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Rachel Swirsky holds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers Workshop, and she graduated from Clarion West in 2005. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Hugo, Locus, World Fantasy and Sturgeon Awards. She’s twice won the Nebula Award: for her 2010 novella, “The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window” and her 2014 short story, “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love.”

January Fifteenth, her new novella from Tor.com, released on June 14, 2022.

Read or listen to Rachel Swirsky’s free online fiction, or buy her collections, singles and anthologies.

Find her on Twitter as rachelswirsky, and follow what she’s up to in her monthly newsletter. Support her on Patreon.

 

January Fifteenth, a new novella by Tor.com

book cover of a person walking down an alley with an umbrella and the following text: January Fifteenth, “Money Changes everything–except people.” Rachel Swirsky, “One of the best speculative writers of the last decade.” –John Scalzi

Follow four women on January fifteenth, the day they get Universal Basic Income

Hannah, an abused mother on the run

Janelle, a reporter raising her sister

Olivia, a wealthy student on break

Sarah, a child bride trapped in a cult

Money changes everything except people

Available at a variety of locations, including Powells, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Google Play, and Indiebound

“Wake Up, I Miss You” in Apex

Uncanny Magazine Issue 43 Cover

That morning, there was a white rose on my windowsill, and my heart cracked. 

How? I wondered, and chastised myself for wondering. There couldn’t be another message until tomorrow. I wondered anyway. Throughout the day, as I patched uniforms for the occupying armsmen, and baked bread to bring my neighbor with the broken leg, and scrubbed every floorboard in the house, I wondered: how?

Quick? Painful? Bloody? Horrible? Unlucky? Slow?

How had my brother died?

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“Wake Up, I Miss You” in Apex

 

Terra stands alone in the middle of the room, staring at nothing. She moves sometimes like someone dreaming, but never reacts.

My poor sister, locked in her own world.

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“Innocent Bird” in Lightspeed

Lightspeed July 2021 Issue 134, dragon with rider

 

It began with Shoko finding feathers in her bed. It was her third year of high school. She’d just turned seventeen.

She was falling in love, and her wings were coming in.

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“Thirteen of the Secrets in My Purse” in Uncanny Magazine

Uncanny Magazine Issue Forty CoverOne: My lipstick.

The shade is Heart’s Blood.

Morbid, if you ask me.

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How_the_World_Became_Quiet_by_Rachel_SwirskyHow the World Became Quiet: Myths of the Past, Present, and Future collects the body of Swirsky’s short fiction through 2013.

While these stories envision pasts, presents, and futures that never existed, they offer revealing examinations of humanity that readers will find undeniably true.

Purchase or read more