanted to see. While not limiting herself to historical or cultural accuracy as a creator of fantasy, she let her imagination unfurl this ancient world’s possibilities of magic and adventure in order to take wonderful storytelling risks.

  “I start with character and worldbuild out of necessity,” she says with a laugh, detailing how her books often open with a sliver of violence, like a drop of blood in a glass of champagne, signaling to the reader the trouble yet to come.

  “My stories came from a place of urgency and joy,” she says. “Those two things combined made me feel like I’ve got to write what I want to write, what comes to me.”

  Knowing that she’s one of the most successful Black and Native science fiction and fantasy writers comes with a lot of responsibility. Roanhorse worked with many sensitivity readers to ensure the series world of Between the Earth and Sky and its characters were depicted with respect and dignity. She aims to tell good stories that celebrate the cultures of her ancestors, build imaginative worlds that invite exploration, and create misfit characters that demand following.

  “I’ve always been an outsider. I’m adopted, and Native identity is complicated and political, and I understand why,” she says. “But I know I mean a lot to many young Native writers. The ones who want to write genre and have not had a model, or who have been discouraged or told outright they can’t. And Black readers have always loved and supported me.”

  She reflects on the fan mail she’s gotten from readers, then she laughs and smiles. “They keep showing up in my workshops and keep saying things like ‘I would’ve been too scared to do this if I hadn’t known you were writing it and teaching it.’ ”

  For Roanhorse, that’s all she needs to keep telling the tales.

  Dhonielle Clayton is the bestselling author of the series 'The Belles,' the coauthor of the 'Tiny Pretty Things' series, and the owner of the book packager Cake Literary.

  A version of this article appeared in the 08/31/2020 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: Genre Bending

• Clarkesworld - https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/roanhorse_interview/

  ISSUE 169 – OCTOBER 2020

  INTERVIEW

  LIVING RAW AND OUT LOUD: A
  CONVERSATION WITH REBECCA ROANHORSE
  BY ARLEY SORG

  Before you ever heard of her, Rebecca Roanhorse was already on her way to glory. In 2018, she showed up in Pittsburgh for the Annual Nebula Awards Conference, nominated for her first publication: “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™” (Apex Magazine 8/17). In front of a crowd of professional authors and publishers, almost all of whom were strangers to her, she won the award for Best Short Story. During that same conference she revealed to me that she’d already signed three separate book deals with two different publishers, for multiple books.

  Roanhorse was born in Conway, AR and grew up in Fort Worth, TX. She earned a BA in Religious Studies from Yale University and an MA in Theology from Union Theological Seminary, and then a JD from the University of New Mexico School of Law, specializing in Federal Indian Law. She attended the VONA/Voices workshop in 2015.

  Her debut novel, Trail of Lightning, came out with Saga Press in 2018, beginning The Sixth World series. Star Wars: Resistance Reborn was published in 2019 with Del Rey. In 2020 her middle grade novel, Race to the Sun, came out from Disney-Hyperion imprint Rick Riordan Presents. Writing for both adults and younger audiences, she has also published a number of well-regarded short stories, and is a Hugo, Nebula, Astounding, and Locus Award winner.

  Roanhorse lives in Northern New Mexico with her husband, daughter, and pup. Black Sun begins series Between Earth and Sky and is due from Saga Press in October 2020.

  author photo

  Your new novel, Black Sun, is the first in the Between Earth and the Sky series, and is inspired by a number of pre-Colombian cultures. Trail of Lightning and The Sixth World series taps into Navajo lore. What were some of the key similarities and differences in terms of the research for these two projects?

  The Sixth World series is a near-future Urban Fantasy so my research was pretty much lived experience from my day-to-day life on the Navajo Nation. I was writing about people and places I knew intimately. Black Sun, on the other hand, is a big sprawling epic fantasy inspired primarily by historical cultures. It required a lot of research on everything from archeoastronomy to indigenous ways of open water navigation, but even with all that research, it’s still a fantastical enterprise. There are giant beasts and blood magic and mythical creatures come to life, but the roots are different.

  The world of Black Sun is inspired by pre-Colombian Americas and the world of The Sixth World is a postapocalyptic vision. Is it trickier to write the Black Sun world in certain ways, or more freeing?

  A little bit of both. My goal with The Sixth World was to portray contemporary (and future) Navajo culture as accurately as I could in order to correct a lot of the stereotypes I saw in the way Natives are portrayed in popular culture, and genre in particular. Similarly, I also wanted to portray pre-Columbian cultures with some of the same grandeur and sophistication that they possessed but that they rarely get credit for, but I did not hold back on mingling cultural aspects with things I wholly made up. I took a lot more liberties and indulged my imagination a lot more in Black Sun.

  Are there important ways that this book changed from when you first started writing and plotting?

  I wrote an entire 95k+ draft of what became Black Sun and turned it in to my editor, Joe Monti, the week of Boskone 2018. I was eager to hear what he had to say when we met up at the Con, and his feedback was something along the lines of the story was good, not great. I was so annoyed I went back and rewrote the whole story, saving only some of the bare-bones worldbuilding and a few names and ideas. It became a wholly different novel, and thank god, because Joe was right. The first version was mediocre. The final version is objectively much better.

  We often talk about science fiction literature as being a conversation, and stories and books are often written as a response to something that came before. Is Black Sun in conversation with particular works, is it building on something that came before, or is it unlike things readers have seen in some ways?

  Black Sun is certainly in conversation with the epics that have come before. I grew up on Jordan and Eddings and, in college, Martin and Erikson were faves. I consciously tried to set aside the conventions and setting of the European-inspired epic while still giving readers what they want to see in high fantasy.

  Additionally, Black Sun was my chance to portray people who look like me as something beyond orcs, laconic horse people, or the enslaved. I wanted to celebrate the various cultures of the Indigenous Americas by embracing their architecture, science, diversity of cultures and worldview, and then going fantastical with it. I dislike how marginalized authors are so rarely allowed to be fantastical, to have limitless imaginations and to break boundaries. I recently saw a review complaining that Black Sun did not meet the reader’s understanding of one of the historical cultures it draws from, and I wanted to shake that reviewer and point to the giant corvids and mermaids in the story and ask if they failed to notice the book was fantasy. I don’t think white writers have to deal with that expectation.

  I really enjoy your characters and I feel like your character work is strong. How do you go about developing characters so that they are interesting, different, but plausible?

  I remember reading a tweet from Kameron Hurley who said something along the lines of not wanting to write the same female character every time, and that made me strive to consciously try to write very different characters from the ones in my previous series. (I know other authors say they write the same five characters over and over and no one notices, and that’s fine, too. Whatever works.) I really try to be conscious of how different people are, and how differently they think and act and what different things drive them. And I try to pull that into my characters. That’s not to say that most characters don’t have aspects of myself in them, some more than others, but their construction is a thoughtful process. After they come alive on the page, so to speak, they often take on a life of their own if I’ve done a good job, but their foundations are deliberation.

  What is horror for you, as opposed to dark fantasy? And do you feel like there are some elements in your books, particularly in Black Sun, which take the narrative to a horror sensibility?

