| 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.”
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. |
New Story “Birthday Girl” in Uncanny Magazine
Bella and her sister stood awhile in silence, toeing the dirt. Her sister crossed her arms over her chest. She kept trying to smile, but awkwardness wiped it from her face. Bella’s sister spoke first. You didn’t make her sick. Bella snapped back. You’re the one who said I did. |
New Story “Love Is Never Still” in Uncanny Magazine
 Birth is pain, and I have been twice born. First I was an egg of ivory until he struck away the pieces that were not me and cracked me open. Later, the goddess touched me with her fiery fingertips and melted away the good, solid quiet of my soul. She made me into hot, fragile skin, always beating with blood.
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New Story “Between Dragons and Their Wrath” in Clarkesworld Magazine
 In the forest, scales are most common. If they cut you, the cut will never stop bleeding.
If you step in a place where a dragon has defecated, food will stream through your body, and you will always be hungry. If you pass a place where a dragon breathed fire, your skin will forever blister and heal and then blister again. If you touch a dragon’s blood, you’ll go mad. |
Short Story Collection, How the World Became Quiet, available now
 How the World Became Quiet: Myths of the Past, Present, and Future collects the body of Swirsky’s short fiction to date… While these stories envision pasts, presents, and futures that never existed, they offer revealing examinations of humanity that readers will find undeniably true.
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