Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ

This week, Penguin Classics . I was fortunate enough to write the foreword to the book. I’ve been a reader of Ligotti since that first collection–we have a first edition in the house. I urge everyone to pick up this new edition and seek out Ligotti’s other fiction as well.

The Wall Street Journal r on Ligotti that’s in general great, with a few caveats. They interviewed me for the piece and used a couple of quotes. But I thought it would be of use to post the entirety of my replies below.

Where the article falls down aĚýtadĚýis in unintentionally reinforcingĚýcertain ideas about Ligotti–for example, by using the part of my quote about how he influenced me that excludes the line “Ligotti has been very generous behind the scenes to new writers.â€� In context, saying he wrote to me in all caps is humorous. Out of context, a bit ominous. But the real hootĚýhere is in S.T. Joshi’s ridiculous admonition that you can’t read Ligotti without reading Poe and Lovecraft. My wife Ann and I both chuckled rather uproariously at that one. No Poe or Lovecraft is required to read Ligotti, any more than you need to read any of King’s influences to enjoy his fiction. Nor, as another individual quotedĚýseems to think, is Ligotti difficult and for a cult audience. You might as well say this about Kafka.

OneĚýproblem for writers like Ligotti lies in the reinforcing of “yes, butsâ€� perpetrated by people who say they love his work…but in what they say wind up discouraging others from picking it up. It’s important to remember this when thinking about how we talk about what we enjoy. I never presume that I somehow am a more rarefied reader than the people I recommend books to.

What we need to remember is that writers like Cormac McCarthy were read by small audiences for years before reaching a wider audience. That Roberto Bolano was not a sure bet to become such an amazing success. That writers do not remain encased in the amber of a selective audience’s regard, given a chance with fresh eyes and the seriousness of an edition like this new one for Ligotti from Penguin Classics. So when you see this new Ligotti edition in the bookstore, check it out. I think you’ll like it.

Here’re my complete answers for the WSJ article.

How would you gauge Ligotti’s influence on horror writers and the genre in general?

He belongs right up there with Poe and Kafka. The best writer of weird fiction in the past half century. And the reason he belongs there isLigotti’s both visceral and intellectual, formally experimental and able to tell a traditional horror story with equal ease. He’s also modernized the weird tale, from his early work on. The later workplace stories complete that process. The other thing he brings is a very dark sense of humor and a sense of the absurdity of the world—and a critique of that world that serves as subtext. All of these elements in harmony—symbiosis and contamination—equal genius

What kind of influence has Ligotti’s work had on you?

I read his work in a continuum that includes Kafka, Poe, Angela Carter, Bruno Schulz, Rikki Durcornet, and the great Caitlin R. Kiernan, but also absurdists and realists and flat-out surrealists. I appreciate that Ligotti stories can be revisited and reveal new dimensions. I try to achieve that in my own work. The mingling of horror and humor is also something in Ligotti’s fiction that I’ve studied quite a lot.

Ligotti has been very generous behind the scenes to new writers. I sent my first major work, a novella entitled “Dradin, in Love,â€� to Ligotti back in the late 1990s and he offered notes on that story and others from my first book from a major publisher, City of Saints & Madmen.Ěý At the time he used a word processing system that put his missives in all-caps, so it was a little bit like getting a letter from some kind of remote deity, but that certainly wasn’t his intent.

Can Ligotti’s work find a broader audience, such as with people who tend to read more pop horror such as Stephen King?

Ligotti tells a damn fine tale and a creepy one at that. You can find traditional chills to enjoy in his work or you can find more esoteric delights. I think his mastery of a sense of unease in the modern world, a sense of things not being quite what they’re portrayed to be, isn’t just relevant to our times but also very relatable. But he’s one of those writers who finds a broader audience because he changes your brain when you read him—like Roberto Bolano. I’d put him in that camp too—the Bolano of 2666. That’s a rare feat these days.

What is/will be Ligotti’s legacy?

He will go down in literary history as the greatest weird fiction writer of his generation and with any luck he’ll, like Kafka or more recently Angela Carter, be revered in a more general way by anyone who loves first-class literature.

