14 Facts About Nalo Hopkinson

Nalo Hopkinson was the co-editor with Uppinder Mehan of the 2004 anthology So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Visions of the Future, and with Geoff Ryman co-edited Tesseracts 9.

Nalo Hopkinson defended George Elliott Clarke's novel Whylah Falls on the CBC's Canada Reads 2002.

Nalo Hopkinson was the curator of Six Impossible Things, an audio series of Canadian fantastical fiction on CBC Radio One.

Nalo Hopkinson was born 20 December 1960 in Kingston, Jamaica, to Freda and Abdur Rahman Slade Hopkinson.

Nalo Hopkinson was raised in a literary environment; her mother was a library technician and her father a Guyanese poet, playwright and actor who taught English and Latin.

Nalo Hopkinson's writing is influenced by the fairy and folk tales she read at a young age, among which were the Afro-Caribbean stories about Anansi, as well as Western works including Gulliver's Travels, the Iliad, and the Odyssey; she was known to have read the works of Shakespeare around the time she was reading Homer.

Nalo Hopkinson lived in Toronto from 1977 to 2011, before moving to Riverside, California, where she works as Professor of Creative Writing at University of California, Riverside.

Nalo Hopkinson has a Master of Arts degree in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University, where she studied with her mentor and instructor, science fiction writer James Morrow.

Nalo Hopkinson has taught writing at various programs around the world, including stints as writer-in-residence at Clarion East, Clarion West and Clarion South.

In 2011, Nalo Hopkinson was hired as an associate professor in creative writing with an emphasis on science fiction, fantasy, and magical realism at University of California, Riverside.

Nalo Hopkinson is historically conscious and uses knowledge from growing up in Caribbean communities in her writing, including the use of Creole and character backgrounds from Caribbean countries including Trinidad and Jamaica.

Nalo Hopkinson has been a key speaker and guest of honor at multiple science fiction conventions.

Nalo Hopkinson is one of the founding members of the Carl Brandon Society and serves on the board.

In 2016, Nalo Hopkinson received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Anglia Ruskin University.