El-Mohtar, Amal
Entry updated 10 March 2025. Tagged: Author, Editor.
(1984- ) Canadian author, poet and editor who first began to publish work of genre interest with "The Crow's Caw" in Shimmer magazine for Summer 2006. She co-edited the online genre Poetry magazine Goblin Fruit (eight issues, 2008-2016), initially with Jessica P Wick and latterly with Caitlin Paxson. The Honey Month (coll 2010 chap) assembles honey-themed tales and verse, including one of her three Rhysling Award-winning poems.
El-Mohtar's short fantasy fiction has received wide attention, with "The Truth About Owls" (in Kaleidoscope, anth 2014, ed Alisa Krasnostein and Julia Rios) winning a Locus Award as best short story and "Seasons of Glass and Iron" (in The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales, anth 2016, ed Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe) winning a Hugo, Locus Award and Nebula as best short story. The River Has Roots (2025) is a fantasy focused on two sisters who live along a river connecting England with Arcadia (see Pastoral), singing in harmony until a Shapeshifting Mysterious Stranger stirs the waters.
Of direct sf interest is the novella-length This Is How You Lose the Time War (2019) with Max Gladstone, telling of an epistolary love affair between Posthuman women on opposite sides of a Changewar; this won a BSFA Award as best shorter fiction and a Nebula, Locus Award and Hugo as best novella. [DRL]
Amal El-Mohtar
born Ottawa, Ontario: 13 December 1984
works
- This Is How You Lose the Time War (New York: Simon and Schuster/Saga Press, 2019) with Max Gladstone [novella: hb/]
- The River Has Roots (New York: Tordotcom, 2025) [hb/]
collections and stories
- The Honey Month (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Papaveria Press, 2010) [coll: chap: pb/Oliver Hunter]
- Bookburners Season 2 Episode 6: Fire and Ice (place not given: Serial Box Publishing, 2016) [ebook: contribution to Shared World serial: Bookburners: na/]
links
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