How do we make locations come alive in our speculative worlds? What techniques for writing environs, cities or places have you found useful in your own writing? What settings of speculative works come alive and feel like a character in and of itself? Join authors D.A. Xiaolin Spires, Risa Wolf, Brian Hugenbruch and Amelia Buzzard as they discuss how to make a place shine.
D.A. Xiaolin Spires writes from the snowy Finger Lakes, but has stepped into portals and reappeared in sites such as NJ, Manhattan, Chicago, Hawaiʻi, various parts of Asia and elsewhere, with her keyboard appendage attached. She has a Ph.D. in socio-cultural anthropology from Cornell University, has conducted National Science Foundation-funded research and instructed youth and college students writing. She writes speculative fiction, non-fiction and poetry, teaches martial arts and languages, crafts fantastical paintings and ceramics, draws comics and relishes gastronomic adventures. Her multifaceted writing reflects her interest in the cosmos, sentience, food systems, ecology, technology and society. Her 100+ short stories have been published in Clarkesworld, Uncanny, Nature Journal, Vice Magazine, MIT Press and chosen for Year’s Best anthologies. Select stories can be read in Japanese, Estonian, Spanish, German, Vietnamese and French translation. Her 75+ poems appear in magazines such as Strange Horizons, Analog and Star*Line—and she served as guest editor for the Aliens issue of Eye to the Telescope. Her poetry has been nominated for the Dwarf Star, Rhysling, Best of the Net and Pushcart Awards. Wintry ecologies of residences past and present inspire her first contact sci-fi novella ELLIPSES from Infinivox. She can be found on Patreon @daxiaolinspires, Facebook @daxspires, Instagram/Threads @spireswriter and Bluesky @spires.bsky.social.
Amelia Buzzard is an emerging writer whose fiction has recently appeared in Magazine Non Grata and Pennyworth Publishing's New Adventures anthology. She is working on a sci-fi novel loosely based on Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid about a tech bro and a space goddess. Alongside her scribbling, she has taught German using puppets in rural Montana, watered greenhouses, and birthed two children.
Brian Hugenbruch is the author of more than ninety speculative fiction stories and poems. His fiction has most recently appeared in Analog, Hell Itself, and Abyss & Apex; his 2021 story, Foster-Child of Silence and Slow Time, was a WSFA Best Short Fiction Finalist. His poetry has been nominated for the Rhyslings, Pushcart Prize, and Best of the Net; and his chapbook, WHILE CHANGING LANES, is available from Bottlecap Press. He enjoys fishing (but only in video games); Scotch (but only in real life); and he spends his days trying to explain quantum cryptography to other nerds. No, he's not certain how to say his last name either.
Risa Wolf s a multi-gendered water elemental disguised as an ink-stained lycanthrope. (Don't tell their spouse or dogs; the disguise is working.) They publish speculative short stories in online magazines like Clarkesworld and Diabolical Plots, and they used to imagine houses for book-ghosts for a living. When not writing, they enjoy hiking, birdwatching, and staring at waterfalls.