Happy birthday to the enigmatic and acclaimed Birdverse creator R. B. Lemberg
A queer, bigender immigrant from Eastern Europe and Israel, R. B. Lemberg is best know for their Birdverse, a complex, culturally diverse world with many LGBTQIA+ characters and different family configurations. Lemberg’s award-winning Birdverse stories and poems appeared in/at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Uncanny, Heiresses of Russ (2016), The Long List Anthology (2016), Transcendent 3: The Year’s Best Transgender Speculative Fiction 2017, Strange Horizons, Through the Gate, Goblin Fruit, and their patreon. The first Birdverse novella, THE FOUR PROFOUND WEAVES (2020), garnered nearly universal acclaim and was a finalist for the World Fantasy, Nebula, Ignyte, and Locus Awards. Lemberg’s first full length Birdverse novel THE UNBALANCING (2022) was released to similar acclaim. Same held true with the collection Geometries of Belonging: Stories & Poems From the Birdverse (2022).
Many of their non-Birdverse works were published by numerous venues including Warrior Wisewoman (2008), Fantasy Magazine, Jabberwocky 6, People of the Book: A Decade of Jewish Fantasy and Science Fiction (2010), Daily Science Fiction, Bahamut, Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology (2015), Queers Destroy Science Fiction! (2015), Sunspot Jungle (2018), Best of Uncanny Magazine (2019), Fireside Magazine, Glittership, and Disabled People Destroy Fantasy! (2019). Some of Lemberg’s poetry was collected in Marginalia to Stone Bird (2016). They founded the speculative poetry magazine Stone Telling and edited the anthologies The Moment of Change (2012) Here, We Cross (2012), An Alphabet of Embers (2016), and Climbing Lightly Through Forests: Poetry in tribute to Ursula K. Le Guin (2021 with Lisa M. Bradley).
A sociolinguist, Lemberg works as an associate professor at a Midwestern university and lives with their spouse Bogi Takács, a fellow queer, trans, and Eastern European Jewish person.
All of us at Tachyon wish the magical, groundbreaking R. B. an amazing birthday!