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The lovely and amazing 4th Estate trade paperback covers (UK editions)–now available.

No, I’m not back on the internet. I’m pretty much off the internet until October, but through the magic of scheduling posts in advance, I can tell you: go forth and acquire the new UK trade paperbacks of the Southern Reach trilogy. They’re beautiful.

I’m also able to come to you from the past to spill some Area X secrets. I’ve followed the discussions at Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ and elsewhere about Area X and what happens in the novels. I’m really humbled and flattered readers are willing to spend the time analyzing the books in such an in-depth way. I’ve been blessed with readers who are willing to accept ambiguity and recognize that this particular trilogy was never going to be about easy answers. But those readers have also gleaned a fair number of the clues and hit upon those answers the series does provide.

In support of that, I thought I’d let slip some little bits of information. This infoĚýmay not come as a surprise to some, but it does qualify as SPOILER, so I’ll put a big image of Area X here between you and it. Scroll down if you wish.

Regarding speculation about the plant/flower: Think of the plant and the bloom as markers on a map. A kind of planting of a flag. But in this case one that draws attention or influence to it. It doesn’t bode well that Control finds a dead one in his desk drawer�

Regarding the animal transformations: Area X doesn’t feel threatened and doesn’t encounter “abnormalities.�

Regarding doppelgangers: Something is wrong or some threat is identified, and thus the “spy� is sent back as counter-spy. To put it as simply as possible.

Complicating matters: Environmental factors and other Area X imperatives can interfere with these definitions or explanations having through-line clarity. Because of this, it seemed unlikelyĚýthe Southern Reach would ever have enough data to figure it out.

As for the use of hypnosis in the novels…there are a few hints that Lowry came back from the first expedition with special knowledge used to enhance conditioning and hypnotic effect beyond what is possible in the here-and-now. I do not think hypnosis in the real world works the way it does forĚýSouthern Reach operatives. (I *do* think a lot of us are brain-washed by ideology and counter-factual information, however…and that’s a form of hypnotism if you think about it.)

As for [redacted], the truth is more astonishing than you might think. It’s actually [redacted], who was [redacted] in the [redacted] because of [redacted].

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(Shared Worlds 2015 poster and student writing book cover. Art by Jeremy Zerfoss.)

For eight years I’ve been a part of in Spartanburg, South Carolina. I currently serve asĚýco-director of the camp, with founder Jeremy L.C. Jones, with my main focus running the creative writing track, publishingĚýthe Shared Worlds book, and bringing in five or six guest writers each year. My wife Ann VanderMeer serves as the editor-in-residence, overseeing things like the critiques and student meetings with guest writers. This year our week one guest writer was Catherynne M. Valente, who gave a marvelous reading that got the students in the right mood to start writing. In week two, we had Nathan Ballingrud, Monica Byrne, Tobias Buckell, and Ekaterina Sedia–all doing amazing work with the students.

(Week two guest writers: Monica Byrne, Nathan Ballingrud, Tobias Buckell, and Ekaterina Sedia–with editor-in-residence, Ann VanderMeer. Hub City Bookshop.)

Every year, it seems like a daunting task, and our eighth year no less so, with over 60 students, from as far away as the UK–and the mission to help the students create whole worlds in groups the first week and then write stories set in those worlds the second week.ĚýAs you might expect, this requires a lot of amazing staff in addition to the guest writers–classroom instructors, guest lecturers, residential assistants, administrative and managerial assistants, and more. We’re also fortunate to have Tim Schmitz as the director of summer programs at Wofford, coordinating all of that, and assistant director Will Hindmarch overseeing the world-building track.

The culmination of all of this effort–fraught with timing issues–is that in the space of about 48 hours at the second week, the students complete their stories, put the finishing touches on their worlds, receive a critique from a guest writer, meet with the guest writer to discuss their story (and writing in general), and then present their worlds via video to each other and to their parents. During that stretch, they also receive the reward of a lot of free books donated by publishers along with other perks. The alien baby, which has been around the world, serves as their mascot, and staff commit to doing silly things as rewards for meeting deadlines. This year, Ann dyed her hair purple and wore her sushi pajamas when the students turned their stories in on time…while I fulfilled a promise I made to “eat my hat� if I turned in the 2014 SW book late and ate a cake that looked like a hat–without aid of utensils or my hands.

