Ryka Aoki is the author of our favorite sci-fi book of 2021 - the breakout hit Light from Uncommon Stars.
We spoke with Ryka on our Red Carpet at Worldcon 2022 in Chicago about what it feels like to celebrate her breakthrough novel as a Hugo Finalist, art and musical expression as a trans musician, setting your fiction in a familiar place, and blending the lines that define genre fiction. Enjoy our energetic conversation with Ryka below!
Watch or listen to the interview:
You can buy Ryka's work at the links below.
Ryka's Bio: Ryka Aoki is the author of Seasonal Velocities, He Mele a Hilo (A Hilo Song), Why Dust Shall Never Settle Upon This Soul and The Great Space Adventure. Her latest novel is Light from Uncommon Stars.
Ryka’s work has appeared or been recognized in Vogue, Elle, Publisher’s Weekly, Bustle, Autostraddle, PopSugar, The Daily Dot, The Guardian, Buzzfeed, The San Francisco Bay Times, and the Huffington Post. Her latest poetry was part of “Are you okay?” curated by Franny Choi at Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, and she was honored by the California State Senate for “extraordinary commitment to the visibility and well-being of Transgender people.”Aoki’s work appears in many queer and mainstream publications and anthologies, and she was honored to work with the American Association of Hiroshima Nagasaki A-Bomb Survivors, where two of her compositions were adopted as the organization’s official “songs of peace.”
Ryka was the inaugural performer for the first ever Transgender Stage at San Francisco Pride, and has performed in venues including the Sundance Film Festival, San Francisco Pride Main Stage, Barnard College, the National Queer Arts Festival, Yale University, UC Berkeley, UCLA, the University of Iceland, the University of Winnipeg, and Ladyfest South. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Cornell University and is currently a professor of English at Santa Monica College. She is Japanese-American.
She is a two-time Lambda Award finalist, and winner of the Eli Coppola Chapbook Contest, the Corson-Bishop Poetry Prize, and a University Award from the Academy of American Poets.
She is also a professor of English at Santa Monica College, a half-decent pianist, and is starting to learn to play the violin.
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