A former neuroscientist and fiction MFA graduate from the University of Nevada, Reno, Persian-Chicagoan Naseem Jamnia garnered the 2023 Judith A. Markowitz Award for Exceptional New LGBTQ Writer and a nomination for Astounding Award for Best New Writer. Their acclaimed THE BRUISING OF QILWA (2022), was nominated for the World Fantasy Award and was a finalist for the Locus Award. Naseem co-write the academic text Positive Interactions with At-Risk Children (2019 with Mojdeh Bayat) and their work appeared in the Lambda Literary EMERGE anthology (2020), We Made Uranium! And Other True Stories from the University of Chicago’s Extraordinary Scavenger Hunt (2019), The Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, The Rumpus, The Writer’s Chronicle, and other venues.

Jamina received fellowships from the 2018 Bitch Media Fellow in Technology, a 2019 Lambda Literary Fellow in Young Adult Fiction, and a 2022 Otherwise Fellow. They were named the inaugural Samuel R. Delany Fellow from CatStone Books. Jaminia is also the managing editor at Sword & Kettle Press, a tiny independent publishing house of inclusive feminist speculative fiction, and the former managing editor at Sidequest.zone, an independent gaming criticism website.

Everyone at Tachyon wishes the awesome Naseem a happy birthday!