Nisi Shawl’s fiction collection Filter House, hailed by Ursula K. Le Guin as “superbly written,” was one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2008. It contains eleven reprints from magazines such as Asimov’s SF and Strange Horizons and from the groundbreaking Dark Matter anthologies of speculative fiction from the African diaspora, plus three previously unpublished stories. Shawl reviews science fiction for the Seattle Times and Ms. Magazine. A graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop, she currently serves on the workshop’s Board of Directors. Shawl is a co-founder of the Carl Brandon Society, a nonprofit literary organization dedicated to improving the representation of people of color in the fantastic genres. In 2008 she taught at the week-long Water World workshop held in Port Townsend, Washington as part of the Centrum Young Artists Project, and will return there in 2009. With Cynthia Ward, Shawl co-authored Writing the Other, which received a James Tiptree, Jr. Award Special Mention in 2005.