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Marshall, Helen

Entry updated 11 March 2024. Tagged: Author.

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(1983-    ) Canadian academic and author, in UK from 2014, more recently in Australia; partner of Vince Haig (who writes as Malcolm Devlin) since 2015. She began to publish poetry around 2004, and published her first work of genre interest with "Skin" in Future Lovecraft (anth 2011) edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R Stiles. Most of her work – much of which has been assembled as Hair Side, Flesh Side (coll 2012) and Gifts for the One Who Comes After (coll 2014), which won the 2015 World Fantasy Award for best collection – has been variously designated as weird fiction, horror and/or fantasy, and fits as a whole within any description of twenty-first century Fantastika that focuses on a vigorous jostling of genres. Much of her short work can be understood as consciously and learnedly mythopoeic, and is set in worlds where instantiations of the past are not only haunting but adherent.

Marshall is of specific sf interest for her first novel, The Migration (2019), set in a Near Future world deep into the devastation of Climate Change, Ecological degradation and Pollution. The premise of the tale is that a plague-like disease – a Pandemic not dissimilar to the Black Plague that wiped out perhaps 200,000,000 humans in the fourteenth century CE – may generate Mutations and Homo sapiens may survive, though significantly changed. The telling of the tale is humane, but unrelentingly focused.

New Worlds, New Stories; Or, Can Science Fiction Really Save the World? (2023), an extended essay, argues that sf may best be understood in terms of its power to recognize the world; Prediction is of less interest. [JC]

Helen Marshall

born Sarnia, Ontario: 7 September 1983

works

  • The Migration (Toronto, Ontario: Random House Canada, 2019) [pb/]

collections and stories

  • Skeleton Leaves: A Collection (Toronto, Ontario: Kelp Queen Press, 2011) [poetry and nonfiction: coll: chap: pb/Chris Roberts]
  • Hair Side, Flesh Side (Toronto, Ontario: ChiZine Publications, 2012) [coll: pb/Erik Mohr]
  • The Hanging Game (New York: Tor.com, 2013) [story: ebook: first appeared 13 March 2013 Tor.com: na/Chris Buzelli]
  • The Sea Lives of Monsters (Toronto, Ontario: Kelp Queen Press, 2013) [poetry and nonfiction: coll: chap: pb/Chris Roberts]
  • Gifts for the One Who Comes After (Toronto, Ontario: ChiZine Publications, 2014) [coll: pb/Erik Mohr]
  • A Texture Like Velvet (Toronto, Ontario: ChiZine Publications, 2015) [story: ebook: first appeared in Hair Side, Flesh Side (coll 2012) above: na/]
  • Velvet (Toronto, Ontario: ChiZine Publications, 2015) [story: ebook: first appeared in Hair Side, Flesh Side (coll 2012) above: na/]
  • Dead White Men (Toronto, Ontario: ChiZine Publications, 2015) [story: ebook: first appeared in Hair Side, Flesh Side (coll 2012) above: na/]
  • Eternal Things (Toronto, Ontario: ChiZine Publications, 2015) [story: ebook: first appeared in Hair Side, Flesh Side (coll 2012) above: na/]
  • Holding Pattern (Toronto, Ontario: ChiZine Publications, 2015) [story: ebook: first appeared in Hair Side, Flesh Side (coll 2012) above: na/]
  • In the High Places of the World (Toronto, Ontario: ChiZine Publications, 2015) [story: ebook: first appeared in Hair Side, Flesh Side (coll 2012) above: na/]
  • Lines of Affection (Toronto, Ontario: ChiZine Publications, 2015) [story: ebook: first appeared in Hair Side, Flesh Side (coll 2012) above: na/]
  • No Ghosts in London (Toronto, Ontario: ChiZine Publications, 2015) [story: ebook: first appeared in Hair Side, Flesh Side (coll 2012) above: na/]
  • Pieces of Broken Things (Toronto, Ontario: ChiZine Publications, 2015) [story: ebook: first appeared in Hair Side, Flesh Side (coll 2012) above: na/]
  • The Art of Dying (Toronto, Ontario: ChiZine Publications, 2015) [story: ebook: first appeared in Hair Side, Flesh Side (coll 2012) above: na/]
  • The Book of Judgement (Toronto, Ontario: ChiZine Publications, 2015) [story: ebook: first appeared in Hair Side, Flesh Side (coll 2012) above: na/]
  • The Mouth, Open (Toronto, Ontario: ChiZine Publications, 2015) [story: ebook: first appeared in Hair Side, Flesh Side (coll 2012) above: na/]
  • The Old and the New (Toronto, Ontario: ChiZine Publications, 2015) [story: ebook: first appeared in Hair Side, Flesh Side (coll 2012) above: na/]
  • This Feeling of Flying (Toronto, Ontario: ChiZine Publications, 2015) [story: ebook: first appeared in Hair Side, Flesh Side (coll 2012) above: na/]

nonfiction

works as editor

links

previous versions of this entry



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