ABOUT MARISSA

(long version)

Marissa van Uden is a writer and full-time editor of dark speculative fiction (especially weird, horror, and eco-fiction) and nonfiction. Her editing credits include award winners, Amazon #1 bestsellers, National Geographic books, and genre magazines. She’s an associate editor at Apex Magazine, an assistant editor at Dark Matter Magazine, and a regular guest on the SFF Audio Podcast. Her short stories appear in Dark Matter Magazine and the Los Suelos interactive anthology. She grew up in Aotearoa-New Zealand, has lived in Dublin, Munich, Berlin, and Los Angeles, and now lives in the woods of rural Vermont, where she reads and writes next a beaver pond.

Notable fiction she’s helped to develop include Alys Arden’s The Casquette Girls (Amazon #1 bestseller, Starred by Publishers Weekly, and picked up in two-book deal by Skyscape Publishing) and The Romeo Catchers (Nominated for Best Young Adult Protagonist in the 2017 RT Reviewers’ Choice Awards); Ciara Ballintyne’s In The Company of the Dead (winner of Pinnacle Awards Best Fantasy Novel); Megan Crewe’s A Mortal Song (Amazon Kindle #1 Bestseller) and A Ruthless Magic; D Robert Pease’s Shadow Swarm (Winner of Mom’s Choice Awards Gold Medal in Fantasy & Science Fiction), D.A. Godwins Guardian’s Prophecy Series; and Debra Goelz’s Mermaids and the Vampires Who Love Them, which won the Watty award in 2014, was picked up by Hatchette Audiobooks, and was adapted into an interactive game in 2018.

She is a member of the Editorial Freelancers Association and has worked in a volunteer capacity for SFWA (Nebula Conference and curating book bundles) and FIYAH Magazine (the inaugral FIYAH Con).

Creatives who inspire her include Philip K Dick, Jeff VanderMeer, Roald Dahl (his fiction, not his politics), James Tiptree Jr., China Miéville, Octavia Butler, Cordwainer Smith, Carl Sagan, Jim Henson, Quentin Tarantino, Neil Druckmann, and every single person who worked on the video game The Last of Us. 

PODCASTS & BOOK REVIEWS

Marissa reviews novels, nonfiction, short stories and (coming soon) science fiction/fantasy narrative-based video games. She joins fellow dickheads Jesse Willis and Paul Weimar — sometimes with very special guests — at the SFF Audio podcast to review all of PKD’s works in roughly the order he wrote them, and to talk about Things in speculative fiction.

YOU CAN FRIEND/FOLLOW/FIND HER AT