  I don’t differentiate between genres while I’m writing. I mix science fiction and fantasy, and there’s definitely elements of horror in my writing, including Black Sun, but that, unlike my character work, is not a conscious choice. That’s just my brain doing its thing. Often, I’m looking for the visceral, the gut punch. I want my work to be immersive, and when you’re immersed fully, it’s frightening. People are frightening. That’s just the truth.

  People have lauded your worldbuilding in the new book. What makes good worldbuilding; how do you infuse a world with detail while keeping it interesting and not overwhelming the story?

  I start with character and build out. I don’t make a world and then fit characters into it, and I don’t do big bibles full of details or anything. I create as much world as the character needs to feel real and to come alive, and then maybe a bit more to make the world feel likewise real and alive. And I try to be judicious about what makes it onto the page. Worldbuilding is not an indulgence, it’s a necessity. I keep it necessary.

  You have books and short stories marketed to different age groups. Are there important differences in your approach to writing or narrative when you compose short fiction for younger audiences; or when you wrote Race to the Sun?

  I think everyone should write for children, especially middle grade, at least once. It really teaches you how to write more completely. We forget that adults come to novels with a lifetime of experience that they then use to navigate a narrative. They can fill in narrative blanks or catch nuance that kids just can’t. Also, adults are much more willing to forgive lapses in plot and give you the benefit of the doubt. Kids call you on your bullshit. You can’t be a lazy storyteller and write for children.

  In Black Sun, right at the outset, there’s this aspect of Serapio’s identity as an individual who is caught between cultures and between parents. Knowing a bit about who you are, this struck me as very personal. Do you feel a closeness to Serapio? Are there other important ways in which you relate to him?

  Oh yes. My birth father is Black, and my birth mother is Native, and I am adopted, so I’m a bit obsessed with identity and where people fit in, or more interestingly, where they don’t fit in. Serapio and his journey are close to my heart. He struggles with his destiny, as all the characters do. But unlike others, he is willing to subvert his personal desires for a higher calling, even if the calling is one that is questionable and that may end badly for him. He does some terrible things in the story in the name of a people who don’t even know him, and frankly, may not want him, at great cost. There’s a quiet desperation to his character when it comes to human connection, but he’s also arguably the most powerful character in the story, a world-shaker. I love that contradiction.

  I loved the line “Teek with a temper” and the book creates this immediate sense of a strong, stubborn, defiant woman in Xiala—perhaps even rowdy. Do you relate to her? What do you like most about this character?

  Definitely rowdy! I’m channeling some of my twenties through Xiala but the difference is that she is unapologetically herself. I was never that confident. Unfortunately, that “self” is a mess. She’s living day-to-day, hour-to-hour, with very little thought for the future and being driven by the demons of her past. But she’s a generally good person whose only great harms are directed at herself. I think she’s the most relatable character in the story.

  How does your connection to Serapio and the other characters in Black Sun, as well as to the overall story, compare to your connection to Maggie Hoskie, the protagonist from your Sixth World series, as well as to that story?

  There are aspects of me in all my characters. I think that’s pretty common for authors. Some are more immediately accessible, some only blossom to recognition as you write. I joke that writing Maggie Hoskie was cheaper than therapy, and there’s a lot of truth to that. That character is my most emotional vulnerable self, everything lived raw and out loud, heart on your sleeve. Writing her was extremely cathartic. Serapio, for example, is a much more philosophical and introspective character. They both want desperately to be loved and to belong, and neither quite understand the power they possess, but Serapio is much closer to that realization than Maggie is. Maggie rejects her calling, Serapio embraces his. Xiala probably thinks having a calling is for suckers and would happily toast to that.

  The concept around Teek as being people who become commodities, literally taken apart for the benefit of other people, strikes me as a powerful metaphor. Was it just a cool concept or is there a deliberate meaning behind this idea?

  It is very much deliberate. There’s a line in the book where Xiala says something like, “They hate people like us until they need us,” referring to her and Serapio. And throughout the series they will both have to wrestle with how people want to use them verses their own desires. It’s a much more complicated question than it may look at first blush. To be useful, even as a commodity, is to be wanted, and for someone who has been so severely rejected, it is a consideration. There is power in sacrifice, but that power doesn’t come cleanly or easily.

  What else would you like people to know about Black Sun, beyond the blurbs and the reviews?

  I’ve talked a lot about character (thanks for the great questions), and that’s probably what is most important to me. This story is about people. People trying to find their way home, whatever that means to them. But the journey is not always successful. Sometimes home isn’t what you thought it would be, sometimes home doesn’t want you, sometimes home doesn’t even recognize you as one of the family. And then what do you do? Do you raze it all? Do you keep searching? Do you build your own family, or do you mold yourself into a more pleasing shape in hopes of acceptance? And at what cost? These are the kinds of human questions I’m exploring behind all the worldbuilding and magic and intrigue. I hope people see that, too.

  What was the most challenging thing about writing this book?

  I pushed through a lot of fear and doubt to write this book. Not only because I trunked the “good but not great” draft, but because of the kinds of characters I chose to write. Serapio has a disability, Xiala is pansexual, there is a third gender that uses modified neopronouns in the story. And, of course, this is a world inspired by non-European paradigms. It was everything I wanted to write, but it felt risky. It felt like I had to take a chance of people not liking it, or, worse to me, getting the representation wrong, but it would be worth the risk it if I got it right.

  What’s next, what’s coming up for you, or what are you working on that you can tell readers about?

  Most things I can’t talk about, but I can say my Hugo and Nebula award-winning short story “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience ™” has been optioned by Amazon Studios, as have a number of other projects. I also have an original TV project in development that I hope to announce soon, and by the time you read this, I’ll be part of a writer’s room on a very cool new science fiction TV series. In addition, I have a one-shot with Marvel Comics coming in November in their Indigenous Voices issue where I wrote a story for the character Echo with Weshoyot Alvitre doing interior art and David W. Mack creating a beautiful variant cover. And, of course, the second book in the Between Earth and Sky series will be out in 2021. My plate is very full and I couldn’t be more grateful.

• NPR - https://www.npr.org/2020/10/17/924734316/i-longed-to-see-something-different-so-i-wrote-it-questions-for-rebecca-roanhors

  'I Longed To See Something Different, So I Wrote It': Questions For Rebecca Roanhorse
  October 17, 202012:00 AM ET
  Petra Mayer at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C., May 21, 2019. (photo by Allison Shelley)
  PETRA MAYER

  Twitter
  Black Sun, by Rebecca Roanhorse
  Saga/Gallery Press
  On a storm-tossed sea, a blind young man with crow-shaped scars carved into his chest and a jewel-eyed, trouble-prone sea captain are heading for an uncertain, probably terrible destiny. And a street beggar-turned-High Priest struggles to maintain position and power in a treacherous city.

  In Rebecca Roanhorse's new fantasy novel Black Sun, all paths lead towards the city of Tova, where a coming eclipse could signal rebirth — or disaster.

  Roanhorse is one of the many authors breaking away from the traditional (and let's face it, kinda done) quasi-European settings of a lot of classic stories, and setting forth into new worlds based on Southeast Asian, Native American and Mesoamerican civilizations — like the Pre-Columbian indigenous cultures that influenced Black Sun.

  In an email interview, Roanhorse tells me that's something she's always wanted to write about. "I have been reading epic fantasies inspired by European settings since I was a child, and while I'm still a fan of many of these works, I longed to see something different," she says. "So I wrote it. I never made a conscious decision to go in that direction. That direction was simply the natural culmination of my love of the architecture, poetry, politics, and history of these places and people that I've been learning about forever."

