Karen Lord | Iridescence

By eastercon_admin, 22 April, 2025

The author looking to the right, against a grey background

Barbadian author and editor Karen Lord has been a physics teacher, a diplomat, a part-time soldier, and an academic at various times and in various countries.

Her debut novel Redemption in Indigo won the 2008 Frank Collymore Literary Award, the 2010 Carl Brandon Parallax Award, the 2011 William L. Crawford Award, the 2011 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature and the 2012 Kitschies Golden Tentacle (Best Debut), and was longlisted for the 2011 Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature and nominated for the 2011 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. Her other works include Unraveling, the second novel in the Redemption series, and The Best of All Possible Worlds (winner of the 2009 Frank Collymore Literary Award), The Galaxy Game, and The Blue, Beautiful World (longlisted for the 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction) in the Cygnus Beta series. She also edited the anthologies New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean, and Reclaim, Restore, Return: Futurist Tales from the Caribbean.

She was a featured author for the 2022 Bocas Lit Fest UK Tour (Norwich and London), the 2019 International Literature Festival Berlin, and the 2018 Edinburgh International Book Festival; the Toastmistress for Worldcon 2017 in Finland; the 2015 Writer-in-residence for the University of the West Indies, St Augustine Campus MFA Programme (Trinidad); the 2014 Guest of Honour at Åcon in Finland; and a featured author at the Adelaide Writers’ Week 2013 in Australia; Calabash 2014 in Jamaica; the Bocas Lit Fest 2012, 2015, 2016 and 2019 and Bocas South 2014 in Trinidad; and the Bim Lit Fest 2012, 2014 and 2016, and Carifesta 2017 in Barbados.

She has been a judge for the 2019 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, the 2018 CODE Burt Award for Caribbean YA Literature, and the 2012 James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award. For 2018 and 2019, she was a member of the Frank Collymore Literary Endowment Committee, which judges the annual Frank Collymore Literary Award.

She has been an instructor for the Clarion West Writers Workshop (2018 and 2023) and the Clarion Workshop (2019); a co-facilitator or instructor for writing and reading workshops at the Bocas Lit Fest, the Bim Lit Fest, and the Edinburgh International Book Festival; and a co-facilitator for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize Workshop (2018) and mentor for the Commonwealth Writers Mentorship Programme (2019, 2020). She held workshops and gave the closing keynotes at the Surrey International Writers’ Conference in 2021 and 2023.

Bibliography

Fiction

Forthcoming 2025. We Will Rise Again: Speculative Stories and Essays on Protest, Resistance, and Hope, edited by Karen Lord, Annalee Newitz, and Malka Older. Saga Press, Simon & Schuster USA.

2023. The Blue, Beautiful World. Del Rey, Penguin Random House, USA and Gollancz, UK.

2023. ‘A Timely Horizon’, The Sunday Morning Transport, edited by Julian Yap and Fran Wilde. https://www.sundaymorningtransport.com/p/a-timely-horizon

2022. ‘Legend’, in The Sunday Morning Transport, edited by Julian Yap and Fran Wilde. https://www.sundaymorningtransport.com/p/legend

2020. ‘The Plague Doctors’, in Take Us to a Better Place: Stories, produced by Melcher Media, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Reprinted in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021, edited by Veronica Roth. HarperCollins Publishers, USA.

2019. ‘Justice’. Unpublished. Commissioned by and presented at the 2019 International Literature Festival Berlin.

2019. ‘Haven’, in Current Futures: a sci-fi ocean anthology, edited by Ann Vandermeer. XPRIZE. Reprinted 2020 by Realm, USA.

2019. Unraveling. DAW Books, USA (reprinted 2024 Del Rey PRH, USA).

2019. ‘Cities of the Sun’, in New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby. Myriad, UK and HarperCollins, USA. Reprinted 2020 by Realm, USA.

2018. ‘The Mysteries’, in Particulates, edited by Nalo Hopkinson, based on art by Rita McBride. Dia Art Foundation, New York. Reprinted 2019 in Lightspeed Magazine Issue 110 (July).

2016. Tobias S. Buckell and Karen Lord. ‘The Mighty Slinger’, in Bridging Infinity, edited by Jonathan Strahan, Solaris, UK. Reprinted 2017 in The Best Science Fiction of the Year Volume 2, edited by Neil Clarke, Night Shade Books, USA; 2018 in Sunspot Jungle: The ever expanding universe of fantasy and science fiction, Volume 2, edited by Bill Campbell, Rosarium Publishing, USA; 2020 in Reclaim, Restore, Return: Futurist Tales from the Caribbean, edited by Karen Lord and Tobias S. Buckell, Caribbean Futures Institute and the NGC Bocas Lit Fest; and 2022 in The Best of World SF: Volume 2, edited by Lavie Tidhar, Head of Zeus, USA.

