Nicky Drayden

Nicky Drayden is an artist, writer, and game designer, and she’s constantly shifting gears between mixing paints and mixing metaphors. Her debut novel, The Prey of Gods (Harper Voyager), featured in The New York Times Best of New Science Fiction and Fantasy and The Wall Street Journal’s Summer Reading: One Expert, One Book. Drayden’s sophomore novel, Temper, is touted as an exciting blend of Afrofuturism and New Weird. Her travels to South Africa as a college student influenced both of these works, and she enjoys blurring the genre lines between mythology, science fiction, fantasy, horror, and dark humor.

Drayden learned to write novels the old fashioned way, by banging out a crappy draft during the month of November with thousands of other aspiring novelists. In between novels, she frequently dabbles in short fiction, with over 30 stories in publications such as Shimmer, Daily Science Fiction, and Space and Time Magazine. She’s also recently dipped her toes into card game design, creating the cooperative Afrofutures card game, Prosper with Dragons that’s currently bringing heat to game nights across the globe.

Nicky Drayden lives and writes in Austin, Texas where being weird is highly encouraged, if not required. Her novel-length work is represented by Jennifer Jackson at the Donald Maass Literary Agency, and you can find out more about her at nickydrayden.com or catch her musings on her Patreon.