The Shared Worldsâ€� 2015Ěýstudent group was amazingly energized and creative for the entire two-week stretch, without let-up–just a great group of students. We also had a lot of TAs and RAs who were former students, and one former student, Jackie Gitlin, who served as a classroom instructor. It’s nice to see that institutional knowledge come back in the service of the camp.ĚýTA Aimee Hyndman even has a novel coming out that’s based on a story she wrote while a student at Shared Worlds.

(Students in a Shared Worlds classroom, taking a break to look at their stories from a different perspective. Photo by Jackie Gitlin.)

The broader goal with Shared Words is to provide a place where creative types can use their imagination and can engage in imaginative play in a structured environment that also includes art and sometimes gaming. Yes, the creative writing component is important–and for many students having a professional consult with an award-winning writer is a huge plus at the camp. But we’re not as concerned with helping teach future writers as we are with allowing for a wider range of creativity. In the camp, students have to work in groups and negotiate as they create their worlds. They have to analyze and synthesize information provided to them about politics, biology, philosophy, and more. They also have to work on their own, self-motivated, and meet deadlines. Really, they’re asked to do so many things, and it works because they love the fantastical, they love the freedom to run wild with their imaginations. The structure gives them that freedom.

(Students browse the free books at camp’s end, provided by publishers and private donors.)

It’s remarkable to me that we’ve made it to the eight-year mark, with the camp in good order as we head into the ninth year–remarkable guests in 2016 include Nnedi Okorafor, Julia Elliott, Kelly Barnhill, Tobias Buckell, and Terra Elan McVoy. We’re also grateful for past support for some of our PR campaigns from such greats as Neil Gaiman and Ursula K. Le Guin.

So I guess it’s time to start planning for a ten-year reunion weekend, too. In the meantime, below findĚýsome more photos and videos from the camp this year. If you are a teen interested in this kind of a camp, you’ll be able to register for 2016 soon. If you’re a parent of such a teenager, feel free to email Shared Worlds with any questions.

(More student joy over free books.)

(It’s a stand-off, as students try to stop assistant director Will Hindmarch from leaving camp�)

(Students present “rough drafts� of their worlds on the first Friday.)

Ěý

(First week reading with Cat Valente)

(Students in awe of Catherynne M. Valente’s reading.)

Ěý

(Catherynne M. Valente joins students in impromptu singing after the bookstore event. Songs from Les Miserables.)

Ěý

(Ekaterina Sedia talking about the importance of specific details in fiction.)

(The alien baby mascot gets a Playdoh makeover from the students�)

(The “hat� I had to eat.)

(The bribe cake for the students, so I could eat a fake hat�)

(First day photo.)

(Campers at registration–returnees greeting old friends and new.)

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I thought that by Niall Harrison at Strange Horizons of James Bradley’s Clade was pretty fascinating and extremely useful. I like that he acknowledges the potential disconnect between the reality we’re headed toward and the way this reality is depicted in fiction—and just how difficult it is for fiction writers to tackle the subject. I also understand his point about “hyperobjects� and agree to an extent, but my point about hyperobjects, as discussed in my “S� essay is really the same as Harrison’s: that any term we do use had better be complex enough to really help us make a paradigm shift in our thinking, because the very problems we face have occurred because we’re too simplistic in our thinking. That term could be “Fred� if Fred does the job, as far as I’m concerned. But, alas, Fred won’t do the job. We’re already running too much of our software using Fred.

The exasperating thing is that good writers are forever meant to be running data through bullshit machines that live in their heads—all while recognizing that writers are no more or less absurd or irrational than anyone else. If your bullshit machine dies, then you die on the page. But it is harder than ever for the bullshit machine to work in the current era–or to keep up with the ways in which the world outside of fiction has become fictionalized, fragmented, and layered with storytelling.