  Sponsor Message

  What came first, the world or the characters? And how did the story take shape in your head?

  'Gods Of Jade And Shadow' Spins A Dark, Dazzling Fairy Tale
  BOOK REVIEWS
  'Gods Of Jade And Shadow' Spins A Dark, Dazzling Fairy Tale
  Belonging And Betrayal Drive The Action In 'Storm Of Locusts'
  BOOK REVIEWS
  Belonging And Betrayal Drive The Action In 'Storm Of Locusts'
  AUTHOR INTERVIEWS
  'Black Sun' Offers A Fantasy Set In Ancient Pre-Columbian Americas
  I knew my general setting, but it's really character that is the engine of inspiration for the story. I'd written an early draft that my editor was lukewarm on, so I took that back and tore it down to its bones. From those bones I saved some of the essential elements of the worldbuilding, like the clans, the emphasis on trade, the city of Tova, but it was really the character Xiala that began to speak to me. I knew I wanted that hard-drinking disaster of a sea captain with powers that she doesn't quite understand and a home she had lost, and then all the other characters started to come together, like variations on a theme.

  What was your research process like?

  Lifelong. Like I said, I've been reading about Pre-Columbian cultures for decades. But for this book I really dug into everything from Polynesian sailing methods to what we know of the Maritime Maya to the habits of corvids. I also read a lot about crows. They're fascinating birds with long memories and intriguing personalities. I, of course, added fantasy elements to their behaviors, but so much of the book is grounded in research.

  Sponsor Message

  Your Sixth World books are pretty dark — it is a post-apocalyptic world, after all — but WHEW is this story DARK.

  Is it? I'm not a good judge of what is dark and not dark in my books. I know that if someone listed all the dark elements I could objectively say, "Yeah, that's dark." But when I'm in it, writing it, it's just the story that naturally comes to me. It's true I wrote a fantasy book that talks about class politics, religious corruption, generational trauma, the cost of vengeance, and the narrow road to redemption, but I also wrote a story about a boy who plays with shadow and talks to crows going on the roadtrip of a lifetime with a party girl. Those two things can co-exist.

  I know you can't give toooo much away, but what can we expect from the next book?

  A continuation of the story with the four POV [point of view] characters I love, but also the addition of a new POV character, a look into new lands on the Meridian continent, and, yes, more time with the Teek [Xiala's seafaring people].

• Shondaland - https://www.shondaland.com/inspire/books/a42007219/rebecca-roanhorse-is-recreating-the-old-west-in-tread-of-angels/

  Rebecca Roanhorse Is Recreating the Old West in ‘Tread of Angels’
  “I wanted to imagine something that felt mythic in scope but also very human.”

  BY SHELBI POLKPUBLISHED: NOV 22, 2022

  With the success of the Between Earth and Sky series, Rebecca Roanhorse established herself as a writer to watch, but that doesn’t mean she’s tied down to just one project. Roanhorse, who identifies as Indigenous and Black, has made a career of building fantasy worlds based on Native American history and culture. She worked as a lawyer before becoming a Hugo and Nebula award-winning writer, and she’s in the middle of adapting Black Sun, the first book in the Between Earth and Sky series, for television.

  Pivoting in her novel writing, Roanhorse recently released Tread of Angels, a stand-alone story. The book is set in an Old West mining town, and two classes govern society: the Fallen and the Elect, with the Elect perceived as superior. The protagonist, Celeste, is the product of an Elect father and a Fallen mother. But she blends in with the rest of the Elect far easier than her sister Mariel. When Mariel is accused of murder, Celeste must break through personal and societal barriers to fight for her sister’s innocence.

  Shondaland talked to Roanhorse about biblical mythmaking, the legacy of the Old West in storytelling, and the danger of truly seeing a person you love.

  SHELBI POLK: So, you’re in the middle of publishing another series, but you took a detour here to a completely different world. What prompted that?

  REBECCA ROANHORSE: Writing a trilogy takes years, and you’re pretty deeply into that world and those characters. But I had this idea at the beginning of Covid lockdown, and we had come back from a trip to Colorado. I’d gone through Leadville, Colorado, which is the highest city in the United States, I believe. I was inspired to do a little research on Leadville, and it’s actually kind of fascinating history. It was a place of massive wealth. They made a massive amount of money during the silver rush of Colorado, and a number of famous people come from there, including the Unsinkable Molly Brown. If you’ve watched Titanic, that’s what made her fortune. And people like Oscar Wilde had visited there and appeared on their opera stage — back then, opera meant sort of everything — and he had this wonderful quote about Leadville. [It was] along the lines of “The only etiquette you need to know in Leadville comes at the end of a revolver,” or something like that. So, I was sort of interested, and I wanted to do this little one-off story about my vision of the Old West. My background is in religious studies — I have a degree from Yale and a master’s in theology. And I’ve always been sort of fascinated with demonology and angelology, theology in general, and biblical mythology. So, that’s sort of what came of that. And my editor said, “Sure, you could take a moment and write this.” I ended up really loving the world, and I would love to perhaps expand it in the future. But this was just a short foray into this world and these ideas.

  Tread of Angels
  Rebecca Roanhorse Tread of Angels
  $28 AT BOOKSHOP
  CREDIT: SHONDALAND STAFF
  SP: I come from a very Bible-obsessed part of the world, so it was fun to see some of those references without it being directly religious or heavy-handed.

  RR: My interest isn’t so much in the religiosity of it, the practice of it, per se. I’m more interested in the mythology. I think there’s something about the Old West that feels expansive and feels biblical, whether it be the drama of the landscape itself, with these massive mountains in the skies that go on for miles, or whether it be sort of the bloody history of conquest and everything that goes into that. I remember Stephen Graham Jones, we were doing an event together once, and he said something along the lines of “Everywhere you walk in the West, there’s blood in the footprint.” So, I think it lends itself to mythmaking. All cultures have their own traditional stories and myths, and this is just one aspect of that. It’s so ingrained in mainstream Western American culture, the biblical mythology, that we often don’t see it as mythmaking. But it certainly is.

  SP: Absolutely. I really enjoyed that aspect. Understandably, as speculative fiction is diversifying, the Old West idea is still problematic with its direct connection to colonialism. So, I would love to hear more about why you decided to take that on.

  RR: I always said to myself I would never write a story of the Old West. I grew up really disliking the stories that came of the Old West because they were all about killing Indians, and Black people were nonexistent. Even though we know that there were tons of Black cowboys. So, it just felt like the parts of me that I identified with were completely erased, and I really didn’t see myself in any of the stories of the Old West.

  But I think as I’ve grown and matured, I’ve sought out all these different stories. I’ve learned about Black cowboys and Indian cowboys. The West was actually incredibly diverse, and all of that has been erased. I got more interested. The story I wanted to tell was a story of the people on the margins, and I wanted to reimagine what that looked like. I didn’t want to play with the same vocabulary of cowboys and Indians and all that sort of stuff when there’s so much more going on. I wanted to imagine something that felt mythic in scope but also very human — about relationships between sisters, one’s place in society, and this whole idea of the tragic mulatto that I touched on. So, I wanted to do a lot more and expand what it is to talk about the Old West.

