Adam R. Shannon is a firefighter/paramedic, speculative fiction writer, food producer, and animal companion. His work has appeared in magazines, podcasts, and anthologies including Apex, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Glitter + Ashes: Queer Tales of a World That Wouldn't Die, and The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019. He was a finalist for the 2019 Sturgeon Award for best science fiction story of the year, and the 2022 Washington Science Fiction Association Small Press Award for Short Fiction. He’s a graduate of the Clarion West writers workshop.
You can find his recent publications here.
Me and Buki
Hi, this is Adam, and that was me talking about myself in the third person. If you have time to read more, here it is.
I visited the Emergency Room a lot as a kid. There’s no unifying theme to those events, other than carelessness and rotten luck. I was stung by a swarm of bees. I wasn’t wearing a seat belt in a violent car accident. I broke my arm trying to tackle someone laughably larger than myself in a pickup football game. I remember the relief I felt when someone helped me during those frightening, painful events.
Nowadays, I'm a career Firefighter/Paramedic in the northern Virginia area. I see many people on the worst day of their lives. I meet some of them on their last day. I try to comfort and help them just as those strangers did for me, many years ago.
I'm also a fiction writer. Words are tools with an astonishing capacity to wound or heal. Speculative fiction allows me the freedom to tinker with the impossible, in worlds where we can wander beyond the boundaries of normal life.
In 2017 I attended Clarion West, a workshop for writers of speculative fiction. I wholeheartedly recommend it to aspiring and emerging authors. If you have questions about my experience there, just drop me a line or DM me.
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