Leading up to the publication of The Narrow Road Between Desires, Patrick Rothfuss has invited esteemed authors to join him in conversation about books, plus this, that, and the other thing.
Patrick talks world-building with New York Times bestselling fantasy authors Nnedi Okorafor and Tad Williams.
Preorder The Narrow Road Between Desires by Patrick Rothfuss. Signed copies available from Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million.
Preorder Shadow Speaker and Like Thunder by Nnedi Okorafor.
Preorder The Navigator’s Children from The Last King of Orden Ard by Tad Williams.
Nnedi Okorafor is an international award-winning New York Times–bestselling writer of science fiction and fantasy for adults, young adults, and children. The more specific terms for her works are africanfuturism and africanjujuism. Born in the United States to Nigerian immigrant parents, Nnedi is known for drawing from African cultures to create captivating stories with unforgettable characters and evocative settings. Nnedi’s works have received the World Fantasy, Nebula, Eisner, Lodestar, Nommo, and Hugo Awards, amongst others. Nnedi holds a PhD in Literature and two Master’s Degrees (Journalism and Literature), and lives in Phoenix, Arizona with her daughter Anyaugo. Learn more at nnedi.com.
Tad Williams is a California-based fantasy superstar. His genre-creating (and genre-busting) books have sold tens of millions worldwide. His works include the worlds of Otherland, Shadowmarch, and Osten Ard—including the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, and The Last King of Osten Ard series—as well as standalone novels Tailchaser’s Song and The War of the Flowers. His considerable output of epic fantasy, science fiction, urban fantasy, comics, and more have strongly influenced a generation of writers. Tad and his family live in the Santa Cruz mountains in a suitably strange and beautiful house.
Annalee Newitz is an American journalist, editor, and author of fiction and nonfiction. They are the recipient of a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship from MIT, and have written for Popular Science, The New Yorker, and the Washington Post. They founded the science fiction website io9 and served as Editor-in-Chief from 2008–2015, and then became Editor-in-Chief at Gizmodo and Tech Culture Editor at Ars Technica. Their book Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction was nominated for the LA Times Book Prize in science. Their first novel, Autonomous, won a Lambda award.
SL Huang is a Hugo-winning and Amazon-bestselling author who justifies an MIT degree by using it to write eccentric mathematical superhero fiction. Huang is the author of the Cas Russell novels from Tor Books, including Zero Sum Game, Null Set, and Critical Point, as well as the new fantasies Burning Roses and The Water Outlaws. In short fiction, Huang’s stories have appeared in Analog, F&SF, Nature, and more, including numerous best-of anthologies. Huang is also a Hollywood stunt performer and firearms expert, with credits including “Battlestar Galactica” and “Top Shot.” Find SL Huang online at www.slhuang.com or on Twitter as @sl_huang.
Piper C.J., author of the bisexual fantasy series The Night and Its Moon, is a photographer, hobby linguist, and french fry enthusiast. She has an M.A. in Folklore, and a B.A. in Broadcasting, which she used in her former life as a morning show weather girl, hockey podcaster, and in audio documentary work. Now when she isn’t playing with her dogs, Arrow and Applesauce, she’s making tiktoks, studying Vietnamese, or writing fantasy very, very quickly.
Most recently, Charlie Jane Anders wrote the young adult Unstoppable trilogy: Victories Greater Than Death, Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak, and Promises Stronger Than Darkness. She’s also the author of the short story collection Even Greater Mistakes, and Never Say You Can’t Survive (August 2021), a book about how to use creative writing to get through hard times. Her other books include The City in the Middle of the Night and All the Birds in the Sky. She’s won the Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, Lambda Literary, Crawford and Locus Awards. She co-created Escapade, a transgender superhero, for Marvel Comics and wrote her into the long-running New Mutants comic. And she’s currently the science fiction and fantasy book reviewer for the Washington Post. Her TED Talk, “Go Ahead, Dream About the Future” got 700,000 views in its first week. With Annalee Newitz, she co-hosts the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct.
Constantly creative, mega versatile, brilliantly inventive, and vastly experienced. In a professional acting career of more than three decades, there’s little Rupert Degas hasn’t done. From film and television acting roles, to the London stage, heaps of animation, and thousands of commercials, impressions, and voice overs, there’s plenty on the menu.
Rupert is also a prolific audiobook narrator, having notched up over 300 titles. Shortlisted for an ABIA in 2021, Rupert has also won a couple of Audies, 21 Earphones Awards, the Odyssey Award, and in 2022 was inducted as a ‘Golden Voice’ by Audiofile Magazine, an honour bestowed on just 40 audiobook narrators since 1992, including Miriam Margolyes, Jim Dale, and Derek Jacobi – great company indeed!
By day, Nick Podehl gives voice to a multitude of characters that heretofore only existed on the page. By night he balances time as husband, dad, and amateur armchair general. His castle stands proudly in The Mitten State where he hopes for snow each and every day.
Topic TBA!