{"id":39753,"date":"2026-11-12T08:51:38","date_gmt":"2026-11-12T13:51:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/?p=39753"},"modified":"2026-11-12T08:51:38","modified_gmt":"2026-11-12T13:51:38","slug":"fran-wilde","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2026\/11\/12\/fran-wilde\/","title":{"rendered":"Savor sushi with the award-winning Fran Wilde on Episode 297 of Eating the Fantastic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Out my window, the leaves may have all changed color, but in my heart — and on Eating the Fantastic — it’s still summer. That’s because it’s time for another conversation recorded at LAcon V, following my chats with Martha Wells<\/a> and Thomas Ha<\/a>, plus the lightning round Worldcon Donut Divertissment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This episode’s guest is Fran Wilde<\/a>, whom I last chatted with while you eavesdropped at Balticon way back in 2016<\/a>, with exactly 10 years, two months, and 30 days passing between our meals. At that time, she\u2019d just won the Compton Crook for Best First Novel \u2014 Updraft<\/em> \u2014 and with last year\u2019s A Philosophy of Thieves<\/em>, she’s now up at nine. That includes the two other books which followed Updraft<\/em> in her Bone Universe<\/em> series \u2014 Cloudbound<\/em> and Horizon<\/em> \u2014 as well as Riverland<\/em>, The Ship of Stolen Words<\/em>, and others.<\/p>\n

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Since the last time we chatted and chewed, she\u2019s also had stories published in magazines such as Uncanny<\/em>, Asimov\u2019s<\/em>, Weird Tales<\/em>, Fireside<\/em>, and The Deadlands<\/em>, and in anthologies such as Infinity\u2019s End<\/em>, Do Not Go Quietly<\/em>, Monsters, Movies & Mayhem<\/em>, and others. Many of those stories were gathered in her 2025 collection A Catalog of Storms<\/em>.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s been nominated for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, the Dragon Award, and the Lodestar Award, and has twice won the Andre Norton Award. She\u2019s also the co-editor-in-chief \u2014 with Julian Yap \u2014 of the Sunday Morning Transport<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

We discussed the Viable Paradise story she wrote in 24 hours which became the inspiration for her Compton Crook Award-winning first novel Updraft<\/em>, why she’s neither a plotter nor a pantser but a plantser, what it’s possible to teach and what it’s possible to learn, the importance of taking self-care when working on larger projects, why she called her latest novel a “genre turducken,” what it was like following Samuel R. Delany in a public reading on the anniversary of the publication of Moby-Dick, how she knows when an idea wants to be a short story, novel, or even series, coping with lengthy editorial responses, the many reasons an editor might reject a story which have nothing to do with that story, the prompts she gives people who don’t know what to write next, plus much more.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how you can join us at Niku 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 296 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