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About

About

Biography

Amal El-Mohtar is an award-winning writer of fiction, poetry, and criticism. Her stories and poems have appeared in magazines including Tor.com, Fireside Fiction, Lightspeed, Uncanny, Strange Horizons, Apex, Stone Telling, and Mythic Delirium; anthologies including The Djinn Falls in Love and Other Stories (2017), The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales (2016), Kaleidoscope: Diverse YA Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories (2014), and The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities (2011); and in her own collection, The Honey Month (2010). She is co-author, with Max Gladstone, of the multiple award-winning This is How You Lose the Time War. Her articles and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, NPR Books and on Tor.com. She has been the New York Times's science fiction and fantasy columnist since February 2018, and she is represented by DongWon Song of HMLA.

Photo by Jessica P. Wick

Awards and Nominations

Amal has written stories about maps, bird women, book women, the Arabic alphabet, singing fish, Damascene dream-crafters, sentient diamond oceans and pockets that are bigger on the inside. Her story “Seasons of Glass and Iron” won the Nebula, Locus and Hugo awards in 2017, while her stories “The Green Book” and “Madeleine” were finalists for the Nebula Award in 2011 and 2015 respectively, and “The Truth About Owls” won the Locus Award in 2015.


Zeus and Amal
Photo by Seanan McGuire

Her poems “Song for an Ancient City,” “Peach-Creamed Honey,” and “Turning the Leaves” won the Rhysling award for Best Short Poem in 2009, 2011 and 2014 respectively, and in 2012 she received the Richard Jefferies Poetry Prize for “Phase Shifting.” In her (few) hours of rest she drinks tea, lifts weights, plays harp, and writes letters to her friends by hand.

Full list of awards and nominations

  • This is How You Lose the Time War, co-written with Max Gladstone, winner of the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Aurora and British Science Fiction and Fantasy awards; finalist for the Brooklyn Public Library Prize and the Ray Bradbury Award at the L.A. Times Book Prizes.
  • Recipient of the 2019 Sally Klages Memorial Fellowship.
  • "Seasons of Glass and Iron," winner of the Hugo, Nebula and Locus Awards for Best Short Story; finalist for the Sturgeon, Eugie Foster, Aurora and World Fantasy Awards.
  • "Pockets," finalist for the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story.
  • "Madeleine," finalist for the Nebula and Locus Awards for Best Short Story.
  • "The Truth About Owls," winner of the Locus Award for Best Short Story.
  • "The New Ways," finalist for the Aurora Award for Best English Poem/Song.
  • "Turning the Leaves," winner of the Rhysling Award for Best Short Poem.
  • "Turning the Leaves" and "Lost," finalists for the Aurora Award for Best English Poem/Song.
  • "Phase Shifting," First Place in the Richard Jefferies Society Poetry Competition.
  • "The Green Book," finalist for the Nebula Award for Best Short Story.
  • "Peach-Creamed Honey," winner of the Rhysling Award for Best Short Poem.
  • "Song for an Ancient City," winner of the Rhysling Award for Best Short Poem.
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