Author Guest of Honor – K. Tempest Bradford

K. Tempest Bradford is an award-winning author, teacher, media critic, podcaster, and community organizer who writes fantasy and science fiction steeped in Black Girl Magic. Her middle grade novel, Ruby Finley vs. the Interstellar Invasion, won the 2022 Andre Norton Nebula Award and is nominated for an IGNYTE Award.

Tempest’s short fiction has appeared in several anthologies and magazines, including New Suns 2: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color, Black Sci-Fi Short Stories, Sunspot Jungle, Diverse Energies, Federations, Strange Horizons, Electric Velocipede, EscapePod, and PodCastle, plus many more. Her debut novel is about Ruby—a young, Black genius who loves entomology—her encounter with the weirdest bug she’s ever seen, and the mysterious men in black suits who come looking for it.

Tempest organizes and teaches classes and seminars on writing inclusive, diverse fiction for Writing the Other.com. She’s also given talks, seminars, and workshops on these and other creative writing topics for Clarion West, Sarah Lawrence College, LitReactor, Sisters in Crime, the Sirens Conference, Willamette Writers Conference, the Writing Excuses Conference and Retreat, several local RWA chapters, and other writing groups, conferences, colleges, and entertainment companies.

In 2020 Tempest, alongside Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward, won the LOCUS Magazine Special Award for Inclusivity and Representation Education for their work with Writing the Other. Tempest, Nisi, and Writing the Other were also nominated in 2020 and 2021 for the IGNYTE Community Award.

Tempest enjoys commenting on media as much as consuming it and won’t hesitate to harsh your squee about that TV show, movie, book, or other piece of entertainment that doesn’t live up to high standards. Her articles, media criticism, and reviews can be found on NPR, LitReactor, the SFWA blog, io9, and various other media outlets. Her essays have appeared in collections (Chicks Dig Time Lords, Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia E. Butler, and more) and college textbooks (Call And Response: Key Debates in African American Studies, and Current Issues and Enduring Questions 12th ed.).

When not writing or teaching, she hosts and contributes to multiple podcasts, including ORIGINality, Writing Excuses, the JEMcast, and The Write Gear.

She’s active in the SFF community and volunteers for a number of non-profit organizations. In the past she’s served as a juror for the James Tiptree Jr. (now Otherwise) Award, served as Programming co-chair for the WisCon feminist science fiction convention, organized fundraising auctions and salons for the Interstitial Arts Foundation, and raised funds for Clarion West, her writing workshop alma mater. Currently, she serves on the board of the Carl Brandon Society, an organization dedicated to increasing racial and ethnic diversity in the production of and audience for speculative fiction.

Tempest has often been been recognized for her activism and community engagement. Most recently in 2023 she and the other members of the Carl Brandon Society leadership team won a LOCUS Magazine Special Award for Developing Diversity in Genre Communities. The organization is also a 2023 nominee for the IGNYTE Awards Community Award for Outstanding Efforts in Service of Inclusion and Equitable Practice in Genre. In 2022 she was honored with the Lemonade Award for acts of kindness which further science fiction community. In 2021 she was nominated for the IGNYTE Ember Award for unsung contributions to the genre.

You can connect with Tempest and find her fiction, classes, and news updates on KTempestBradford.com. She occasionally shares bits of in-progress fiction and microstories via her den of patronage: The Tempestuous Salon.