  SP: That also kind of touches on another theme that I loved, which operates here in a way that feels very true but also a little heightened. This society has an absolutist understanding of who a person is based on how they look, related to class and privilege and race. Can you tell me more about this society, these races that you built, and why you design them like this?

  RR: So, I was trying to avoid races per se, so in this world are sort of two castes of people, two classes of people: the Fallen and the Elect. The Elect believe themselves descendants of angels, and the Fallen are descendants of the rebellious angels, Lucifer and his ilk. And based on that divide, this society has built itself up. But each is dependent on each other in a certain way. The Elect cannot build their technologies and do all the things that they do without the Fallen, and the Fallen are in this position where they are sort of dependent on the Elect because that is the way their society has been built.

  And so Celeste, the main character, is someone who is, for lack of a better term, mixed race and struggling with that and where she fits in, what her obligations are, and to whom, within the larger society. So, I’m playing a little bit with the idea of mixed race, [with] me being mixed race and adopted. That really speaks to me. Also, this idea of code switching, and fluidity between cultures, and where you actually belong, and all of that stuff that goes into not fitting neatly into any categories in our society.

  SP: That is really interesting that as soon as these characters have a physical difference that marks them, I assume that it must be a racial difference. That’s an automatic, knee-jerk reaction for me.

  RR: Yeah, and that’s fair. When I say don’t have race in mind, race is a social construct. So, there’s nothing inherent about one race to the other. We all sort of as a society decide this is what determines this race, and this is what determines that race, but it’s all fake. We all just made it up, so I think that’s what I’m trying to touch on. So, clearly, there’s a parallel between the Elect and a white upper-class society, and the Fallen and Black or brown lower-class society. I mean, that’s an obvious one.

  Sometimes, we have to acknowledge when people are not [who] we want them to be and hopefully survive that.
  SP: Another theme I was interested in was this idea of these imaginary versions of people we love that we create in our heads. Can you tell me more about that and why it was so central?

  RR: I think sometimes we want to believe so badly in someone, and we want to see the good in someone so badly that we sort of blind ourselves to reality. And I think it’s very, very hard to admit when someone has lied to you or betrayed you, or is not the person that you thought they were. Because I think generally, we want to see the good in people, and that is not always the case. Sometimes, we have to acknowledge when people are not [who] we want them to be and hopefully survive that. And whether or not Celeste survives that is part of the question of the story. And also, at what cost? At some point, you have to choose to not see the truth, even though the truth is all around you. I read a review that was like, “Oh, I guessed the ending.” And I hope you did! Because I’ve given you all the clues!

  SP: That almost loops back around to the fact that, sure, race is a construct, but the physicality of characters comes with certain expectations, depending on where you’re looking at them from. It’s almost like a very individual version of that — that Celeste has never broken down her own expectations of the people around her.

  RR: Right. And I think a lot of times, Celeste is trying too hard. I think she’s trying to make up for the fact that she’s sort of light skinned. I’m not sure how else to say that. Because I did try to make a point that her sister is dark skinned, and the people around Celeste — she’s choosing to self-identify with the Fallen. Even though, if she’s honest with herself, she could easily fit in with the Elect. She was raised Elect, and she could pass. But she’s choosing to self-identify with the Fallen. And how does that keep her from being honest with herself? And is she trying too hard? Many of the others would be like, “Girl, you are trying too hard. Just be who you are, and stop trying to prove to us that you’re the most Fallen among us.”

  SP: What’s coming next for you?

  RR: So next, I am writing the final book in the trilogy in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy. It is very close to finished but not quite. So, I am excited to get that out. It’ll be called Mirrored Heavens, and it should be out, hopefully in late 2023 or early 2024. Also, Black Sun is being developed for TV by AMC, which I’m pretty excited about. I wrote the pilot. And I’m working with Angela Kang for The Walking Dead. She’s producing. So, hopefully you will see some of that on a small screen in the future!

  SP: What was that process like, adapting your own work for the screen? You’ve done TV writing before, right?

  RR: Yes, I’ve been in a couple of writers’ rooms for Marvel and for an FX sci-fi show. It was exciting. I have great partners. I think partners make all the difference, and Angela is a showrunner as well. So, it’s been great working with her and her team. It’s been awesome because, when you write a book, you sort of stop writing it. You never really finish it, and then at some point you just have to cut it off and be like, “I’m done.” Black Sun came out in 2020, so I have all kinds of new thoughts about it. And since then, I’ve written Fevered Star, and now I’m writing Mirrored Heavens. There are things that maybe I wish I could go back and tweak a little bit or spend a little more time here or there, and writing the pilot allows me to do that. It allows us to go back and fill in some of the gaps that were in Black Sun, because the thrust of the overall story just didn’t allow time for them. But certainly, a pilot does. In fact, you need it to fill out the contours of the character development.

• Locus - https://locusmag.com/2018/09/rebecca-roanhorse-from-legend-to-fantasy/

  Rebecca Roanhorse: From Legend to Fantasy
  September 17, 2018 Interviews
  Rebecca Roanhorse Locus Magazine Interview

  REBECCA ROANHORSE was born in 1971 in Conway AR and grew up in Fort Worth TX. She received a B.A. in Religious Studies from Yale University and an M.A. in Theology from Union Theological Seminary before going on to receive a J.D. from the Univer­sity of New Mexico School of Law, specializing in Federal Indian Law. Roanhorse is of Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo and African American descent, and writes “rez-based fantasy and indigenous futurisms.” She attended the VONA/Voices workshop in 2015.

  Debut story “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experi­ence™” won Hugo and Nebula Awards, was nominated for a Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and was a World Fan­tasy Award finalist. Her first novel Trail of Lightning (2018) began the four-book Sixth World series, with the second book, Storm of Locusts, coming in April 2019. Middle-grade novel Race to the Sky will appear in 2019, and an Anasazi-inspired epic fantasy trilogy is scheduled to begin with Between the Earth and the Sky in 2020. She is this year’s winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

  Roanhorse lives in Sante Fe NM with her husband, daughter, and pug.

  Excerpts from the interview:

  “I’m half Ohkay Owingeh and half black, and I have always had an outsider status. I’ve always been the person in the liminal spaces, in the in-between, and I have never quite fit in any particular mold. I’m good with that now – as an adult that’s fine – but as a child that’s a tough place to be. I will always write the outsiders. I will always be drawn to that. Even in ‘Welcome to Your Authentic Indian ExperienceTM‘, the main character is Native, but he’s not a very good one. He’s not a paragon of his culture – he’s just trying to get by and maybe make a buck and have a beer at the end of the day.

  “In short fiction you can do a lot more experimental things. ‘Welcome to Your Authentic Indian ExperienceTM‘ is written in second-person present, and there’s no way I could sustain that for a book. It works in that story because it’s a virtual reality story about appropriation, and one of the things I wanted it to do, be­sides just to be a good story and have an emotional bite, was to make the reader complicit in the appropriation. I picked second-person to put the reader in the protagonist’s shoes, and I picked present because appropriation is happening now, and I wanted to give the story a sense of urgency. The novel and short story forms serve different functions. I can do a better deep-dive of worldbuilding and character development in a novel, but the short story can be a lot more exploratory.

