N. K. Jemisin’s First Short Story Collection is Coming This Fall

Literary Hub is pleased to announce that the brilliant N.K. Jemisin, who won the Hugo Award for Best Novel for both The Fifth Season and The Obelisk Gate, and the Locus Award for her debut novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, will be publishing her very first collection of short stories, How Long ‘Til Black Future Month?, with Orbit and Orbit UK on November 27th of this year.

The publisher describes the collection this way:

In these stories, Jemisin sharply examines modern society, infusing magic into the mundane, and drawing deft parallels in the fantasy realms of her imagination. Dragons and hateful spirits haunt the flooded city of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In a parallel universe, a utopian society watches our world, trying to learn from our mistakes. A black mother in the Jim Crow south must figure out how to save her daughter from a fey offering impossible promises. And in the Hugo award-winning novella “The City Born Great,” a young street kid fights to give birth to an old metropolis’s soul.

In a statement, Jemisin said, “It’s amazing to me to be coming out with a collection of short stories now. Back at the beginning of my career, I didn’t think I was capable of writing short fiction, let alone publishing it! I think my longtime readers will enjoy the chance to see the evolution of my style and attitude, and I hope new readers will like just seeing what kinds of worlds and weirdness I can come up with.”

This is going to be good—but in the meantime, read Jemisin on craft, advocacy, and ignoring the naysayers, check out her recent conversation with Neil Gaiman, and most importantly read her books—they’re probably better than whatever else you were going to read next.