One need only read of efforts in the U.S. by state legislatures to ban the use of the term “global warming� or to ban reference to rising sea levels to understand this. One need only read the article “Come With Us If You Want To Live: Among the Apocalyptic Libertarians of Silicon Valley� by Sam Frank in the January 2015 issue of Harper’s Magazine to recognize another outbreak of the absurd and irrational, amongst those we want to believe are more logical and forward thinking. The article chronicles a commitment to cryogenics to things far more outlandish, often disguised as a “commitment to the new enlightenment.� You will also find odd statements like (and I paraphrase) “AI is so much more complicated than natural ecosystems.� Yet as far as I know, human beings have never created a complex natural ecosystem from scratch.

In this context, one possible solution to what fiction can do to portray the world—as it is and is becoming—is to avoid certain kinds of simplicity. One easy way to do this right now is to avoid what I call the Two-Percent Solution. In the Two-Percent Solution some plague or virus twenty to fifty years from now has reduced the world’s population down to almost nothingĚý(usually white, with some exceptions) and characters in a gutted human environment soldier on.Ěý And the reality of the situation, no matter how horrific, is still containable, manageable, easily understood, because the context is past real plagues that humankind has survived. These scenarios thus aren’t realistic but escapist, especially in that they tend to side-step the impact of global warming almost entirely. (No matter what you think of Atwood’s Oryx & Crake, and personally I think it’s great, that novel doesn’t side-step the issue.)

The other simplification going on is the expectation of some version of the hackneyed try-fail, try-fail, try-succeed structure that may make for effective storytelling, but also reflects the innate human arrogance of ultimate success in any situation.ĚýThere may come a time when telling a traditional type of story seems like a betrayal of reality, but right now, we tolerate this approach, even celebrate it at times, because we live in a transitional state, in the middle of this slow apocalypse. Neither cooked nor raw.

What may be required is that we redefine Dystopia and Utopia, perhaps not so much along the lines of “do we have things or do we not have things”—less about a middle-class idea of happiness—and more along the lines of what do we need to do to be less intrusive on the landscape and to be more adaptive to it. If that lessening is “dystopiaâ€� then maybe dystopia isn’t a bad place to be. Ěý(Or “Post-apoc”—if you think I’m confusing dystopia/post-apoc, they’ve been tossed in a blender across so many media outlets it hardly matters any more.)

Desolate is not depressing. Empty is not depressing. These are human constructs, values we apply to the diminishment of human beings or the thought of the diminishment of human beings. Any reasonable human being as the law defines reasonable may think this way, and that’s understandable. But what’s coming in terms of the slow apocalypse is not reasonable. It cannot be reasoned with. It doesn’t understand reason because it exists at a geologic level—at earth magnitude as the “dark ecology� philosopher Timothy Morton would say.

I state this, too, in the context that there’s a distinct possibility that there is no other exit strategy from our current situation than to find a way to halt global warming and ride out the effects of warming already in play and coming into play. And, to be honest, if I could be uploaded tomorrow into some AI version of the internet or become a nascent Mars colonist, I would reject both options as morally, ethically wrong. You cannot trash an entire planet, kill billions of organisms (often for no reason at all), and then simply take up elsewhere with no change in thinking or accountability.

No matter how remote that kind of choice might be, other sorts of related decisions may be forced upon us soon enough, in the realm of life, that render fiction a very secondary concern. It is therefore not giving in to despair to say that,Ěýwhile we’re able to, we should look the apocalypse in the eye or the snout. When we conflate dead with alive, we wind up in purgatory. We need to choose. Do we want dead. Do we want alive. If we do not choose we will live in dead town, thinking we are alive. It is always better to live in dead town knowing we are dead. At least then we’re not living a lie.

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Annihilation, the first novel , has won the Shirley Jackson Award.

This comes on the heels of Annihilation winning the Nebula Award as well as being nominated for the Locus Award and longlisted for the 25,000-pound Warwick Prize, and the entire trilogy being nominated for the World Fantasy Award and the Campbell Award, among other honors. The novels are also now being published in 25 countries, along, of course, with the plans in place for Alex Garland to adapt the series for Paramount Pictures /ĚýScott Rudin and Eli Bush. I feel extremely blessed and fortunate.

