Womack, Marian

Entry updated 13 January 2025. Tagged: Author.

(1975- ) Spanish translator, editor and author, married to James Womack, now mostly resident in the UK. She writes Gothic, weird and sf tales in both Spanish and English and teaches in the Oxford University writing programme. She has contributed to important Anthologies, such as The Best of Spanish Steampunk (anth 2015), which she co-edited by James Womack, and Aquelarre. Antología del cuento de terror español actual ["Coven. Anthology of Contemporary Spanish Horror Tales"] (anth 2010) edited by Antonio Rómar and Pablo Mazo. With her husband she ran the Small Presses Nevsky Prospects (2009-2016, dedicated to Russian authors) and Fábulas de Albión (2011-2017), and now Calque Press in the UK.

Her first work of genre interest was "Nox Una" in the aforementioned anthology Aquelarre; in her own translation, "Nox Una" was included in The Silent Garden: A Journal of Esoteric Fabulism (anth 2018) edited anonymously. Memoria de la nieve ["Memory of the Snow"] (2011) is a novella with very careful prose and a gothic atmosphere, where snow is the substance that alters reality and unites the dead with the living. La calle Andersen ["Andersen Street"] (2014) is a Young Adult steampunk novel set in Copenhagen during the industrial revolution.

The stories assembled as Lost Objects (coll 2018) and Out of the Window, Into the Dark (coll 2024), and the novel The Golden Key (2020), touch on the topoi of Horror in SF but they are in fact generally supernatural. On the contrary, The Swimmers (2021) is a claustrophobic dystopia set in the hot landscape of Andalusia; it is reminiscent of Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation. The novel shows a Ruined Earth centuries hence, where unstoppable Climate Change has killed the oceans, and the foetid jungles of the world have become breeding grounds for Mutants. A not unfamiliar distinction between the wealthy in their Keeps and the poor in the wild gains poignance through the difficult life of the protagonist of the tale, Pearl, who shapes herself into a teller of stories. Womack's latest book is On the Nature of Magic (2023), a gothic supernatural mystery. [MV]

see also: Ignotus Award.

Maria de los Ángeles Via Rivera-Womack

born Cádiz, Andalusia, Spain: 1975

works

Memoria de la nieve ["Memory of the Snow"] (Spain: Tropo, 2011) [novella: pb/]
La calle Andersen ["Andersen Street"] with Sofía Rhei (Spain: La Galera, 2014) [pb/Lola Rodríguez]
The Golden Key (London: Titan Books, 2020) [pb/]
The Swimmers (London: Titan Books, 2021) [pb/Julia Lloyd]
On the Nature of Magic (London: Titan Books, 2023) [pb/]

collections

Lost Objects (Edinburgh, Scotland: Luna Books, 2018) [coll: pb/Malcolm Devlin as Vince Haig]
Out of the Window, Into the Dark (Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Calque Press, 2024) [coll: pb/Malcolm Devlin as Vince Haig]

works as editor

Paseando con fantasmas: Antología del cuento gótico ["Walking with Ghosts: Anthology of the Gothic Tale"] (Madrid, Spain: Páginas de Espuma, 2012) [anth: pb/Henry Fuseli]
Retrofuturismos: Antologia Steampunk ["Retrofuturism: A Steampunk Anthology"] (Barcelona, Spain: Fábulas de Albión, 2014) [anth: Steampunk: pb/Alejandro Colucci]
The Best of Spanish Steampunk (Tallahassee, Florida: Cheeky Frawg Books / Madrid, Spain: Ediciones Nevsky, 2015) with James Womack [anth: ebook: Steampunk: contains some stories in common with Retrofuturismos above: na/]
An Invite to Eternity: Tales of Nature Disrupted (place not given: Calque Press, 2019) with Garry Budden [anth: Climate Change: pb/Malcolm Devlin as Vince Haig]

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