Happy weekend! As a follow-up to my thoughts yesterday about authors working in multiple genres, it’s worth noting that while authors absolutely need to read widely in the genre(s) they write in, very few authors only read in the genre(s) they write in. Personally, I’ve added a lot of romance into the rotation in the past year or so, though I have no idea whether I’d be capable of writing it or not. I’ve also been reading a lot more fantasy, especially new fantasy novels that break the fusty old mold of Tolkien-esque Man On Quest, With Creatures.

Kat Howard’s AN UNKINDNESS OF MAGICIANS, which features a fierce, powerful magic-making heroine in a beautifully realized alternate world, is one of my favorite recent fantasy reads. I’m delighted to welcome her to the blog as today’s #read99women guest.

Kat Howard is a writer of fantasy, science fiction, and horror who lives and writes in New Hampshire.

Her novella THE END OF THE SENTENCE, co-written with Maria Dahvana Headley, was one of NPR's best books of 2014, and her debut novel ROSES AND ROT was a finalist for the Locus Award for Best First Novel. AN UNKINDNESS OF MAGICIANS was named a best book of 2017 by NPR, and won a 2018 Alex Award. Her recent short fiction collection A CATHEDRAL OF MYTH AND BONE collects work that has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, performed as part of Selected Shorts, and anthologized in year’s best and best of volumes, as well as new pieces original to the collection. She's currently the writer for THE BOOKS OF MAGIC, part of DC Comics' Sandman Universe. Her next novel, A SLEIGHT OF SHADOWS, is the sequel to AN UNKINDNESS OF MAGICIANS and will be out in June 2020. In the past, she’s been a competitive fencer and a college professor. You can find her @KatwithSword on Twitter and on Instagram.

And speaking of crossing genres, Kat’s choice for #read99women is Nina MacLaughlin’s HAMMER HEAD.

“If you had told me at any point before I read it that a memoir on becoming a carpenter would become one of my very favorite books, I would never have believed you. Thankfully, no one asked before sending me an ARC of Nina MacLaughlin's gorgeous book, HAMMER HEAD. The first time I read it, I read it all in one day. And yes, it's about becoming a carpenter and the story of MacLaughlin's journey into that life is beautiful and rich and moved me in ways I didn't anticipate. But this is also a book about the idea of making things - creating space in your own life to remake yourself, learning to see the way pieces of things fit together. It's the book I recommend most. It's the book I go back to again and again when my own words are stuck in my head. It's a kind of spirit level for my soul, and I love it.”