We have welcomed our 13th writer-in-residence. Octavia is a Cambridge based writer with a PhD in science communication. She likes using speculative fiction to talk about science in new and interesting ways – her sample writing for the Michael King residency was a short story about rebuilding scientific and academic publishing after the apocalypse!
She has sold over 50 short stories to various markets, including Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, and Asimov’s. Her first short story collection, The Mythology of Salt and Other Stories, was published in 2020, as was a climate fiction novel, The Stone Wētā, which is about a network of scientists smuggling climate data in order to preserve it from hostile, anti-science governments.
Octavia attended the Clarion West Writers Workshop in Seattle, and is a three time Sir Julius Vogel award winner, as well as a Bram Stoker nominee. In 2020, she was a visiting artist at Massey University/Square Edge, and also held a micro-residency at the Christchurch Arts Centre. She will be using her time at the Michael King Writers Centre to work on a short story collection centred around the post-apocalyptic lives of conservation scientists.