Today we celebrate science fiction author Daniel José Older.
From Guernica Magazine:
Daniel José Older is the author of the A Bone Street Rumba Novel urban fantasy series from Penguin’s Roc Books and the Young Adult novel Shadowshaper (Scholastic, 2015), a New York Times Notable Book of 2015, which was shortlisted for the Kirkus Prize in Young Readers’ Literature and the Andre Norton Award, and named one of Esquire’s “80 Books Every Person Should Read”. He co-edited the Locus and World Fantasy-nominated anthology Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History. His short stories and essays have appeared in The Guardian, NPR, Tor.com, Salon, BuzzFeed, Fireside Fiction, The New Haven Review, PANK, Apex, and Strange Horizons, and the anthologies The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race and Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond. You can find his thoughts on writing, read dispatches from his decade-long career as an NYC paramedic and hear his music at http://danieljoseolder.net/, on Youtube, and @djolder on Twitter.
From Publishers Weekly
I hope people feel empowered to tell their own stories. I hope they find solace in the power of art and the community around them. And I hope they feel like there are ways out of this mess that we’re living through right now—friendship, or the act of creation, or figuring out something about your life that you were struggling with. It’s not always going to be that we win every battle, or that we topple every evil empire; sometimes, victory is found in these small moments. And that’s important—there’s power to that.