Rachel Swirsky Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Short Story Collections

Publication Order of Conversation Pieces Books

Publication Order of Oz Reimagined Books

Publication Order of Doctor Who Anthologies

Publication Order of The WisCon Chronicles Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Rachel Swirsky
Rachel Swirsky was born in San Jose, California on April 14, 1982 into a Jewish family.

She is a graduate of the University of California, Santa Cruz and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she taught undergrad science fiction and fantasy writing as a teaching assistant at the University of Iowa. In 2005, she went to the Clarion West Writers workshop.

Rachel, in addition to her fiction writing, also writes critical reviews, essays, and other non fiction.

She has donated her writing to a number of charity anthologies. “Heat Engine” appeared in “Last Bird, Drink Head”, which is a flash fiction anthology supporting the ProLiteracy charity. In September of 2010, she contributed this story to the online chapbook story collection “Clash of the Geeks”, presented by Subterranean Press and supporting the Lupus Alliance of America.

This comes after she grew up with a very volunteer-minded ethos growing up. Her parents have always worked incredibly hard to support their communities, from the high school where Rachel’s mom worked as a librarian (where she spent three nights a week and Saturdays keeping the fickle computer labs running), to their hobbies like AMICA (an organization for automated musical instrument enthusiasts) and square dancing. When Rachel’s able, she likes to pitch in where she can.

Volunteering is good, she finds, but so is offering up individual or small group support and mentorship to those that need it. That’s definitely Rachel’s favorite part.

Rachel has been published in literary publications that include the Konundrum Engine Literary Review, PANK, and the New Haven Review. Her speculative fiction work has appeared in various markets include Subterranean Magazine, Weird Tales, Fantasy Magazine, Tor.com, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Interzone, and Realms of Fantasy. It’s also been collected in numerous year’s best anthologies, which includes Rich Horton’s “The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy”, Gardner Dozois’ “The Year’s best Science Fiction”, Jeff & Ann VanderMeer’s “Best American Fantasy”, and Jonathan Strahan’s “Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year”.

When she is crafting a story, it’s a mix between imagery and sometimes it’s ideas that she starts with. Often with ideas it is a science fiction story, but images is almost always fantasy. Rachel began “Love Is Never Still” as a poem, and then the imagery seemed to lend itself into prose and expansion.

Since this story went through such a particularly long draft process, the imagery and the story heavily influenced one another while she worked this story into the shape that she wanted. Rachel was using imagery in order to convey the metaphors that in turned conveyed character. When she put Aphrodite and Hephaestus into this basalt palace, this suggests desolation and things gone cold, which in turn creates the sense of alienation in their marriage. She looked up ancient Greek gold-working, and learned all about techniques which could describe Hephaestus’ multi-faceted abilities as a smith, and these in turn shape the characterization.

Then the main core of her revision process was about directing her story. She was trying to subtract, add, and condense point of view sections in order to make the plot the correct shape, and to give the Aphrodite thread the necessary weight that it needed in order counterpoint Galatea, who draft one was mostly about. While she was pursuing structural goals, which was the majority of the time, she had to work with the imagery she could mine out of the plot.

“If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love” won the 2013 Nebula Award for Best Short Story.

“Through the Drowsy Dark” is a short story collection that was released in 2010. This collects together nine poems and ten stories by Hugo- and Nebula-nominee Rachel Swirsky, who’s a terrific writer that has been making her name with a string of perceptive and intelligent stories.

In “Through the Drowsy Dark”, her characters struggle with too much and too little emotional control, with heartbreak, with grief which has gone deep underground; they search for difference, nothingness, for oneness.

One commits this terrible crime since she believes that it is the moral thing to do, as another one digs a dead dog up because the mere thought of kissing it on the lips makes her clitoris throb. Rachel’s exploration of the mind and heart are fearless, and dangerous fictions indeed.

“How the World Became Quiet” is a short story collection that was released in 2013. After this powerful sorceress gets murdered, she is summoned through the centuries to witness all of the devastating changes to the land where she was born. There is a series of apocalypses which leaves the world quiet. A man is searching for the memory which is going to overwrite his childhood abuse. A woman that lives by scavenging corpses in the Japanese suicide forest is haunted by her deceased lover. Helios is left at the altar.

From the politics and riveting emotion of ‘The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Window’ (a Nebula Winner) to the melancholy family saga that is ‘Eros, Philia, Agape’ (Theodore Sturgeon and Hugo finalist), this critically acclaimed collection of stories have rapidly made her one of the rising stars in the field. Her work is (by turns) engaging and clever, quietly devastating and unflinching, often in the space of the exact same story.

“How the World Became Quiet: Myths of the Past, Present, and Future” collects together the body of Swirsky’s short fiction to date for the very first time. With these stories envision presents, pasts, and futures which never existed at all, offering revealing examinations of humanity which readers are going to find undeniably true.

Her character is rather stubborn yet still likable. As short as these vignettes are, they nevertheless give a valid feeling about the setting and still bind the reader to the situation. Each part could be extended into a whole entire novel and fans of the book would love to read even more. This is a lovely and haunting set of stories. This was well executed and it’s great to see that the main character was not what you would expect her to be.