  “I can’t ever remember a time when I wasn’t reading. I was one of those kids who would hole up in the closet with my books and just read a lot. I read a lot of fantasy. I read the Dragonlance Chronicles – I was a little obsessed with Raistlin – and the Belgariad by Eddings of course. The first science fiction novel I remember is Dune, and that set me on my path.

  “Reading and writing go hand-in-hand in my mind. I won my first poetry contest in third grade and I was hooked. I grew up in Fort Worth TX, and being a black and Native kid in Fort Worth in the ’70s and ’80s was pretty limiting, and I needed the escape. I wrote a lot of SF because I imagined different worlds and different places, and created complex places to escape to. I wrote my first story in sev­enth grade, and it just grew from there. I’ve been writing all my life.

  “My mom was a high school English teacher, so she was very supportive – she would praise my work. It could be crap and she would still say she loved it. My dad was an economics professor, so they were both very well-read.

  “My dad has passed away, but I recently gave my mom Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders and Victor LaValle’s The Changeling, just to expand her horizons a bit. I think she had no idea what to do with those books. She read them, so I’m proud of her, but she was like, ‘Is this supposed to be real?’ I said, ‘Just go with it, Mom.’

  “I started to get serious about writ­ing in 2015, about the time I applied to VONA/Voices, a summer workshop run by the Voices of Our Nations Art Foundation. I was looking around for workshops, trying to take my writing to the next level, and I didn’t see anything that seemed welcoming. It can be intimidating, especially when you’re me. There was a workshop meant for writers of color, and I thought, ‘If I’m going to be in an environment where my work is being critiqued and I’m on the spot, I’d prefer to be around other people of color, who have probably had similar life experiences to mine.’

  “I’m a lawyer by trade – that’s my day job. Before I was writing, that job was sucking my soul dry. I’d also just had a child, who was still pretty small, and I was feeling lost as far as who I was. I needed to find something to bring me back to who Rebecca is, instead of all these roles I was playing – as care­giver, or breadwinner, or whatever. So I turned to writing again. Writing has always been my special place, my joy. As I got more into it, I found a writing group and a local critique group. The feedback was good, and the camarade­rie, and seeing other people that had published – it started to seem like be­ing a writer wasn’t that far out of reach, and that it could be done. So I just did it. Full-time writing is my dream. My first book just came out, so let’s see how it sells, and see if people enjoy it, and then I’ll go from there.

  “Growing up, I read all the fantasy you would expect, and yes, it was very white. In college I discovered the black literary world. I read a lot of Toni Mor­rison, Alice Walker, all those classics, and left fantasy behind for a while. I remember being in an airport, coming home during senior year in college or something, and picking up a Laurell K. Hamilton book. Vampires and were­wolves, fighting over the woman they love! I was like, ‘What? You can write and publish this?’ That was my entry into urban fantasy, and that brought me back into the fantasy fold. Urban fantasy was usually woman-centered, and though it was still mostly white, it was more accessible than farm boys go­ing on quests, and that got me excited about the genre again.

  “I wrote so many white boys when I was starting out. I would write epic fantasy quests, space pirates, sci-fi cops, and they all centered white men. I didn’t know I could center people who looked like me. I didn’t even realize I could center women until I came back into fantasy via urban fantasy. The programming is real.

  “Why Trail of Lightning? I was reading these urban fantasies with female protagonists who were half-Native, but they were written by white authors, and their Nativeness often just manifested as some superpower, usually nature-based – they could shapeshift into a coyote or call on some nature element or something, and I was like, ‘This Native repre­sentation is crap’ – no offense to those authors. It just didn’t feel like anything I knew from living on the reservation, or my experience of Nativeness. They didn’t even know their tribes. I wanted to write a story where the Native characters looked like the people I know, and function like the people I know. I didn’t want to base it in fairies or vampires or any other European mythology we see so much in fan­tasy. I wanted to base it in Navajo mythology. Why wouldn’t I? We have this rich tradition of stories and heroes and legends and gods and no one really knows, outside of Navajo circles, and that seemed like a shame.”

  Interview design by Stephen H. Segal. Photograph by Arley Sorg.
  Read the full review in the September 2018 issue of Locus.

Rebecca Roanhorse. Saga, $16.99 trade paper (320p) ISBN 978-1-5344-1353-5

Roanhorse's second Sixth World apocalyptic fantasy novel is less emotionally charged than its predecessor, Trail of Lightning, but dives deeply into the characters, introduces a great new one, and continues weaving Navajo beliefs overtly and subtly into the story. Maggie Hoskie, monsterslayer, learns that Kai, the powerful young medicine man she loves, may have been kidnapped by a cult leader with powers of his own. Maggie is forced to venture into the ravaged world beyond Dinetah, the Navajo's protected land, to save both Kai and Dinetah itself. There's plenty of tension, particularly with Maggie cut off from her homeland and trying hard to keep from killing anyone. She's joined by teen girl Ben, who displays a perfect balance of strength and vulnerability, and her effect on the otherwise distant Maggie is a high point of the book. The depiction of North America in ruins is a dark treat, including vivid scenes of women saving enslaved women and supernatural locust swarms descending. Readers who enjoyed Roanhorse's first book will eagerly blaze through her second. (Apr.)

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"Storm of Locusts." Publishers Weekly, vol. 266, no. 9, 4 Mar. 2019, pp. 63+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A578584207/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=71ea02ef. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023.

Roanhorse, Rebecca STORM OF LOCUSTS Saga/Simon & Schuster (Adult Fiction) $27.99 4, 23 ISBN: 978-1-5344-1353-5

Maggie Hoskie and her god-blasting clan powers are back in the second book of Roanhorse's post-apocalyptic Sixth World series; this time she's taking on The White Locust, a man with clan powers who wants to destroy the now-thriving dystopian Navajo Nation (or Dinétah), Maggie's home.

We already know that the Big Water has drowned most of America, and Dinétah is one of the last remaining strongholds. The magic of the Diné (Navajo) gods and the clan powers they bestow, and the powerful walls the medicine men constructed, are the only thing holding the chaos of the rest of the world back. What we don't know is that a man given the power to rain down locusts and create humanlike figures from them, a cult leader called The White Locust, wants to destroy Dinétah for rejecting him as a mixed blood. What we find out is that this man has Kai, Maggie's love, a medicine man she feels she has betrayed--and who betrayed her. Thus begins Maggie's journey to find Kai, to defeat the White Locust--and to face her fears of intimacy and betrayal, garnered from a tragic, violent past. Her journey takes her out of the safety of Dinétah, straight into the hands of people willing to do anything to survive, cultures built on ones that existed in the American Southwest but are now powerful, rich, and terrifying warrior-states. It also takes her to zoot suit-wearing trickster Gods. Roanhorse is the first Indigenous American to win a Nebula, a Hugo, and the Campbell award and is nominated for a second Nebula this year. She's a groundbreaking writer, weaving Diné language and culture throughout her work in innovative and deeply important ways while at the same time providing a purely joyous reading experience.

Roanhorse's latest is a killer.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Roanhorse, Rebecca: STORM OF LOCUSTS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2019, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A578090834/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=fe319965. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023.

Storm of Locusts.

By Rebecca Roanhorse.

Apr. 2019.320p. Saga, paper, $16.99 (9781534413535); e-book (9781534413542).

