Background

Silvia Moreno-Garcia was born in Mexico. Her parents worked for radio stations.

Education

Silvia Moreno-Garcia has a Master of Arts degree in Science and Technology Studies from the University of British Columbia. Her thesis was titled Magna Mater: Women and Eugenic Thought in the Work of H.P. Lovecraft.

Career

Moreno-Garcia began her career publishing in various fiction magazines and books including Exile Quarterly. Her first short story collection This Strange Way of Dying was published in September 2013 by Exile Editions. Her second collection, Love and Other Potions came out in 2014 from Innsmouth Free Press. Her debut novel Signal to Noise was about music and magic in Mexico City and was published in 2015 by Solaris Books. Her second novel Certain Dark Things focused on narco vampires, the third, The Beautiful Ones, is a fantasy of manners.

She serves as publisher of Innsmouth Free Press, an imprint devoted to weird fiction. With Paula R. Stiles, she co-edited the books Historical Lovecraft (2011), Future Lovecraft (2012), Sword and Mythos (2014), and She Walks In Shadows (2015). With Orrin Grey, she co-edited Fungi (2013), a collection of "fungal fiction". With Lavie Tidhar, she edits The Jewish Mexican Literary Review.

Her most recent work is the novel Gods of Jade and Shadow (2019).

Achievements

• Silvia Moreno-Garcia was nominated for the British Fantasy, Locus, Aurora, and Sunburst awards. She was a finalist for the 2011 Manchester Fiction Prize. Her book Certain Dark Things was selected as one of National Public Radio's best books of 2016 and a Publishers Weekly top ten. Signal to Noise was named one of the best books of the year by BookRiot, Tordotcom, BuzzFeed, and io9.

Works

More photos

• book

  • This Strange Way of Dying

    (Spanning a variety of genres - fantasy, science fiction, ...)

    2013
  • Dead North

    (An enjoyable and rollicking ride, this collection contain...)

    2013
  • She Walks in Shadows

    (The pale and secretive Lavinia wanders through the woods,...)

    2015
  • Gods of Jade and Shadow

    (The Jazz Age is in full swing, but Casiopea Tun is too bu...)

    2019
  • Future Lovecraft

    (Decades, centuries, and even thousands of years in the fu...)

    2012
  • Certain Dark Things

    (Certain Dark Things is a pulse-pounding and action-packed...)

    2016
  • Sword & Mythos

    (Aztec warriors ready for battle, intent on conquering a n...)

    2014
  • Prime Meridian

    (The Mars of the movies and the imagination, an endless ba...)

    2017
  • The Beautiful Ones

    (The Beautiful Ones is a sweeping fantasy of manners set i...)

    2017
  • Fungi

    (A collection of fungal wonders and terrors. In this new a...)

    2013
  • Signal to Noise

    (Mexico City, 1988. Long before iTunes or MP3s, you said "...)

    2015

Views

Legends and folklore influence her work. Oral tradition is a pretty big deal to her. Her great-grandmother's stories, her oral narratives, had a big impact on Silvia. She told her stories of her childhood, folktales, she sometimes narrated movies she’d seen. If she hadn’t told her stories, she wouldn’t write today.

Lovecraft is a huge influence on the field of horror. She likes his sense of dread and madness. She also enjoys how the past tends to come back to haunt his characters.

Quotations: "I don't write in a single category. I've written magic realism, horror, fantasy, and noir. The switching of categories, along with the fact I have no interest in long sagas, means it is harder to make money with my writing. Thus, any little bit extra helps keep me writing. Yes, I have a job that pays my bills, but as most writers will tell you what the money buys is time to write so I don't have to be side hustling for late night pizza. It can also help me attend cons or other events, which I normally don't do."

"One of the things I’m trying to do with my son is to tell him all the stories I was told as a child so that he’ll tell them to someone else. It’s the only way our ancestors will be remembered and our stories will live on."

"Love dies in different ways. For most, it is a slow, agonizing death. Meche, however, cut her love the same way the executioner might chop ahead: with a single, accurate swing."

Personality

Silvia loves Canada, but there’s always a bit of guilt for abandoning her family and her old city. But she can’t go back. That Mexico is gone but it lives in her memory. It’s a weird thing for her, it’s like a ghost of her past life.

Connections

Silvia Moreno-Garcia is married. The marriage produced a son.