Nisi Shawl

press release: Room is proud to welcome Nisi Shawl, past WisCon Guest of Honor, Tiptree Award winner, for a reading from her new science fiction novel Everfair!

EVERFAIR is an alternate history novel set in the Belgian Congo, from noted and award-winning short story writer Nisi Shawl. This beautiful and heart wrenching book gives voice to those so often silenced by history, illuminating one of the most disastrous periods of human history and re-writing the historic possibilities for an enslaved people.

EVERFAIR is a Neo-Victorian speculative history that explores the question of what might have come of Belgium's colonization of the Congo if the native populations had learned about steam technology a bit earlier. Fabian Socialists from Great Britain join forces with African-American missionaries to purchase land from the Belgian Congo's "owner," King Leopold II. This land, named Everfair, is set aside as a safe haven, an imaginary Utopia for native populations of the Congo as well as escaped slaves returning from America and other places where African natives were being mistreated. Unlikely friendships and alliances are formed as these countrymen fight to protect their new home from attack by outside forces hoping to rip apart their sanctuary.

EVERFAIR is told from a multiplicity of points-of-view: Africans, Europeans, East Asians and African Americans in complex relationships with one another, in a compelling range of voices that have historically been silenced. These characters struggle with their attractions and compulsions, their own internalized prejudice and their motives for joining the burgeoning colony to create a rich tapestry of narratives.

Nisi Shawl is a writer of science fiction and fantasy short stories and a journalist. She is the co-author (with Cynthia Ward) of Writing the Other: Bridging Cultural Differences for Successful Fiction. Her short stories have appeared in Asimov's SF Magazine, Strange Horizons, and numerous other magazines and anthologies. Her story collection Filter House co-won the James Tiptree, Jr. Award in 2009 and her stories have been shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Award, the Gaylactic Spectrum Award, and the Carl Brandon Society Parallax Award. To learn more about Nisi Shawl, visit www.nisishawl.com

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