Skyhorse, Brando
Entry updated 25 August 2025. Tagged: Author.
(1973- ) US editor and author whose complex family past has been transformational significance in his work, as unpacked in a memoir, Take This Man (2014); he was born Brando Kelly Ulloa, of Mexican-American parentage, but raised in the belief that he was the son of Paul Skyhorse Johnson, a Native American activist. Issues of Identity – of specifically American identity, which is to say problems inherent to a nation inhabited entirely from migrant stock – permeate his first work of sf interest, My Name Is Iris (2023), which is set in a Near Future California at a time when those born in America but who cannot provide proof of parental citizenship are barred from the recently introduced "Band", an information-resource-cum-surveillance bracelet that has become mandatory. Anyone not so harnessed becomes a non-person. Skyhorse's densely fluent capturing of the sensorium of urban humanity in America has drawn comparisons with the work of Junot Díaz. [JC]
Brando Skyhorse
born Echo Park, California: 1973
works (highly selected)
- My Name Is Iris (New York: Simon and Schuster/Avid Reader Press, 2023) [hb/Richard Ljoenes]
links
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