When Maggie Hoskie's most recent bounty hunt goes badly wrong, she finds herself acting as Auntie to a strong-willed 16-year-old, Ben, with clan powers and a thirst for revenge. Then the Goodacre twins show up at her door looking for help finding their youngest brother, Caleb, who's gone missing along with Kai, a man Maggie would do anything for. The Goodacres are convinced that Caleb is dead and that Kai was in on it, under the influence of a doomsday cult led by a mysterious figure calling himself the White Locust. But Maggie knows Kai would never hurt Caleb, even if his last words to her (via surveillance footage) were unsettling: "1 love you. Don't follow me." Expanding on the richly detailed world she built in Trail of Lightning (2018), Roanhorse deepens our appreciation for the postapocalyptic landscape while enriching our understanding of the indigenous customs and legends that have come alive within it. Maggie Hoskie is as complex a heroine as you could wish for, and everything about this installment sings. A must-read for anyone interested in own-voices or speculative fiction.--Diana Piatt

ONLINE ALERT! Looking for Andrew McCabe's The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump? You'll find llene Cooper's review on Booklist Online, where It was our Review of the Day on February 27.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 American Library Association
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Piatt, Diana. "Storm of Locusts." Booklist, vol. 115, no. 15, 1 Apr. 2019, p. 31. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A581731280/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=32fe2b5d. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023.

Race to the Sun Rebecca Roanhorse. Disney-Hyperion/Riordan, $16.99 (320p) ISBN 978-1-368-02466-2

In this fantasy inspired by Navajo legends, two siblings discover they're the latest incarnations of the famed Hero Twins, just in time to combat a devious monster who plans to unleash his brethren upon the world. In Albuquerque, N.M., 12-year-old Nizhoni Begay can detect monsters disguised as regular people. And no one heeds her warnings, even when one monster--her father's new boss, Mr. Charles, an oil executive at a company that "people are protesting for putting in that pipeline"--shows interest in her Navajo heritage. After Mr. Charles kidnaps her father, Nizhoni, along with her younger brother Marcus and her best friend Davery, journey across the American Southwest and into a spiritual realm to obtain the weapons needed to defeat Mr. Charles's army of monsters. But for Nizhoni to follow in her long-vanished mother's footsteps as a monster slayer, she must survive a grueling series of challenges. Roanhorse (the Sixth World series for adults), who is Ohkay Owingeh and African-American, draws on her husband's heritage to reimagine Navajo stories and characters, delivering a fast-paced, exciting adventure. While the antagonists could stand further development, Nizhoni's blend of snark, confidence, and humor proves as multifaceted as the satisfying tale's focus on friendship, family, and cultural legacy. Ages 8-12. Agent: Sara Megibow, KT Literary. (Jan.)

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 PWxyz, LLC
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"Race to the Sun." Publishers Weekly, vol. 266, no. 44, 4 Nov. 2019, p. 59. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A606234616/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=6c2db16d. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023.

Roanhorse, Rebecca RACE TO THE SUN Rick Riordan Presents/Disney (Children's Fiction) $16.99 1, 14 ISBN: 978-1-368-02466-2

A Diné teen teams up with her younger brother and her best friend to battle monsters threatening their world.

After seventh grader Nizhoni Begay senses a monster lurking in the stands during her basketball game, she tells her younger brother, Mac. When the monster kidnaps her father as part of a multilayered plot to lure her brother--the only one who knows her monster-spotting abilities--into servitude, kill her, and destroy the world, Nizhoni seeks help from her biracial best friend, Davery, whose mother is African American, his father, Diné. Aided by Mr. Yazzie, a stuffed horned-toad toy that can talk, and a cast of characters from Diné culture, the three kids embark on an adventurous trek to free Dad and stop the monsters. But even with powers inherited from monster-slaying ancestors, assistance from Holy People, and weapons fashioned from the Sun, Nizhoni will need to believe in herself while sacrificing what's most important if she hopes to succeed. Fans of Hugo and Nebula winner Roanhorse (Ohkay Owingeh) will appreciate her fast-paced prose, page-turning chapter endings, and, most of all, strong female protagonist. By reimagining a traditional story in a contemporary context, populating it with faceted Native characters, and centering it on and around the Navajo Nation, Roanhorse shows that Native stories are active and alive.

Native readers will see themselves as necessary heroes while readers of all walks will want to be their accomplices. (glossary of Navajo terms, author's note) (Fantasy. 8-12)

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Roanhorse, Rebecca: RACE TO THE SUN." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Nov. 2019, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A605549406/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=21f6c6bd. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023.

Race to the Sun

By Rebecca Roanhorse

Middle schoolers have a lot to deal with, from bullies to burgeoning hormones, on top of their homework. Throw in a supernatural ability to detect monsters, and you've got a real recipe for mayhem.

As though seventh grader Nizhoni Begay's strange reality couldn't get any weirder, her dad's new boss, Mr. Charles, has started to show unsettling interest in her and her brother, Mac--and in their family's Navajo heritage. After their father suddenly disappears, Mac and Nizhoni, along with her best friend, Davery, find themselves on the run. It will take all of their knowledge of Navajo legends, not to mention every ounce of their courage, to find Nizhoni's father and save their world from the ancient creatures Mr. Charles has unleashed.

Nebula and Hugo Award-winning author Rebecca Roanhorse (Trail of Lightning) adds to the increasingly diverse roster of Rick Riordan's eponymous imprint with Race to the Sun (Rick Riordan, $16.99, 9781368024662, ages 8 to 12). Native American myth and lore take center stage in this story, supported by action and adventure that will keep readers turning pages as they anxiously anticipate the outcome of Nizhoni's thrilling quest. It's populated with quirky characters reminiscent of Riordan's own stories, so every reader will find someone to connect with in this novel.

Through its incorporation of important aspects of Native American beliefs and culture, including protecting the natural world and honoring family, Race to the Sun adds vital and long-overdue positive representation of contemporary Native Americans to young readers' shelves.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 BookPage
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Lamb, Hannah. "Race to the Sun." BookPage, Jan. 2020, pp. 30+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A609585292/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=8f6e6be1. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023.

Race to the Sun

Rebecca Roanhorse

Disney Hyperion

www.DisneyBooks.com

9781368024662 $16.99

Written for middle grade readers, Race to the Sun tells of a seventh grader, Nizhoni Begay, who is able to detect monsters masquerading as ordinary people. Her latest insight: her dad's new boss, who is uncommonly interested in their family and Navajo heritage.

When her father vanishes after admonishing them to run, the siblings and their friend embark on a rescue mission which tests their heritage, special abilities, and friendships in a journey that faces more than monsters. As the story moves through family interactions and struggles to a rescue mission that seems impossible, it provides engrossing insights to readers interested in fantasy adventures with underlying social and family messages. The story is refreshingly original, unexpected, and hard to put down.

