Rachel Swirsky

Rachel Swirsky is an American literary, speculative fiction and fantasy writer, poet, and editor living in California. She was the founding editor of the PodCastle podcast and served as editor from 2008 to 2010. She is vice president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. She was born in California. A graduate of the University of California Santa Cruz and the Iowa Writers Workshop, Swirsky taught undergraduate science fiction and fantasy writing while a teaching assistant at The University of Iowa. In 2005, she attended the Clarion West writers workshop. In addition to her fiction, Swirsky writes critical essays, reviews, and other non-fiction. She has been published in such literary publications as PANK, the Konundrum Engine Literary Review, and the New Haven Review. Her speculative fiction work has appeared in numerous markets including Tor.com, Subterranean Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Fantasy Magazine, Interzone, Realms of Fantasy, and Weird Tales, and collected in a variety of year's best anthologies, including Gardner Dozois's The Year's Best Science Fiction, Rich Horton's The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, Jonathan Strahan's Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, and Jeff & Ann VanderMeer's Best American Fantasy. Her novella The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen's Window won the 2010 Nebula Award. and was also a nominee for a 2011 Hugo Award and for the 2011 World Fantasy Award. Additionally, Swirsky's If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love, won the 2013 Nebula Award for best short story. (Wikipedia)