Back before the height of genre popularity, most books were classified as just ‘sci-fi & fantasy’ even though the two areas of the genre tended to be very different from one another. You had your space operas and your epic fantasy worlds all living together under one umbrella. Now that there is more distinction in the subgenres, it is both easier and harder to categorize speculative fiction. In our previous lists we talked about authors who are prominent in either science fiction or fantasy. For this one we are going to take a look at the black authors who write sci-fi and fantasy, or sometimes mix them together to cross genre lines.

Reading genre fiction should expand your horizons, open your mind to new ideas. In order to be better allies, white people everywhere must work to understand the black experience. And one of the ways to do that is to read their work, and amplify black voices. To that end, we have compiled a list of black authors who write genre fiction. Do the work, read their words, and stand up against injustice, just like so many genre heroes would do.

We have covered some of these authors before in our lists for black history month. But reading black voices should not be limited to one month. Put these authors in your rotation and read them all year round.

We will be publishing several articles over the next few days with lists of black genre authors. For easy reference, we will be breaking down the categories into subgenres of Fantasy, Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction, and Authors Who Do Both. If you don’t see your favorite on this list, never fear. They are probably included in another category.

The Cross-Genre Authors Who Defy Easy Categorization

“Writers are in the business of mythmaking and imaginings, and imaginings are what, among other things, power resistance movements. Things can be better is an act of imagining, and writing concretizes that in very discrete fashion. Another element of mythmaking, particularly among marginalized communities, is an unveiling. Black writers revealing to a wider audience the interiority—the SOULS—of black folk.”

Emily O'Donnell is a writer and photographer with roots in some of the earliest online fandoms. She cut her genre teeth on the Wizard of Oz books at the tender age of 6 years old, and was reading epic adult fantasy novels by the age of 10. Decades later, she still consumes genre fiction like there is no tomorrow. She is delighted to be living through the golden age of sci-fi and fantasy popularity. She is unashamed of the amount of fanfiction that still lingers online under her name.