N. K. Jemisin

There's a tendency in American thought - maybe elsewhere, but that's the culture I know best - to default to social Darwinism, even though even Darwin noted that's a misapplication of his ideas.

A fantasy novel set in something other than medieval Europe, featuring an almost entirely black cast, is considered risky.

To some degree, as I move outside of the exclusive genre audience, the exclusive genre issues don't bother me as much. Maybe that's just speculation.

Reactionary movements can't sustain themselves unless they find something new to catch and burn on.

I write what feels real. I write things that are informed both by my own experience and by actual history.

I read a lot of history for fun.

I've always believed that as an artist, as a writer, you need a lot of contact with other people to make your art good.

I tend to like writing characters that are not typical heroes.

I am a linear thinker in a lot of ways.

I tend to write society as I see and understand it.

It's the way the human brain works: when enough events occur in a pattern, we stop thinking and go into macro mode.

I write for myself - but it is nice when other people like it, too!

I would love to just write and not have everything I say or do turn into a political battle.

Knowing about authors' beliefs helps you understand how those beliefs influence their writing, and things you thought meant one thing, once you've got enough information about that writer, you suddenly realize mean an entirely different thing. That makes a difference.

I think the people who believe that works can and always should be divorced from the context are people who have the privilege to do so.

If you can imagine something, it will be.

There's a thriving field of self-published stuff in, particularly, black fiction. I don't know that other groups of people of color have that same recourse.

All people who grew up with science fiction and fantasy and horror went through the whole acculturation process of the genre. We were all told to read the golden age writers. We were all told Heinlein and Asimov and all these straight, white males, although some of them were Jewish.

Any writer kind of who knows what they're doing goes forth and grabs a copy of an issue of something that they want to be published in, or they skim it online. They read what that market has been doing. They see a particular flavor of fiction.

I've been very happy with Orbit and am thrilled that they're giving me more chances to explore my creative visions.

It's human nature that we come in our own flavours, and it doesn't make any sense to write a monochromatic or monocultural story unless you're doing something extremely small - a locked room-style story.

As a black woman, I have no particular interest in maintaining the status quo. Why would I? The status quo is harmful; the status quo is significantly racist and sexist and a whole bunch of other things that I think need to change.

I was raised to be very wary of the police. I was raised to stay away from them unless you absolutely have to. Because they're dangerous.

Readers seem to really like the fact that what I'm writing is not traditional fantasy.

It takes practice to do anything unique within this field, period, in writing, practice doing anything unique in writing.