This time, Hugo Award-winner John Chu was kind enough to accept on my behalf, as we’d just gotten back from a festival in Sardinia. And this time I wanted to recognize some influencers on the Area X novels that I haven’t really talked about before. I think it’s clear these novels are personal to me, but they’re personal to me on so many levels, from work experience and my relationship with the wilderness here in Florida–and also, in terms of family. I’m a huge fan of Jackson’s work, so this award means a lot. Thanks, too, to all of myĚýeditors and publishersĚýand readersĚýworldwide.

Jeff

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Thank you for this honor—my thanks to the judges and my heartfelt appreciation to the other nominees for their great work. Thanks to my wonderful wife Ann—the characters and situations were immeasurably enriched by her contributions, as are most things. I must also thank my agent Sally Harding and my editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Sean McDonald. Both of you have been godsends and I am humbly grateful.

Sometimes you can forget the people in your past and present who have contributed to a worldview or a way of thinking about story. For the Southern Reach, then, I’d like to thank a few relatives and friends in science or science-related fields who are present in the series indirectly. And whose research in various ways supports a view of the mundane world as complex and deep and also, in its way, strange and uncanny.

–My father, Robert K. VanderMeer, an entomologist and research chemist whose groundbreaking work has led to him, among other things, using poison frog venom to control fire ants. His commitment to process, his work ethic, and his inventiveness have inspired me—as have my glimpses of the scientific community through him from an early age.

–My mother, Penelope Miller, whose biological illustration of sea turtles and other ocean life for a number of publications and naturalists made me want to become a marine biologist before I became a writer and whose painter’s eye she, thankfully, passed down to me.

–My stepmother Laurence Morel, whose breakthroughs on lupus have brought us closer to a cure and whose scientific work shares the same rigor and thoughtfulness as that of my father.

–My sister Elizabeth VanderMeer, whose environmental work (policy and ethics) and study of environmental planning in cities, both in Brazil and in England—combined with her other emphasisĚýonĚýprimate studies—has given me valuable insight into both the human and animal worlds.

–My close friend of almost 20 years, Eric Schaller, a molecular biologistĚýwhose testing and questioning extend beyond the lab he runs at Dartmouth and into interrogations of scientists and the lives they live in fiction like my novel Authority.

–And, finally, my stepdaughter Erin Kennedy, also in environmental studies, whose spirit is especially present in Acceptance and without which the novel would be much diminished. Her big heart and creative stick-to-itiveness I will always love.

If the Southern Reach is any way weird science fiction, or telling a true story, it is in part because of them. This shouldn’t be a surprise. Scientists can also be storytellers—they have big, bold imaginations and they enrich the world by better communicating the true oddness of its reality to us.ĚýThank you again for this award.

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Happy to say that Ekaterina Sedia and Tobias Buckell are returning to teach at Shared Worlds again this year. They’re both excellent instructors and the students will really enjoy them.

Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant unfortunately have unforeseen circumstances that will not allow them to attend as our guests. But we hope to reschedule them in the future.

Here’s more on Sedia and Buckell–and you can see our entire line-up online, including Catherynne M. Valente and Monica Byrne. All of our guests will be reading at Hub City Bookstore, schedule to be announced. Ann and I will also be there, of course.

Tobias S. Buckell is a New York Times Bestselling author born in the Caribbean. He grew up in Grenada and spent time in the British and US Virgin Islands, which influence much of his work. His novels and over 50 stories have been translated into 18 different languages. His work has been nominated for awards like the Hugo, Nebula, Prometheus, and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction Author. He currently lives in Bluffton, Ohio with his wife, twin daughters, and a pair of dogs.

Ekaterina Sedia resides in the Pinelands of New Jersey. Her critically-acclaimed and award-nominated novels, The Secret History of Moscow, The Alchemy of Stone, The House of Discarded Dreams, and Heart of Iron, were published by Prime Books. Her short stories appeared in Analog, Baen’s Universe, Subterranean, and Clarkesworld, as well as numerous anthologies, including Haunted Legends andMagic in the Mirrorstone. She is also the editor of the anthologies Paper Cities (World Fantasy Award winner),Running with the Pack, Bewere the Night, and Bloody Fabulous as well as The Mammoth Book of Gaslit Romanceand Wilful Impropriety.

