Voyage Into Genre with T. L. Huchu, P. Djèlí Clark, and Kamau Ware

Tor Books, in partnership with Literary Hub, presents Voyage Into Genre! Every other Wednesday, join host Drew Broussard for conversations with Tor authors discussing their new books, the future, and the future of genre. Oh, and maybe there’ll be some surprises along the way…

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ITINERARY: July 14, 2021

Edinburgh, Scotland (20xx) to talk to T. L. Huchu about The Library of the Dead, the dystopias around us, scientific magic, and making up a new music craze.

Cairo, Egypt (1912) to talk to P. Djèlí Clark about A Master of Djinn, counterfactuals, returning to a world, and the writer’s toolkit.

New York, USA (2021) for a quick city stroll with Kamau Ware, founder of the Black Gotham Experience.

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T. L. Huchu on how his Edinburgh isn’t so far-fetched:

“I’m showing you that the history has come full-circle, that Edinburgh is back to that place where it was a third-world city. And you might be saying that’s a weird thing, how does that happen. If you think about your big third-world cities, they still function: they’ve got things that work and things that don’t particularly work, and that’s the vibe you get from this Edinburgh. I’m always chuckling when people call it dystopian because if you call Delhi or Harare or Lagos dystopian, then, yeah, this is what Edinburgh would look like.”

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P. Djèlí Clark on filling gaps in histories real and imagined:

“There’s this theory that sometimes when there are gaps in the history, these silences, it actually makes it louder because people go looking. And then there’s a way that the subversion makes it louder, because people want to know ‘did that really happen?’ or ‘that’s such an odd change, what was the real history?’ At the end of the day, I’m a storyteller, I want people to have fun with the story, but it is also supposed to be a critique of the colonial world and what could have been. And even in that ‘what could have been,’ it’s not a utopia.”

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Kamau Ware on what a city walk can do to your brain:

“I look at walking as my preferred method of meditating, learning, because I get to write my own story. Bipedalism is like my pen.”

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Tor Presents: Voyage into Genre is a co-production with Lit Hub Radio. Hosted by Drew Broussard. Studio engineering + production by Stardust House Creative. Music by Dani Lencioni of Evelyn.