{"id":23987,"date":"2017-11-17T08:08:14","date_gmt":"2017-11-17T13:08:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=23987"},"modified":"2017-11-17T08:08:14","modified_gmt":"2017-11-17T13:08:14","slug":"nibble-frozen-cranberries-with-amal-el-mohtar-in-episode-52-of-eating-the-fantastic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2017\/11\/17\/nibble-frozen-cranberries-with-amal-el-mohtar-in-episode-52-of-eating-the-fantastic\/","title":{"rendered":"Nibble frozen cranberries with Amal El-Mohtar in Episode 52 of Eating the Fantastic"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s time to say farewell to Helsinki—and hello to award-winning writer Amal El-Mohtar—in the final episode of Eating the Fantastic recorded during Worldcon 75. Our meal took place a mere 36 hours after she’d won this year\u2019s Best Short Story Hugo Award for “Seasons of Glass and Iron,” for which she\u2019d also won a Nebula Award earlier in the year.<\/p>\n

We chose one of the city’s oldest seafood restaurants for our lunch—Sea Horse<\/a>, which has been in operation since 1934. And it’s lasted that long for a good reason! We enjoyed the food and the ambiance so much I returned a few days later for dinner with my wife during our post-Worldcon stay.<\/p>\n

Amal’s stories and poems have appeared in magazines such as Lightspeed<\/em>, Uncanny<\/em>, Strange Horizons<\/em>, and Apex<\/em>. Her stories \u201cThe Green Book\u201d and \u201cMadeleine\u201d were finalists for the Nebula Award in 2011 and 2015 respectively, and \u201cThe Truth About Owls\u201d won the Locus Award in 2015. She won the Rhysling award for Best Short Poem in 2009, 2011 and 2014, and in 2012 received the Richard Jefferies Poetry Prize. <\/p>\n

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We discussed the importance of female friendship, the first poem she wrote at age 6 1\/2 (which you’ll hear her recite), how Charles de Lint helped her get her first bookstore job, the importance of welcoming newcomers into the tent of science fiction and fantasy, what she learned about empathy from Nalo Hopkinson, the only time she ever cosplayed, which book made her a writer, why Storm is her favorite member of the X-Men, the delicious magic of honey, the difficulties of reviewing books in a field where everybody knows everybody, and much more.<\/p>\n

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Here\u2019s how to join us at our booth—<\/p>\n

1) Subscribe at the iTunes store<\/a>, where all 51 previous episodes can also be found.<\/p>\n

2) Download the episode to any device of your choosing by using the show’s RSS feed of http:\/\/eatingthefantastic.libsyn.com\/rss<\/a>.<\/p>\n

3) Or use the embed below to listen right here.<\/p>\n