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This summer I’m a guest at the Isle of Stories Festival in Sardinia, with an event July 3 (). I’m taking some writing with me–about done with a novella entitled “Blissâ€� and some short stories. But I’m also taking some books! And what books. Great stuff has come in the door recently. In addition to the Lispector Complete Stories (more info below), I’mĚýin the middle of reading some great books. Here are some first impressions.

ENRIQUE VILA-MATAS� A BRIEF HISTORY OF PORTABLE LITERATURE (New Directions)–I must admit I envy Vila-Matas. He’s sneaky, funny, gets to be somewhat experimental but is still accessible, and underneath it all he knows how to tell an entertaining story. This tale of a secret society of writers and artists could just be an in-joke, but it’s not.

JOSEPH ROTH’S THE HOTEL YEARS (New Directions)–Written between WWI and WII, these essays cover a variety of topics, serious and less serious. Some are observations in a moment, others deeply evocative of setting, and some touch on politics. I’m just getting into this one, but it’s already an interesting look at the past, in a sense. For some reason, I’m drawn to think of the movie The Grand Budapest Hotel (perhaps I should be chided for that) and then its source material while I’m reading.

MARIANNE FRITZ’S THE WEIGHT OF THINGS (Dorothy Project). Brian Evenson blurbed this one as starting out simply and gently and then wading “into resonant darkness.â€� I haven’t gotten to the darkness yet, but it is already striking me in good ways and I’m intrigued. ALTHOUGH NOTHING INTRIGUES ME MORE than backcover copy mentioning a 10,000-page book by FritzĚýtitled “Fortress”Ěýthat she created elaborate diagrams in full color for and which Dorothy Project claims is untranslatable. For shame for shame, Dorothy. I think you should do it. At the very least, I am going to have to track down a copy in the original Austrian.

JUSSI ADLER-OLSEN’s THE KEEPER OF LOST CAUSES (Plume)–Although this one starts out a bit shakily, this first Department Q novel soon finds its sea legs and becomes an engrossing mystery about an abducted woman and the eccentric and shaken detective who picks up the cold case and begins to pursue it. Lively, with some unexpected scenes on a human level as well as good twists. I’ve become addicted to this one and expect it to hold up to the end.

***

Earlier this summer, I also read the following books (in no particular order), all of which I recommend and some of which seem like essential reading.

EKA KURNIAWAN’s BEAUTY IS A WOUND (New Directions) –This Indonesian author’s English-language debut is scatological, scandalous, lively, beautiful and dark and messed up and fantastical. It’s like One Hundred Years of Solitude kicked into another gear, with almost a punk sensibility housed within gorgeous writing–and stories coiled within stories within stories. One of the most brilliant things about the novel is how Kurniawan never loses the thread even when spinning so many tales at once.

PHIL KLAY’s REDEPLOYMENT (Penguin)–I still feel that this is best paired with The Corpse Exhibition by Hassan Blasim but on a re-read I really liked quite a few of these stories. A couple fall flat, like one set on a college campus, but in general it was a recommended read, withĚýseveral that seemed brave and different to me.

JOANNA WALSH’s VERTIGO (Dorothy Project)–Stunning short, sharp shocks with insight that reminds me of the very personal work of Clarice Lispector. Forthcoming–don’t miss it. Packs a wallop into a very small space. I suspect this will get some year-end kudos.

AMELIA GRAY’s GUTSHOT (FSG Originals)–Odd, weird, disturbing stories about people in air ducts and casual conversations about, well, being gutshot. Modern fables with a visceral qualityĚýthat willĚýalter your brain.

ALEXANDRA HOROWITZ’s ON LOOKING (Scribner)–“Eleven walks through expert eyes� that should be required reading for writers as it’s a fascinating showcase of bias, emphasis, and how we miss things in our environment depending on our background.

NELL ZINK’s MISLAID (Ecco)–A hilarious but also serious comedy of errors and comedy of clashing cultures. Zink’s strengths from her first novel Wall Creeper are all on display in this tale of the South. Some good interrogation of dominant hierarchy and systems as well.

