I'm Just Here For The Stories – N. R. M. Roshak's blog

“Cousin Entropy” nominated for Rosetta Award

My translation from the French of “Cousin Entropy” by Michèle Laframboise has been shortlisted for the 2021 short-form Rosetta Awards.

The Rosetta Awards are a new project, started in December 2020 by an international team of SFF writers and editors, “with the love of global SFF community and the anticipation of further communicating between different languages & cultures and of recognition of the great but underrated efforts of translators and those who endeavor to make the translation works come true.” https://sffrosettaawards.com/2020/12/26/birthday-of-sff-rosetta-awards/ What a great vision! I’m thrilled to be on their first shortlist. And still grateful to Alex Shvartsman and Michèle Laframboise for the opportunity to translate Michèle’s highly original, galaxy-spanning story.

The full shortlist is here: https://sffrosettaawards.com/2021/07/05/announcing-shortlist-of-science-fiction-and-fantasy-rosetta-awards-2021/

Listen to “The Zest for Life” on StarShipSofa

You (or I, or anyone) can now hear my story “The Zest for Life” on the latest StarShipSofa! I enjoyed TF Ahmad’s narration. His matter-of-fact delivery perfectly complements the story. TF Ahmad is a writer and narrator from Chicago.

“The Zest for Life” was originally published in Future Science Fiction Digest, Issue 2, March 2019, and has been translated into Estonian.

“Bitter Thing” out in Galaxies today!

I’m excited to have a story out in the French magazine Galaxies SF today, thanks to the talented Pierre-Alexandre Sicart, who translated my story “Bitter Thing” as “Par les yeux d’autrui.”

C’est ma première parution en Galaxies! Un gros merci au traducteur très talentueux, Pierre-Alexandre Sicart.

Starblinded: Guest post on WWP blog

World Weaver Press invited me to write a guest post about “By the Light of the Stars”, my story in their solarpunk anthology Multispecies Cities. I took the opportunity to write about nocturnal light pollution, known as skyglow, and its cost to humans and animals.

In January 1994, a 6.7-magnitude earthquake shook Los Angeles. The Northridge earthquake rumbled through at 4:30 AM, waking residents and taking out the power grid. People poured out of their homes and into the darkened streets. And some of them dialed 911, not about the earthquake, but about what they saw in the dark sky: a strange “giant, silvery cloud” arching over the stricken city.
That mysterious cloud? It was the Milky Way.

Head on over if you’d like to read more about how skyglow inspired this story. https://www.worldweaverpress.com/blog/starblinded

New story: By The Light of the Stars

I have a story out today in World Weaver Press‘s new solarpunk anthology, Multispecies Cities.

N.R.M. Roshak’s “By the Light of the Stars” saturate[s] conservation crises in casual kindness.
Publishers Weekly

Review: The Unteachables

Fantasy’s been having a boom, fueled by everyone’s desire to read something that has absolutely nothing to do with COVID, politics, war, elections, police brutality, or anything else remotely recalling the past year. Well, forget fantasy. MG is where it’s at. In particular, Gordon Korman’s MG. His lightweight, warm writing is the perfect escape from the pandemic.

Review: To Night Owl, From Dogfish

I recently picked up Holly Goldberg Sloan and Meg Wolitzer’s 2019 book To Night Owl, From Dogfish. I’m a sucker for alternative formats, and this epistolary novel is told entirely in the form of e-mails between two middle-school girls.

I loved the queer-family representation in this MG book: both girls are in single-parent families headed by a gay father.

Hurricane Child review

I’m perenially catching up on my reading, and just finished Kacen Callender’s 2020 MG debut, Hurricane Child. It was a thoroughly engrossing read. Set in the US Virgin Islands, it delivered a multisensory immersion into the life of a lonely 12-year-old. The main character, Caroline, is friendless and motherless. Her isolation nurtures her unique spirit. Caroline’s not quite like anyone else on the inside, and knows it. She sees spirits, and falls in love with an equally unusual girl.

The book’s structure feels a little messy, but in a way that works. Middle school is messy. For example, Caroline’s questions around her ability to see spirits are left unresolved. But that’s OK. No one’s finished figuring themselves out at 12.

Blue jay

Spring is slowly coming to Ontario, and soon the jays will be building their nests. A side project I’ve been poking at, an urban-naturalist’s ABC, inspired me to draw this jeering bird. Ink on vellum, 2021.

Making Frances Gilbert Laugh

Text: The marching band filled their tubas. AROOGAHFLOOP — She had me at “Aroogahfloop”.

This past Tuesday, I took in a webinar with Frances Gilbert, cheerfully titled “I’ll Acquire Your Book If You Make Me Laugh: Writing Humorous Picture Books”. Frances Gilbert is both an editor at Doubleday Young Readers and the author of several really funny picture books.