Who knows where her next destination will be? Lava fields? The center of a black hole? A shanty in a part of Alaska where polar bears hunt humans with one paw over their noses, to conceal their one black feature so they blend into vast, blank white? She will sit, wrapped in synthetics and faux fur, shivering while she bangs out stories.

"Heartstrung" by Doug Sirois

Swirsky's short fiction has appeared in venues including Tor.com, Subterranean Magazine, Fantasy Magazine, Weird Tales, and the Konundrum Engine Literary Review, and been selected for inclusion in year's best collections from Jonathan Strahan, Rich Horton, and the VanderMeers. In 2007, her poem, "The Oracle on River Street," came in third place for the Rhysling Award. Through the Drowsy Dark, a mini-collection of Swirsky's feminist poems and short stories will be forthcoming from Aqueduct Press's conversation pieces series in May. Swirsky blogs about feminist science fiction at Ambling Along the Aqueduct, about politics at Alas, a Blog, about writing at Big Other, and about a combination of all of the above at her personal blog, That Which Deranges the Senses.

Header illustrations by Sam Weber (left and right) and Fantasio (center).