Wiswell, John
Entry updated 23 June 2025. Tagged: Author.
(1981- ) US author of sf and fantasy who began to publish work of genre interest with "Alligators by Twitter" in Flash Fiction Online for April 2010. He has since published over thirty short stories in numerous venues, including The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Lightspeed, and Uncanny Magazine. His "Open House on Haunted Hill" (June 2020 Diabolical Plots) won the 2021 Locus Award and Nebula for best short story. It follows a sentient house, which for a humorous twist welcomes its prospective buyers. [For Haunted Dwellings see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below.] "That Story Isn't the Story" (November/December 2021 Uncanny Magazine) won a Locus Award as best novelette.
Wiswell has a neuromuscular disorder and explores the travails of characters with unusual bodies in such stories as "Tank!" (June 2018 Diabolical Plots) and "The Tentacle and You" (February 2019 Nature). His debut novel, Someone You Can Build a Nest In (2024), narrated by its Shapeshifting Monster protagonist, fuses Horror, fantasy, and sf. As in "Open House on Haunted Hill", its protagonist is one usually presented as monstrous, but in a sympathetic light: a female "wyrm" whose protean nature is explored in terms of Biology rather than magic. Wyrms have no skeleton but can incorporate old bones and other rigid structures, including metal, to help them pass as human; they have a need for regular hibernation; they are widely known to be vulnerable to fire and a certain Poison. The viewpoint character's increasing affection for a human woman (from an alarmingly dysfunctional family) looks set to clash with the biological urge to use said human as a receptacle for her eggs, as suggested by the title. In the event this dilemma is not so much resolved as sidestepped by the discovery of an older, more malevolent wyrm who is well entrenched in human society and whose unpleasant plans must be thwarted. Someone You Can Build a Nest In won a Nebula award as best novel and a Locus Award as best debut novel. [JM/DRL]
John Wiswell
born New York, USA: 4 September 1981
works
- Someone You Can Build a Nest In (New York: DAW Books, 2024) [hb/J M Fenner]
collections and stories
- D.I.Y (New York: Tor.com, 2022) [story: ebook: na/J Yang]
- The Three O'Clock Dragon (New York: Tor.com, 2023) [story: ebook: na/J Yang]
links
- John Wiswell
- Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- The Encyclopedia of Fantasy: Haunted Dwellings
- Picture Gallery
previous versions of this entry