Background

Ethnicity: Daniel José Older's mother is Cuban and his father is Jewish.

Daniel José Older was born on January 18, 1980, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. He grew up in Boston surrounded by books and storytelling. His family loves movies, music, and just appreciates the arts all around. That was the best gift for him as a kid.

Education

Daniel José Older graduated from the Cambridge School of Weston. After high school, he moved to California, where he worked as a bike messenger and waiter. Then he attended Hampshire College.

During his last semester in college, he took an EMT course, because he knew he needed a job. He wanted to write, and writing was a natural thing for him, but he needed more information to know what he was writing about and to make sense of the world. Later he received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Antioch University.

Career

Before becoming a full-time writer, Daniel José Older worked as a paramedic for ten years writing at nights. Now he is the author and musician living in Brooklyn, New York. He has facilitated workshops on music and anti-oppression at public schools, religious houses, universities, and prisons. His journalism on social justice, diversity, and gentrification appears regularly in The Guardian. His short stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, Flash Fiction, Crossed Genres, The Innsmouth Free Press, and the anthology Subversion: Science Fiction & Fantasy tales of challenging the norm. He has been a featured reader at The New York Review of Science Fiction and Sheree Renée Thomas’ Black Pot Mojo Reading Series. Older offers multiple workshops on story craft, as well as a series of workshops entitled, “Shape Your Shadow,” which engages diversity and literature in a much-needed conversation.

Some of his stories were collected in his first book Salsa Nocturna (2012). The first novel Half-Resurrection Blues (2015) is adult fantasy and began the Bone Street Rumba series. This novel pits half-dead Carlos Delacruz, an agent for the New York Council for the Dead, against an ancient sorcerer. Carlos is an inbetweener, “alive and dead at the same time,” with no memory of his past. He and other COD agents work to protect the mortal world and the land of the dead from each other. The series continues with the books Midnight Taxi Tango (2016) and Battle Hill Bolero (2017).

In 2015 Older also began The Shadowshaper Cypher series. Its first book was a young adult fantasy Shadowshaper. It is the story of Sierra Santiago, a young woman with the power to infuse art with spirits and save her community from destruction. Set in Older's modern, magical Brooklyn, Shadowshaper shows us the supernatural power of heritage while also tackling subjects like gentrification, cultural tourism, and young love. The first book is followed by Shadowhouse Fall (2017). He is also the author of the middle-grade book Dactyl Hill Squad (2018). The second book in the series, Dactyl Hill Squad Book 2: Freedom Fire was published in May 2019. His other books include Star Wars: Last Shot and co-edited with Rose Fox anthology Long Hidden.

Daniel José Older's recent book is an evocative multigenerational Cuban-American family story of revolution, loss, and family bonds The Book of Lost Saints (2019). It's an epic written for adults, featuring magical realism and complex exploration of the silence that permeates immigrant communities. The author took inspiration for this book from Gabriel García Márquez's and Isabel Allende's books. In addition to his writing, Older has taught at Voices at VONA, Mile High MFA Program, Vermont College of Fine Arts Writing for Children and Young Adults MFA program, Boricua College, St John’s University, and Rikers Island, among others.

Achievements

• Daniel José Older won the International Latino Book Award and has been nominated for the Kirkus Prize, the Mythopoetic Award, the Locus Award, the Andre Norton Award, and the World Fantasy Award. His book Shadowshaper was named one of Esquire’s 80 Books Every Person Should Read.
  
  

Works

More photos

• book

  • Midnight Taxi Tango

    (Carlos Delacruz, Brooklyn’s most notorious half-dead hitm...)

    2016
  • Half-Resurrection Blues

    (Carlos Delacruz is one of the New York Council of the Dea...)

    2015
  • Shadowhouse Fall

    (Sierra and her friends love their new lives as shadowshap...)

    2017
  • Dactyl Hill Squad

    (It's 1863 and dinosaurs roam the streets of New York as t...)

    2018
  • Salsa Nocturna: A Bone Street Rumba Collection

    (A 300-year-old story collector enlists the help of the co...)

    2012
  • Battle Hill Bolero

    (For years Carlos Delacruz has followed orders as a half-d...)

    2017
  • Shadowshaper

    (Sierra Santiago planned an easy summer of making art and ...)

    2015
  • The Book of Lost Saints

    (Marisol vanished during the Cuban Revolution, disappearin...)

    2019
  • Last Shot (Star Wars)

    (Last Shot consists of four storylines, spread across five...)

    2018
  • Freedom Fire

    (Magdalys and the squad are flying south on pteroback. Sou...)

    2019

Views

Daniel José Older created in 2014 a petition to change the World Fantasy Award statuette from a bust of H. P. Lovecraft to one of African-American author Octavia Butler, on account of Lovecraft's racism, and concerns that it would be disrespectful to recipients, in particular, those belonging to non-white ethnicities that Lovecraft held in particular contempt. Older has almost 2,500 signatories and in November 2015 it was announced that the World Fantasy Award trophy would no longer be modeled on H. P. Lovecraft.

Quotations: "I think storytelling is our deepest form of expression. It’s something we all do as humans, and I think it very often saves our lives. It’s how we process the world. It’s how we understand things and muddle through the problems we’re going through, whether they’re personal problems or gigantic, world-changing problems."

"It’s been one of the best things about being a writer - being inspired and inspiring other people."

"When you translate, something is always lost and something else gained. These are the immeasurable units of language, the tumbling impossibility of meaning stretched over the equally impossible borderlines of culture and perception."

"I think storytelling is our deepest form of expression. It’s something we all do as humans, and I think it very often saves our lives. It’s how we process the world. It’s how we understand things and muddle through the problems we’re going through, whether they’re personal problems or gigantic, world-changing problems. And I think that there’s a power to that when we’re the ones telling our own story, that supersedes anything else."

"Maybe the word hasn’t been invented yet - that thing beyond diversity. We often define movements by what they’re against, but the final goal is greater than the powers it dismantles, deeper than any statistic. It’s something like equity - a commitment to harvesting a narrative language so broad it has no face, no name."

"You can't tiptoe toward justice. You can't walk up to the door all polite and knock once or twice, hoping someone's home. Justice is a door that, when closed, must be kicked in."

Personality

Older's favorite books are Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Dune, Foundation, and Harry Potter.

Quotes from others about the person

• "Clearly, Older is a strong, creative writer." - Alex Brown

Interests

• Writers

  Tananarive Due, Jacqueline Woodson