CLARICE LISPECTOR’s The Complete Stories (New Directions)–I don’t know how to describe this book except as a revelation and transcendent. It’s tough to write such personal stories that seem so universal. Lispector can take the smallest detail and make it fascinating and the center of a story, or she use a wider lens. This collection, to me, is as important to any writer as the collected stories of Vladimir Nabokov. Like the Nabokov, these stories are arranged in chronological order, so you can chart the writer’s progress over the years. (I’ll be reviewing this one shortly.)

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Finally, in other news, my Nebula Award for Annihilation came in the mail yesterday–and if you missed it, Annihilation is on the , which comes with a generous 25,000-pounds for the winner. Will my slim novel containing multitudes beat out some of those heavy hitters? We’ll see. The short list is announced in a few months.

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If you’ve followed me on twitter or facebook, you know I’ve had a fair number of gigs already this year, including a great one at the Arthur C. Clarke Center for the Human Imagination in San Diego last week. I also saved a toad at my sister-in-law’s wedding in San Antonio and that same night learned I’d Ěý(the )â€�this after recently , with the UK rights going to Fourth Estate and Canadian rights to HarperCollins Canada.ĚýToday, too, I learned the Southern Reach trilogy has a Portuguese publisher.

The biggest news, though, comes from Ann, who is stepping down from her day job to focus on her editing. Here’s the full announcement:

Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning editor Ann VanderMeer has stepped down from her IT job in Tallahassee, Florida, after thirty-plus years of juggling software management and fiction editing. VanderMeer will manage VanderMeer Creative, Inc., a business that handles Ann and Jeff VanderMeer’s speaking engagements, workshops, and book projects—while also spending more time on new editing projects. Ann VanderMeer is an acquiring editor for Tor.com and the editor or co-editor of over a dozen iconic anthologies of science fiction and fantasy—including The Big Book of Science Fiction, forthcoming from Vintage.

In support of VanderMeer Creative, we that gives you a list of all of upcoming events as well as an overview of the kinds of masterclasses, keynote speeches, and other events we do.

Not a bad start to the summer.ĚýBut now it begins to heat up. Ann and I are teaching at the Yale Writersâ€� Workshop and also at Shared Worlds. In addition, Ann accompanying me to a festival in Sardinia that looks like a lot of fun. I also just added Brown to the schedule, in December. Again, o.

I’ve also gotten a lot of writing done, despite distractions. BesidesĚýfinishing up Borne, I’ve completed “Bliss,â€� a novella about a rock band on what I can only call a trip downriver gone wrong, with elements of humor and Grand Guignol. It features a song about cockroaches. In addition, two related but self-contained novellas, “Driftâ€� and “Depthâ€� have begun to suggest themselves–tons of notebooks full of scene fragments–so this might wind up being a book.

On the plane to San Antonio, I wrote a science-fiction story set in the far future titled “Always Home� and I’m also making progress on “The Bird Watchers,� a Southern Reach novella featuring Old Jim and set a day before the Area X border came down. I’ve also committed to contributing an end-of-the-world story to Steve Erickson’s Black Clock magazine, and it’s possible my GWB 9/11 story will appear as a reprint on a major online venue soon. This in addition to writing a review for Slate.com and hopefully placing a revised version of the speech I gave at the Clarke Center as well as an essay on the CIA torture program.

It’s been an incredibly rich and productive year so far and I’m really happy to be writing a lot of fiction again, in a lot of different modes. But because of all of this, I’m not likely to be very active online the next few months. I’m hopefully there’ll be quite a few weeks I’m not online at all. But you can always check out this blog or for information on what’s going on.

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Saturday the Nebula Awards were announced, and my novel Annihilation won in the best novel category. You can find the entire –congratulations to all. I was in San Antonio for a family wedding and so couldn’t attend the ceremony. But my friend (and very talented writer) Usman Tanveer Malik accepted on my behalf and read the speech below Thanks for all of the congratulations on social media–I’m afraid I haven’t yet caught up on my thanks individually since it’s been overwhelming and I wasĚýaway from my computerĚýmuch of the weekend. Special thanks to my editor Sean McDonald at FSG.

