Gareth L. Powell is the author of 20+ books, including novels, novellas, short fiction collections, and About Writing, his guide for aspiring authors.
He has twice won the British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Novel (previous winners include J. G. Ballard and Arthur C. Clarke) and has become one of the most shortlisted authors in the award’s 50-year history. He has also been a finalist for the Locus Award (twice), the British Fantasy Award, the Seiun Award, the Premios Ignotus, and the Canopus Award.
Gareth is the Managing Editor of Stars and Sabers Publishing, the publishing imprint he founded with his spouse, the American author Jendia Gammon.
He started writing seriously as a teenager and was lucky to be able to count Diana Wynne Jones and Helen Dunmore as early mentors. More recently, he has co-written stories with bestselling authors Peter F. Hamilton and Aliette de Bodard, and his work has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, Japanese, Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Catalan, and Croatian.
His short fiction has appeared in the magazines Clarkesworld, Interzone, Galaxy, Worlds of IF, and others, and has been featured in numerous anthologies, including Shine: The Anthology of Optimistic Science Fiction, and The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Second Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois.
Gareth is popular on social media for the time he spends giving advice and support to fledgeling authors. He is extremely knowledgeable about writing, and genre writing in particular, and is also a popular and entertaining guest for podcasts, conventions and literary festivals. He has hosted numerous writing workshops at universities and schools in the UK, Europe, and USA, and is also a tutor for The Bestseller Academy.
As a freelancer writer, he has penned a strip for long-running British comic 2000 AD, articles for The Guardian, Irish Times, Acoustic Magazine, and SFX Magazine, and currently writes a monthly column about future tech for The Engineer.
In 2023, he was a consultant on Creative Futures, a research partnership between Coventry University and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), exploring the challenges faced by the UK and the world at large over the next 100 years.
Currently, Gareth is based in Bristol, UK. He is married to the American author Jendia Gammon and is represented by literary agent Lucienne Diver at The Knight Agency.
Awards and Nominations
- 2024 Premios Ignotus – Foreign Short Novel – Light Chaser (finalist)
- 2023 BSFA Awards – Best Novel – Descendant Machine (finalist)
- 2023 Canopus Awards – Published Long-Form Fiction – Light Chaser (finalist)
- 2022 BSFA Awards – Best Novel –Stars and Bones (finalist)
- 2021 BSFA Awards – Best Shorter Fiction – Light Chaser (finalist)
- 2021 Seiun Awards – Best Translated Novel – Embers of War (finalist)
- 2020 BSFA Awards – Best Novel – Light of Impossible Stars (finalist)
- 2020 British Fantasy Awards – Best Novella – Ragged Alice (finalist)
- 2020 Locus Awards – Best SF Novel – Fleet of Knives (finalist)
- 2019 BSFA Awards – Best Novel – Fleet of Knives (finalist)
- 2019 BSFA Awards – Best Shorter Fiction – Ragged Alice (finalist)
- 2019 BSFA Awards – Best Non-fiction – About Writing (finalist)
- 2019 Locus Awards – Best SF Novel – Embers of War (finalist)
- 2018 BSFA Award – Best Novel – Embers of War (winner)
- 2016 Seiun Awards – Best Translated Novel – Ack-Ack Macaque (finalist)
- 2015 BSFA Awards – Best Short Fiction – ‘Ride The Blue Horse’ (finalist)
- 2013 BSFA Award – Best Novel – Ack-Ack Macaque (winner)
Praise
“On my must-read list.” – Ann Leckie
“The ideas fizz off the page.” – The Guardian
“Current leader of the British space-opera pack.” – The Morning Star
“One of our best modern SF writers.” – Adrian Tchaikovsky
“Powell understands and adeptly utilises genre fiction’s capacity to combine everyday qualities of friendship, responsibility, collaboration and self-sacrifice … there is also a slightly offbeat, quirky side to his writing which underpins his popularity” – Nick Hubble
“When you have an imagination like Gareth Powell’s, you must write or paint or otherwise vent that imagination through art so your head won’t explode.” – New York Journal of Books
“Grittily poetic.” – Locus Magazine
“A masterful writer.” – Jonathan Maberry
“One of the most consistently entertaining UK SF writers” – Matthew Cavanagh
“A creative and literate space opera author.” – Publisher’s Weekly Starred Review