Micaiah Johnson

Oct 29, 2024 | reactormag.com | Micaiah Johnson

When 2,000 civilians invaded the United States Capitol, I was in the middle of a re-reading of C.L.R. James’s Black Jacobins to prepare for writing an uprising of the oppressed in my own novel. It had been six months since my last protesting arrest, and I watched the insurrection with an uncanny mix of the familiar and the horrid, like coming upon maggots in food you only knew as good. The tactics were familiar, the indignation was familiar, the beneficiary was not.

Oct 11, 2024 | publishersweekly.com | Micaiah Johnson |Simon Jimenez |Evan Friss |Sally Rooney

Keir AlekseiiAssociate AgentAzantian Literary AgencyAge: 36Years in publishing: 3First job: Administrative assistantFavorite book read this year: Those Beyond the Wall by Micaiah JohnsonWhat advice would you give to someone interested in joining the industry today? Good mentorship and a supportive community are the keys to success.

Jul 16, 2024 | electricliterature.com | Micaiah Johnson |Emily Tesh

The Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction, a $25,000 prize honoring a book-length work of imaginative fiction, today announces the shortlist for the 2024 prize. The prize, created to continue Le Guin’s legacy, is given to a writer whose work reflects the concepts and ideas that were central to Ursula’s own work: hope, equity, and freedom; non-violence and alternatives to conflict; and a holistic view of humanity’s place in the natural world.

Mar 13, 2024 | crimereads.com | Micaiah Johnson

Anyone who knows me, or has read my second book, or has stood too close to me at a bookstore knows I despise the concept of genre. I despise the tweed coat that genre wears when it decides what is literary and what is not. I despise the lab coat genre wears when it separates hard sci-fi from soft sci-fi. I despise genre’s internalized misogyny as it reliably separates anything feminine into whatever category is least likely to garner acclaim.

Jan 11, 2024 | fivebooks.com | Mur Lafferty |John Scalzi |Micaiah Johnson |Arkady Martine

There are of course many types of mystery story and many types of sci-fi story, which can be recombined for a whole range of effects. What is the general appeal of this mystery-plus-sci-fi approach? I tend to break genres into two overarching categories. There are structure-driven genres like mystery, heist, thriller, or romance. And then there are aesthetic-driven genres like science fiction, fantasy, and historical fiction.