Penguin Putnam

c/o Penguin Young Readers Group

www.penguin.com

Two books for advanced elementary to middle grade readers offer fun stories that leisure readers will appreciate. Brian McCann's Wannabe Farms (9781524793005, $18.99) provides a fun visual collection of poems and animal adventures that pairs rhyme with fanciful discussions of animals who aspire to be more than just barnyard residents,. A whimsical, fun approach to comedy and fun will appeal to advanced elementary to early middle grades as it explores a world in which pigs try to live like humans, sheep desire to become barbers, and cows build their own car. Two-color drawings by Meghan Lands enhance the zany circumstances described by McCann. Sally Gardner's Mr. Tiger, Betsy, and the Blue Moon (9780593095164, $16.99) tells of a secret island, a little girl who meets a mysterious tiger, and a quest that involves them both. Nick Maland provides lovely drawings following blue text descriptions of their journey and evolving relationship in a fun read kids will find captivating.

Please Note: Illustration(s) are not available due to copyright restrictions.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 Midwest Book Review
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"Race to the Sun." Children's Bookwatch, June 2020, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A629320169/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=e1883bb6. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023.

Black Sun

Rebecca Roanhorse. Saga, $27.99 (464p) ISBN 978-1-5344-3767-8

The opening of Hugo- and Nebula Award-winner Roanhorse's Between Earth and Sky series draws inspiration from the indigenous cultures of North and Central America to deliver a razor-sharp examination of politics, generational trauma, and the path to redemption. Sun Priest Naranpa, the highest religious authority in the holy city of Tova, faces prejudice for her low birth despite her high rank, and her radical desire for her priests to be more accessible to Tova's people makes her an object of resenrment. Meanwhile, in the Obregi Mountains, a young boy named Serapio, raised to become the vessel of the god Grandfather Crow and take revenge for the Night of Knives, a massacre committed against his people, sets out to fulfill his destiny. Sea captain Xiala, a Treek who commands powerful sea-born magic, may be her own worst enemy of many, but she proves a welcome friend to Serapio as he voyages across the sea to avenge his people by ending the Sun Priest's reign. All three formidable characters are on a collision course that keeps the pages flying. Roanhorse (the Sixth World series) strikes a perfect balance between powerful world building and rich thematic explorarion as the protagonists struggle against their fates. Fantasy fans will be wowed. Agent: Sara Megibow. KT Literary. (Oct.)

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 PWxyz, LLC
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"Black Sun." Publishers Weekly, vol. 267, no. 30, 27 July 2020, p. 45. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A633466554/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=a45e5c4d. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023.

Roanhorse, Rebecca BLACK SUN Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster (Fiction None) $27.99 10, 13 ISBN: 978-1-5344-3767-8

A powerful priest, an outcast seafarer, and a man born to be the vessel of a god come together in the first of Roanhorse’s Between Earth and Sky trilogy.

The winter solstice is coming, and the elite members of the sacred Sky Made clans in the city of Tova are preparing for a great celebration, led by Naranpa, the newly appointed Sun Priest. But unrest is brewing in Carrion Crow, one of the clans. Years ago, a previous Sun Priest feared heresy among the people of Carrion Crow and ordered his mighty Watchers to attack them, a terrible act that stripped the clan of its power for generations. Now, a secretive group of cultists within Carrion Crow believe that their god is coming back to seek vengeance against the Sun Priest, but Naranpa’s enemies are much closer than any resurrected god. Meanwhile, a young sailor named Xiala has been outcast from her home and spends much of her time drowning her sorrows in alcohol in the city of Cuecola. Xiala is Teek, a heritage that brings with it some mysterious magical abilities and deep knowledge of seafaring but often attracts suspicion and fear. A strange nobleman hires Xiala to sail a ship from Cuecola to Tova. Her cargo? A single passenger, Serapio, a strange young man with an affinity for crows and a score to settle with the Sun Priest. Roanhorse’s fantasy world based on pre-Columbian cultures is rich, detailed, and expertly constructed. Between the political complications in Tova, Serapio’s struggle with a great destiny he never asked for, and Xiala’s discovery of abilities she never knew she had, the pages turn themselves. A beautifully crafted setting with complex character dynamics and layers of political intrigue? Perfection.

Mark your calendars, this is the next big thing.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Roanhorse, Rebecca: BLACK SUN." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Aug. 2020, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A630892437/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=a3a11da0. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023.

Black Sun. By Rebecca Roanhorse. Oct. 2020. 464p. Saga, $27.99 (9781534437678); e book (9781534437692).

In a world inspired by the culture, legends, and religions of Central and South America, Roanhorse (Storm of Locusts, 2019) weaves together the stories and destinies of a complex cast of characters. Serapio, scarred by his mother at the age of 12 as tribute to and vessel for the Crow God, voyages toward a legendary homeland. The ship's captain, Xiala, is one of the few who are not immediately afraid of Serapio, perhaps due to her own secrets and the magic her people control through song. Naranpa, oracle and Sunpriest in the land they approach, dreams of reforming a calcified institution and serving her people. All must deal with political intrigue and physical danger, and the upcoming chaos of the convergence, and what all of this means for the holy city of Tova and the centuries-long peace, is truly unpredictable. A must read for fans of N.K. Jemisin's epic fantasy and those who love George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series but want more diverse worlds.--Sarah Rice

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 American Library Association
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Rice, Sarah. "Black Sun." Booklist, vol. 117, no. 1-2, 1 Sept. 2020, p. 50. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A637433420/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=dcc0e2ee. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023.

Roanhorse, Rebecca. Fevered Star. Saga: S. & S. (Between Earth and Sky, Bk. 2). Apr. 2022. 416p. ISBN 9781534437739. $27.99. FANTASY

Picking up not long after the events in Black Sun, Tova is in ruins as clan leaders are dead or regrouping, and the sun itself is caught in eclipse. Prophecy insists upon more death and the rise of a new ruler--and the question of who drives the story. Serapio is drawn further out of humanity as his power grows, but not everyone within the Carrion Crow believes he is their future. Naranpa finds that her tests will continue as she discovers her path as a living avatar. The Golden Eagles continue to try to take power. The former sea captain Xiala tumbles through the changes like the waves of the sea, and she not only discovers a possible ally in Iktan, the former Priest of Knives, but finds that former enemies are gathering, including her Teek Matriarchs and others who also seek their own power. VERDICT Roanhorse's pre-Columbian-inspired Meridian is an amazingly complex world of magic, gods, and power plays. With exquisite details and characters on tremendous journeys, readers will be anticipating the next book as soon as they turn the last page.--Kristi Chadwick, Massachusetts Lib. Syst., Northampton

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Chadwick, Kristi. "Roanhorse, Rebecca. Fevered Star." Library Journal, vol. 146, no. 12, Dec. 2021, p. 71. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A686559341/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=a60a99ea. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023.

Roanhorse, Rebecca FEVERED STAR Saga/Simon & Schuster (Fiction None) $27.99 4, 19 ISBN: 978-1-5344-3773-9

The much-anticipated second book in Roanhorse's Between Earth and Sky series finds Serapio, Naranpa, and Xiala scrambling to find their footing after the explosive ending of Black Sun.

