The SFWA Southern California Reading Series are free quarterly events that allow the Science Fiction and Fantasy community a chance to gather, network, and enjoy readings from from local and visiting authors. The series will be hosted by Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore in its San Diego and Redondo Beach locations. Each event features three authors who read from their latest work, followed by a question and answer session and a signing.

The inaugural event will be held at 2pm on Saturday, May 31 at the San Diego location (7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd, San Diego, CA 92111). Our featured readers will be Cecil Castellucci (castellucci.wordpress.com) and Nalo Hopkinson (www.nalohopkinson.com), with a third reader to be announced.

The second event will be at 2pm on Saturday, August 30 at the Redondo Beach location (2810 Artesia Blvd, Redondo Beach, CA 90278). Our featured readers will be Stephen Blackmoore (www.stephenblackmoore.com), Sofia Samatar (www.sofiasamatar.com), and Sherwood Smith (www.sherwoodsmith.net).

There is no need to RSVP to either event, but be sure to arrive early to get books and good seats! If you have any questions about the series, please email Adam Rakunas (rak@giro.org).

About the Readers

Nalo Hopkinson, born in Jamaica, has lived in Jamaica, Trinidad and Guyana and for the past 30 years in Canada. She is the author of four novels and a short story collection (Brown Girl in the Ring, Midnight Robber, The Salt Roads, The New Moon’s Arms, Skin Folk). She is the editor of fiction anthologies Whispers From the Cotton Tree Root: Caribbean Fabulist Fiction, and Mojo: Conjure Stories. She is the co-editor of fiction anthologies So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction (with Uppinder Mehan) and Tesseracts Nine (with Geoff Ryman). Hopkinson’s work has received Honourable Mention in Cuba’s “Casa de las Americas” literary prize. She is a recipient of the Warner Aspect First Novel Award, the Ontario Arts Council Foundation Award for emerging writers, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, the Locus Award for Best New Writer, the World Fantasy Award, the Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, the Aurora Award, and the Gaylactic Spectrum Award. Her new novel, The New Moon’s Arms, is a February 2007 release from Warner/Hachette Books.

Cecil Castellucci is the author of books and graphic novels for young adults including Boy Proof, The Plain Janes, First Day on Earth, The Year of the Beasts and Odd Duck. Her picture book, Grandma’s Gloves, won the California Book Award Gold Medal. Her short stories have been published in Strange Horizons, YARN, Tor.com, and various anthologies including, Teeth, After and Interfictions 2. She is the YA editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books, Children’s Correspondence Coordinator for The Rumpus and a two time Macdowell Fellow. She lives in Los Angeles.

Stephen Blackmoore is the author of City of the Lost and Dead Things. He is also the author of the true-life crime blog L.A. NOIR, chronicling some of the darker aspects of Los Angeles. He helps edit the pulp noir magazine NEEDLE: A MAGAZINE OF NOIR.

Sofia Samatar is the author of A Stranger in Olondria, a fantasy novel exploring themes of travel, exile, and the conflict between oral and written ways of knowing. It won the 2014 Crawford Award and is a finalist for the 2014 Nebula. She is nonfiction and poetry editor for the online journal Interfictions. She’s interested in world literature, African literature, fantasy and science fiction, feminism, and all strange and subversive forms of writing. Before going back to school for a doctoral degree, Dr. Samatar lived in South Sudan and Egypt for twelve years, where she became proficient in Arabic. In addition to teaching literature and writing, she teaches Cal State Channel Islands’s first Arabic class.

Sherwood Smith is the author of dozens of fantasy and science fiction books, including the Wren and Sartorias-deles  series. She has collaborated with Dave Trowbridge in writing the Exordium series and with Andre Norton in writing two of the books in the Solar Queen universe. Wren’s War was an Anne Spencer Lindbergh Honor book and a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award finalist.