Kameron Hurley is a science fiction and fantasy author as well as essayist who uses her writing to explore the future of war and resistance to oppression. Her fiction includes vivid female characters such as her 2018 book Apocalypse Nyx’s bounty hunter Nyx, who must navigate a dystopian world and deal with challenges like giant bugs and contaminated deserts as she works to survive. Her short fiction was first published in 1998, and she has been writing novels since 2010. She is the author of The Light Brigade (2019) and The Stars are Legion (2017) as well as two trilogies, the Worldbreaker Saga and the award-winning God’s War trilogy.
She was born in the Pacific Northwest and earned a bachelor’s degree in historical studies at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, going on to receive a master’s degree in the history of South African resistance movements from the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal in Durban, South Africa. Her nonfiction has been published in journals including The Atlantic, The Village Voice, Entertainment Weekly, and Writers Digest, and she writes columns about writing and the publishing industry for Locus Magazine. In 2014, her essay “We Have Always Fought: Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle and Slaves’ Narrative” (2013) won a Hugo Award; that same year, she also won the Hugo for Best Fan Writer. Hurley is also the author of the award-winning essay collection The Geek Feminist Revolution (2017 Locus and BSFA winner, nonfiction); she is an active blogger who posts reflections on topics including how not to burn out living in a “gig economy” and resisting nihilism. Amusingly, she refers to the sphere of her thought and writing as “the Hurleyverse.” She lives in Ohio, where she is cultivating an urban homestead.
This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Women Writers by Becca Anderson, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.
The Blog of Awesome Women 