Having executed his dark purpose as the Crow God's human avatar and causing a mysterious eclipse that blocks the sun over the city of Tova, Serapio wakes up gravely injured. One of the giant crows of clan Carrion Crow rescued him, and Okoa, the captain of the Shield, is nursing him back to health. Serapio learns that he can't necessarily trust everyone from Carrion Crow and also that he will continue to be treated not as a human being but as a weapon for the clan. Xiala, meanwhile, is desperate to find Serapio but is lost in an unfamiliar city and eventually makes some uneasy alliances in order to protect him. And Naranpa, the dethroned Sun Priest, literally crawls out from a tomb and discovers that she and her opposite, Serapio, may not be such opposites after all. The second in a trilogy, this novel does suffer from some inevitable pitfalls. There's a lot of cleaning up after the end of Book 1 and more setting the stage for what's to come. But even a middle book from Roanhorse is still a book from Roanhorse, with all the excellent plot machinations and stellar prose that readers know to expect from her. She delves further into the political history of the Meridian and saves room for a few big twists to wind up the anticipation for Book 3.

An excellent second installment that adds even more detail and intrigue.

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"Roanhorse, Rebecca: FEVERED STAR." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Feb. 2022, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A693214658/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=2798d7d8. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023.

Rebecca Roanhorse. Saga, $22.99 (208p) ISBN 978-1-982166-18-2

Skillfully blending a noir atmosphere with western tropes and biblical mythology, bestseller Roanhorse (Fevered Star) crafts an immersive historical fantasy centered on ambition, privilege, and marginalization. In the Colorado town of Goetia, in an alternate old west with an almost steampunk vibe, miners extract the all-purpose element of divinity from the long-dead corpse of the angel Abaddon. The Elect, descendants of angels, exploit and look down upon the Fallen, descendants of demons, while the Virtue Orders enforce holy justice. The flawed and fascinating heroine, half-Fallen, halfElect Celeste Semyaza, ekes out a living as a card dealer in a local gambling den, where her sister, Mariel, headlines as a singer. When Mariel is arrested on suspicion of murdering a Virtue, Celeste will do everything in her power to prove her sister innocent--even accept the help of her former lover, the demon Abraxas. While investigating, Celeste stumbles across the town's dark secret, and must reconsider her own priorities and future plans, as well as her relationships with those she cares for. The mystery plot is solidly entertaining and suits the atmosphere, but it remains fairly basic--even predictable--to the end. Instead, the world building is the real star here; readers will hope for a chance to explore it further in future outings. Agent: Sara Megiboiv, KT Literary. (Nov.)

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 PWxyz, LLC
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"Tread of Angels." Publishers Weekly, vol. 269, no. 34, 15 Aug. 2022, p. 54. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A715674464/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=ba57d680. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023.

Tread of Angels. By Rebecca Roanhorse. Nov. 2022.208p. Saga, $22.99 (9781982166182); e-book (9781982166205).

Roanhorse's latest (after Fevered Star, 2022) imagines a Wild West world where everyone is a descendant of those who fought in the war between God's heavenly forces and Lucifer's fallen ones. Respectively known as the Elect and the Fallen, the former rule with a sense of inherited superiority while the latter bear horns, odd eyes, and occasionally stranger marks of their heritage. Celeste, card dealer and mixed-race daughter who resembles her Elect father, must navigate this dangerously segregated world to save the person she loves most. Her Fallen sister, Mariel, is accused of murder, and Celeste will stop at nothing, including making deals with her seductive ex-lover and demon lord Abraxas, to free her. The Old West aesthetic, the steampunk flair of the divinity-powered devices, and the many references to Christian theology and angelology grounding the fantastical elements create a fascinating world. Fans of urban fantasy and its resourceful but conflicted heroines will find the mining town of Goetia, its colorful denizens, and Celeste's investigations a refreshing combination.--Sarah Rice

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 American Library Association
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Rice, Sarah. "Tread of Angels." Booklist, vol. 119, no. 5-6, 1 Nov. 2022, p. 42. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A727772498/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=c8a396d3. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023.

Roanhorse, Rebecca TREAD OF ANGELS Saga/Simon & Schuster (Fiction None) $22.99 11, 15 ISBN: 978-1-982166-18-2

When her younger sister is arrested for murder, Celeste Semyaza must scramble to prove her innocence.

In the world of Roanhorse's new novel, society is divided between the Elect and the Fallen. The Fallen are descendants of the demons who followed Lucifer and rebelled against God. As a result, they are largely discriminated against and looked down upon as sinful and evil by the privileged Elect. In the mining town of Goetia, however, the Fallen and the Elect live together in order to mine a precious substance called divinity, which the Fallen are better equipped to handle than the Elect. Celeste, a card dealer, and her sister, Mariel, a singer, are half Fallen, half Elect. When Mariel is accused of murdering a Virtue, the most respected of all the Elect humans, Celeste is determined to find evidence of her innocence and set her free. Roanhorse, an expert worldbuilder, sets up her fantasy-Western universe and her take on angels and demons as fantasy tropes with impressive efficiency. And when her world is so quickly and easily understood by the reader, Roanhorse has plenty of space to engage with noir storytelling and the trope of the "tragic mulatto," as she mentions in her acknowledgements. Too much description of her excellent plot would risk spoiling an inventive and propulsive narrative, but readers accustomed to Roanhorse's richly detailed characters and beautifully executed action sequences will not be disappointed.

A superb dark fantasy.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Roanhorse, Rebecca: TREAD OF ANGELS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Sept. 2022, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A717107272/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=cfcf80dc. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023.

"Storm of Locusts." Publishers Weekly, vol. 266, no. 9, 4 Mar. 2019, pp. 63+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A578584207/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=71ea02ef. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023. "Roanhorse, Rebecca: STORM OF LOCUSTS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2019, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A578090834/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=fe319965. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023. Piatt, Diana. "Storm of Locusts." Booklist, vol. 115, no. 15, 1 Apr. 2019, p. 31. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A581731280/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=32fe2b5d. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023. "Race to the Sun." Publishers Weekly, vol. 266, no. 44, 4 Nov. 2019, p. 59. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A606234616/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=6c2db16d. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023. "Roanhorse, Rebecca: RACE TO THE SUN." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Nov. 2019, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A605549406/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=21f6c6bd. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023. Lamb, Hannah. "Race to the Sun." BookPage, Jan. 2020, pp. 30+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A609585292/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=8f6e6be1. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023. "Race to the Sun." Children's Bookwatch, June 2020, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A629320169/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=e1883bb6. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023. "Black Sun." Publishers Weekly, vol. 267, no. 30, 27 July 2020, p. 45. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A633466554/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=a45e5c4d. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023. "Roanhorse, Rebecca: BLACK SUN." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Aug. 2020, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A630892437/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=a3a11da0. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023. Rice, Sarah. "Black Sun." Booklist, vol. 117, no. 1-2, 1 Sept. 2020, p. 50. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A637433420/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=dcc0e2ee. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023. Chadwick, Kristi. "Roanhorse, Rebecca. Fevered Star." Library Journal, vol. 146, no. 12, Dec. 2021, p. 71. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A686559341/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=a60a99ea. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023. "Roanhorse, Rebecca: FEVERED STAR." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Feb. 2022, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A693214658/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=2798d7d8. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023. "Tread of Angels." Publishers Weekly, vol. 269, no. 34, 15 Aug. 2022, p. 54. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A715674464/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=ba57d680. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023. Rice, Sarah. "Tread of Angels." Booklist, vol. 119, no. 5-6, 1 Nov. 2022, p. 42. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A727772498/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=c8a396d3. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023. "Roanhorse, Rebecca: TREAD OF ANGELS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Sept. 2022, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A717107272/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=cfcf80dc. Accessed 12 Jan. 2023.

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