{"id":34867,"date":"2024-02-23T09:15:29","date_gmt":"2024-02-23T14:15:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=34867"},"modified":"2024-02-24T10:51:10","modified_gmt":"2024-02-24T15:51:10","slug":"ray-nayler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2024\/02\/23\/ray-nayler\/","title":{"rendered":"Snack on sushi with Ray Nayler in Episode 219 of Eating the Fantastic"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wasn’t able to make Ray Nayler<\/a>‘s launch event last month for his new novella The Tusks of Extinction<\/em> at D.C.’s Lost City Bookstore<\/a>, but we were able to get together for lunch just a few days later — and you can join us at the table.<\/p>\n

Nayler is the author of the Locus Award-winning debut novel\u00a0The Mountain in the Sea<\/em>, which was also\u00a0a finalist for\u00a0the Nebula Award and the L.A. Times Book Awards’ Ray Bradbury Award for Science\u00a0Fiction, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction. He began publishing speculative fiction in 2015\u00a0in Asimov\u2019s<\/em>, and since then, his stories have appeared in\u00a0Clarkesworld<\/em>,\u00a0Analog<\/em>,\u00a0The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction<\/em>,\u00a0Lightspeed<\/em>,\u00a0Vice<\/em>, Nightmare<\/em>, and other magazines. His story “Yesterday’s Wolf” won the 2022\u00a0Clarkesworld<\/em>\u00a0Readers\u2019 poll, and the same year, his story “Muallim” won the\u00a0Asimov’s<\/em>\u00a0Readers’ Award, his story “Father”, in French translation, won the\u00a0Bifrost\u00a0readers’ award, and his novelette “Sarcophagus” was a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Award.<\/p>\n

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In addition to his speculative fiction, Ray has published in many other genres,\u00a0from mainstream literary fiction to comics.\u00a0Those have appeared in\u00a0Ellery Queen<\/em>,\u00a0Crimewave<\/em>,\u00a0Hardboiled<\/em>, Cemetery Dance<\/em>, Deathrealm<\/em>, Queen’s Quarterly<\/em>, the\u00a0Berkeley Fiction Review<\/em>,\u00a0and other journals. He’s also a widely published\u00a0poet, with work in the\u00a0Atlanta Review<\/em>,\u00a0the\u00a0Beloit Poetry Journal<\/em>, Weave<\/em>, Juked<\/em>, Able Muse<\/em>, Sentence<\/em>,\u00a0and\u00a0many more.\u00a0He is currently Diplomatic Fellow and Visiting Scholar at the Institute for International\u00a0Science and Technology Policy at The George Washington University.<\/p>\n

We discussed how his time living outside the U.S. helped him become a better science fiction writer, why he feels the greatest effect of having written The Mountain in the Sea<\/em> was a culinary one, the reason we agree our favorite part of writing is rewriting, the sad results of his accidental Facebook experiment, whether his mammoth memory behavior is based on scientific facts or is purely speculative, why we’ll likely never be able to truly resurrect extinct species, how changes in culture can affect evolution, the train trip where he received career advice from a stranger he didn’t realize was Neil Gaiman, why we aren’t totally in control of our writing destinies, how he’s haunted by the ghost of an alternate version of himself, plus much more.<\/p>\n

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Here\u2019s how you can eavesdrop on our lunch at Hilo Poke and Sushi <\/a> — <\/p>\n

1) Subscribe at Apple Podcasts<\/a> — or wherever<\/a> you choose to consume your podcasts — where I hope you’ll be tempted to sample a few of the 218 previous episodes.<\/p>\n

2) Listen via the RSS feed of http:\/\/eatingthefantastic.libsyn.com\/rss<\/a> on the device of your choice.<\/p>\n

3) Or simply use the embed below.<\/p>\n