ABOUT MARISSA

(long version)

Marissa van Uden is a writer and full-time editor from Aotearoa-New Zealand who now lives in the woods of Vermont. She specializes in horror, weird fiction, and other dark speculative fiction. Her short stories appear in Dark Matter Magazine and the Los Suelos interactive anthology. She’s a freelance manuscript editor, an acquisitions editor for Dark Matter Magazine, and an associate editor at Apex Magazine. You can often find her sitting by the beaver pond, following animal tracks through the woods, or taking photos of lichens and fungi.

Marissa is an active member of the Editorial Freelancers Association whose editing credits include award winners, Amazon #1 bestsellers, and National Geographic books. Notable fiction she has edited include Alys Arden’s The Casquette Girls (which became an Amazon #1 bestseller, was 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.

Creatives who inspire her include Philip K Dick, Jeff VanderMeer, James Tiptree Jr., Octavia Butler, Roald Dahl (his fiction, not his politics), China Miéville, Cordwainer Smith, Carl Sagan, Jim Henson, 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