2016. ‘A New Panama’, in Bim: Arts for the 21st Century Vol. 8 (Nov): 23–29. Reprinted 2017 in Catalysts, Explorers & Secret Keepers: Women of Science Fiction, edited by Monica Louzon, Jake Weisfeld, Heather McHale, Barbara Jasny and Rachel Frederick. The Museum of Science Fiction, USA.

2016. New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean, editor. Peekash Press (Peepal Tree Press, UK; Akashic Books, USA).

2015. ‘The Counsellor Crow’, in The Bestiary, edited by Ann VanderMeer. Cheeky Frawg Books (ebook) and Centipede Press (print), USA. Reprinted 2018 in Lightspeed Magazine Issue 103 (December).

2015. The Galaxy Game. JFB, Quercus, UK and Del Rey, Penguin Random House, USA (reprinted 2023 Del Rey PRH, USA and 2024 Gollancz, UK).

2014. ‘Hiraeth: A tragedy in four acts’, in Reach for Infinity, edited by Jonathan Strahan. Solaris, UK.

2014. Die beste Welt. Heyne, Germany.

2014. Le meilleur des mondes possibles. Panini, France.

2013. ‘Haunts’, in Bim: Arts for the 21st Century Vol. 6 (May 2013-May 2014): 110-113.

2013. El mejor de los mundos posibles. RBA Libros, Spain.

2013. The Best of All Possible Worlds. JFB, Quercus, UK and Del Rey, Random House, USA (reprinted 2023 Del Rey PRH, USA and 2024 Gollancz, UK).

Winner of the 2009 Frank Collymore Literary Award, and the 2013 RT Book Reviews Reviewers’
Choice Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.
Nominated for the 2013 RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Award for Book of the Year.
Finalist for the 2014 Locus Awards Best Science Fiction Novel.

2010. ‘Bacchanal’, in Bim: Arts for the 21st Century Vol. 3 No. 2 (March-October): 64-73.

2010. Redemption in Indigo. Small Beer Press, USA; and 2012, JFB, Quercus, UK (reprinted 2024 Del Rey PRH, USA).

Winner of the 2008 Frank Collymore Literary Award, the 2010 Carl Brandon Parallax Award, the 2011 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature, the 2011 William L. Crawford Award, and the 2012 Kitschies Award for Best Debut.
Nominated for the 2011 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel.
Longlisted for the 2011 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature.

2009. Excerpt from ‘The Labyrinths of Midnight’, in Bim: Arts for the 21st Century Vol. 2. No. 2 (May- November): 53–63.

Non-fiction

2022. ‘Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland (1884) / Unflattening Scientific Worldviews’, in Uneven Futures: Strategies for Community Survival from Speculative Fiction, edited by Ida Yoshinaga, Sean Guynes, and Gerry Canavan, The MIT Press, USA.

2021. ‘Being and Becoming a Writer’, in Pocket Workshop: Essays on Living as a Writer, edited by Todd McCoy and M. Huw Evans for the Clarion West Writers Workshop, Hydra House Books, USA.

2020. ‘Our Sanctuary Sea’, in Reclaim, Restore, Return: Futurist Tales from the Caribbean, edited by Karen Lord and Tobias S. Buckell. Caribbean Futures Institute and the NGC Bocas Lit Fest.
https://www.bocaslitfest.com/2020/09/16/reclaim-restore-return-futurist-tales-from-the-caribbean/

2018. ‘At Sea’, in The Freedom Papers, edited by Henry Bell, supplement to Gutter Magazine Issue 18 (30 July): 155-156.

2017. ‘Writing the World into Being’, in Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia E. Butler edited by Alexandra Pierce and Mimi Mondal, Twelfth Planet Press, Australia.

2016. ‘Circa 1953: In the Castle of My Skin’, in the Caribbean Review of Books, August.
http://caribbeanreviewofbooks.com/crb-archive/circa/1953-in-the-castle-of-my-skin/

2016. ‘Unbought and Unbossed: Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea and Amaryllis Collymore’, in The Cascadia Subduction Zone: a literary quarterly Vol. 6. No. 3. (July): 1-2.

2013. ‘What Is/What If: The beauty of mystery’, in Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction by Jeff VanderMeer, Abrams Image, p 27-28.

Academic

J. Lashley, D. Marshall, and K. Lord. 2015. Millennium Development Goals Assessment for Barbados and a Post-2015 Agenda. SALISES and UNDP Barbados and the OECS.

J. Lashley, D. Marshall, C. Bailey, C. Crawford, L. Lazarus, and K. Lord. 2015. Youth are the Future: The Imperative of Youth Employment for Sustainable Development. Caribbean Development Bank.