The first-ever Hugo award for a poem was awarded to Marie Brennan at Worldcon 2025. In addition to poetry, Marie is an accomplished author of novels and short stories. Thanks to Marie for talking with me!
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Myna: Tell us about your Hugo-winning poem, “A War of Words” (Strange Horizons). What themes do you explore?
Marie: The inspiration for it came while I was reading Robert Bringhurst’s book A Story as Sharp as a Knife: The Classical Haida Mythtellers and Their World. There’s a story in there, narrated by Kilxhawgins, which implies that some young men raiding a village not only kidnap the women they meet, but steal the odd cry of delight they heard the women making beforehand.
In a typical move for me, I thought, “Hmmm, a world in which warfare involves stealing words out of someone’s language! That sounds cool!”, sat down, wrote the poem – and then, having done so, looked back and though, “Ohhhhh. Yeah, okay, this is about what colonialism does to indigenous languages.” (Or, for that matter, the current conservative war on “diversity” and other such words that point in directions they don’t like.)
I rarely think about theme first before writing. But sometimes, after I’ve written a piece, I see very clearly what I didn’t realize I was talking about until I was done.
Myna: When a reader finishes the last word in the poem, what emotion will they be feeling?
Marie: Not gonna lie, this one is a downer. It’s a poem about loss, and it doesn’t end with a promise that anything can be regained.
Myna: Do you have other poems we can read?
Marie: I’m still new enough to poetry that I haven’t published a ton, and of what there is, not all of it is available for free online. But “Damnatio Memoriae” (in Fantasy Magazine) is a bit akin to “A War of Words,” while “To the Angels Alone” (in Augur) reflects my folkloric interests, and “Hermit of the Crossroads” (in Haven Spec) feels like a very me poem: a rhymed and metered form called terza rima, a secondary-world setting, exploration of a religious/magical concept.
Myna: You’ve found success in so many different types of writing. How did you get started? Is there a type, form, or style that feels more comfortable to you than others?
Marie: I was a natural novelist first – in fact, I wrote two perfectly competent novels (both of them now published: Warrior and Lies and Prophecy) before I wrote a single short story that wasn’t an abject failure! Learning to write other things has always happened as a bit of a light switch for me, rather than slow practice and improvement. It’s just that one day my brain goes, ohhhh, THAT’S what a short story-sized idea looks like – or poetry, or what have you. They’re different gears in my head, and until I find how to shift into that gear, I just don’t produce that kind of thing.
Myna: Tell us about your novels!
Marie: Since those are the thing I started doing first, I have quite a lot of them at this point! I’ve written all over the spectrum of fantasy: everything from historical fantasy (the Onyx Court quartet) to contemporary fantasy (the Wilders trilogy – currently unfinished, alas) to a standalone Viking revenge epic (The Waking of Angantyr) to whatever Driftwood is to my most well-known series, the Memoirs of Lady Trent, about a Victorian-esque woman who becomes a field biologist for dragons. I also co-write with my friend Alyc Helms under the name M.A. Carrick, where we have an epic fantasy trilogy, Rook and Rose.
Myna: Can you tell us more about your short fiction. What is your primary area of interest? Can you suggest a few for us to read?
Marie: Probably the bulk of it lands in secondary world fantasy – my anthropological background showing through. I also do a fair bit of folklore-based work, and then smaller amounts of contemporary and historical fantasy.
I’ve made a practice of collecting it all into novella-sized books, organized around those subgenres. Two of those came out this year: The Atlas of Anywhere for secondary world fantasy – which reprints “A War of Words” alongside the stories – and A Songbook of Sparks for folkloric works, specifically stories based on traditional ballads and songs. Those and my other collections are all listed on my website.
Myna: Tell us about your teaching!
Marie: I started publishing while I was in grad school, where I was also TAing and occasionally teaching my own courses – including one focused specifically on writing speculative short stories. I found that really rewarding, so once I left academia, I kept looking for other opportunities. I did a condensed version of that course for Duke’s TIP program, for gifted middle school students, and recently spent a couple of days lecturing at the Alpha Young Writers’ Workshop. I’ve also done more focused workshops and classes for Clarion West and the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, covering specific aspects of worldbuilding, writing fight scenes – I have an ebook on that! – and how to pare down the wordcount of a story without losing any of its flavor or content. And then there have been some one-on-one mentorships, especially through SFWA.
Teaching something really does help you understand it better. I like the challenge of figuring out how to talk about an aspect of writing craft, getting a better grip on how I do what I do.
Myna: And you’re a photographer, too? I’d love to hear more about that!
Marie: It’s my one visual arts hobby! (Well, that and a minor resurgence of calligraphy: I did the lettering for the pattern deck Alyc and I crowd-funded as an accompaniment to the Rook and Rose books.) I mostly take pictures when I’m traveling, which I love to do; at home I’ll occasionally pull out my phone to snap a pic, but I don’t tend to take a lot unless I’m outside my usual environment. A lot of my focus is on architecture, like this shot of Venice’s Piazza San Marco, which is one of my personal favorites.
Photography has had an interesting effect for me as a writer. I’ve discovered a love of photographing little details – things I might not have even glanced at if I was just wandering through, not looking for something that might make a good picture. I suspect it’s upped my descriptive game, since after all, you have to think about details before you can say anything about them.
I have a selection of my photos up on my website, organized geographically – there are regional galleries for areas like Asia (so far, Japan and India) or the British Isles (which I’ve visited numerous times), or for certain subjects, like cemeteries or birds. I’ve even sold a few prints! If anybody wants one, they can get in touch with me via the contact form on my site, and we’ll discuss size and medium.
Myna: Do you have a pet, or other non-writing hobbies/activities?
Marie: Anybody who spends their time sitting at a computer for a living should absolutely find some physical hobby, if at all possible. For me, that’s shōrin-ryu karate, which I’ve been practicing for seventeen years. Even on days when I’m really not in the mood to walk away from the computer – especially on days when I’m not in the mood – it’s beneficial for me to get out of my head for a little while and into my body instead.
Myna: What’s next for you?
Marie: Two things at once! Alyc and I are doing another M.A. Carrick series, an alternate history duology called the Sea Beyond, about a changeling trying to figure out how conquistadors are mapping and controlling the islands of the faerie Otherworld, and the young woman whose place he took, now lost among those islands. And then under my own name, I’m about to start a trilogy about a Buddhist-style monk with incredibly terrible karma, who goes on pilgrimage to try and fix that.
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Marie Brennan is a former anthropologist and folklorist who shamelessly leans on her academic fields for inspiration. She is the author of more than twenty novels, ninety short stories, and several poems; her work has won the Hugo Award and been nominated for the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. As half of M.A. Carrick, she has also written the Rook and Rose epic fantasy trilogy. Find her at swantower.com and on Patreon.
Myna Chang 