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Thank you for this honor—my thanks to the voters and my heartfelt appreciation to the other nominees. Thanks to my wife Ann, love of my life and the only person I felt comfortable talking to about the Southern Reach trilogy while writing the rough drafts. The characters and situations were immeasurably enriched by her contributions—as are most things. A huge thank you to my agent Sally Harding and to Farrar, Straus and Giroux, as well as the many publishers world-wide who have been so enthusiastic about this series.

My novels have been nominated for many awards, but this is the first time I’ve won something. Which is funny because I wrote this novel while I had severe bronchitis and for a long time thought maybe I’d just written something aimless about four women wandering a wilderness landscape that happened to resemble the 14-mile trail I hike in North Florida. Also, given that the Southern Reach trilogy as a whole is an examination of the dysfunction and absurdity found in human-created systems, it’s astonishing to me that I was up for a Nebula rather than this year’s Hugo. For which fact I am eternally grateful, however.

If I have anything else left to say—beyond cursing the fates at having a scheduling conflict the year Nick Offerman hosted the Nebulas—it would just be this…It’s an encouraging sign that Liu Cixin’s novel made the ballot this year, and I hope it’s the start of a trend. I’m uncomfortably aware of the fact that for a lot of international writers US- and UK-based awards seem distant and inaccessible. The more that writers from outside ofĚý the Usual Places feel like their work is being seriously considered, the more we build a broader and more diverse community. The more we enrich our own work as well.

If I had to confess to influences on the Southern Reach trilogy, they would come from all over the world, and from amazing writers who published stunning novels and stories in English but who never even made a Nebula ballot. In accepting this award, I must also accept that I am only as good as the sum of that diverse reading. So I dedicate this win to those writers and to their legacy.

Thank you very much again for this honor.

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As the , I’ve sold my new novel Borne to Sean McDonald at Farrar, Straus and Giroux in a mid-six-figure deal that’s a landmark for me. Many thanks to my agent Sally Harding and everyone at the . In all things career-wise Sally has been a great boon. There’s also a very robust deal with The Fourth Estate for the UK rights, and it appears there will be more news soon about other rights sales involving Borne—on several fronts.

FSG did an amazing job with my Southern Reach trilogy and I am really glad to be back with them. They’ve been kind of a dream to work with, and even though I’ve been in this business 30 years I’m continually learning from what they do and how they do it. I also appreciated their tenacity and endurance in supporting the release of all three Southern Reach novels in one year. I’m very thankful they’re taking such good care of me, and I look forward to seeing what they’ll do with Borne.

Borne is the novel I’ve talked about for a couple of years now, the same one the New York Times last year. An excerpt from an early draft appeared in , edited by Steve Erickson. Erickson’s comments on the excerpt also were helpful in thinking about Borne as a whole. The novel’s about a woman in a ruined city of the future who is a scavenger of biotech, who finds a strange creature in the matted fur of a giant, psychotic bear named Mord that’s been terrorizing the city. The woman, Rachel, takes the creature home and slowly begins to bond with it, against her best instincts. Is Borne an animal or plant? A deity, or a cruel experiment?Ěý “Am I a person?â€� Borne asks Rachel, in extremis. “Yes, you are a person,â€� Rachel tells him. “But like a person, you can be a weapon, too.â€�

What follows is kind of like an intense Chekov play in the round, with monsters fighting in the backdrop. It’s meant to be harrowing, yet sometimes very funny. If ever I’ve written something that’s dark and dangerous but also hopeful and uplifting, it might just be Borne. A lot of it is taken from life and my family and there’s a lot that’s relevant to our current environmental situation. But more than anything, it’s kind of satisfying that Borne has a traditional three-act structure and lots of natural resolution at the end. The Southern Reach trilogy was always going to be more ambivalent about closure due to the nature of the novels. But Borne’s a different kind of creature�

An exact publication date for Borne hasn’t yet been set, but hopefully I’ll know by the fall or winter.

In other news, rumor has it that Natalie Portman may join the cast ofĚýthe movie version of my novel Annihilation, which is being written and directed by Ex Machina’s Alex Garland. More info on the Annihilation movie when I have it.

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