Aliya Whiteley is the author of many books of speculative fiction, including the fantasy/SF travelogue Three Eight One, which won the BSFA 2024 Best Novel award, Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlisted Skyward Inn and The Loosening Skin, and also The Beauty, which was shortlisted for a Shirley Jackson award. She lives in Sussex with her husband and daughter.

Her short fiction has appeared in F&SF, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Strange Horizons, The Dark, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and The Guardian, as well as in anthologies such as Unsung Stories’ 2084 and Lonely Planet’s Better than Fiction.

Her non-fiction includes The Secret Life of Fungi, a look at how fungi are a permanent presence in her life. She also writes a regular non-fiction column on sci fi and fantasy matters for Interzone magazine.

Here’s the unofficial bit:

I read a lot, I cook a lot, and I dance around the kitchen a lot if nobody’s looking. I love board games and video games, and grew up on D&D and 2000AD. I have a snoring dog who can’t resist a wrapped present. I write in cafes when I can. I’m coffee powered until midday, having learned the hard way to be mint tea powered after noon. My favourite authors include Iris Murdoch, Graham Greene, Rupert Thomson, Patrick McGrath, Octavia Butler, Ursula Le Guin, Christopher Priest, Alan Moore, Richard Brautigan, Yoko Ogawa, Doris Lessing, Emmanuel Carrere, Junji Ito, DH Lawrence, John Fowles, Daphne Du Maurier, Michel Faber, Nevil Shute, Shirley Jackson…

That’s a large pile of greatness.

Someone told me the other day that they like the way I write as if I’m trying to get out of the way of my subconscious, and that feels accurate. I like those moments in stories where you have no idea what’s going to happen next. The moments when genre can’t save you.