Eris Young

I’m a queer, transgender writer of speculative fiction and nonfiction.

I'm also fiction editor at 2024 British Fantasy Award-winning science fiction magazine, Shoreline of Infinity.

stories

Awards-Eligible Works

Lacquer Cabinet Trick

GIGANOTOSAURUS, May 2024 Read it here

Longlisted for a BSFA award for Best Short Story! BSFA members can vote HERE until 29 March.

Hugo Award nominations closing 14th March.

Reviewed in Locus Magazine:

“Young builds up a cross-genre experience that is part mystery, part romance, part courtroom drama, and part gaslamp fantasy, blending the disparate elements into a seamless and captivating whole. At its heart, the story deals with prejudice and fate and the prices often paid for resisting both. But there is strength and fortune (as well as very entertaining reading) to be found when people marginalized by the system stand together, and defy the forces pushing them toward destruction and ruination. That the story’s structure follows the steps of the sisters’ signature trick adds a nice layer of misdirection and flourish, and it all comes together quite well.”

Broderie Écossaise

NOVA SCOTIA 2, LUNA PRESS; Aug 2024 (excerpted here)

This story appears in a follow-up volume to Nova Scotia: New Scottish Speculative Fiction (2005), published to coincide with Glasgow Worldcon in August. Read an excerpt here.

Previously Published Works

The Outer Body

STARSHIPSOFA 750 (free to listen)

Narrated by Katra Ariello

All That Water

THE FUTURE FIRE 72 February, 2025 (free to read)

IMMIGRANT SCI-FI SHORT STORIES anthology, Flame Tree Publishing; 14 – 3 – 2023

BFS HORIZONS 14; 5 – 10 – 2022

first place winner, 2021 British Fantasy Society short story competition.

Idomeneja

PSEUDOPOD 831; 7 – 10 – 2022 (free to read/listen)

“OH MY. If you want an unsettling, disturbing horror tale that burrows into the ground, into an ancient grave, and into the past and into history to bring you a different kind of blood-drinking creature, then this story is most certainly for you… I loved every delicious drop of this story and the way it plays around with perspective and power.”

– Maria Haskins

From Clay

GWYLLION #3; 2021, reprinting May 2024 in SMALL WONDERS #11 (free to read)

Deal

ESCAPE POD 769; 2021 (free to read/listen)

Featured on the Nerds of a Feather 2022 Hugo Award Recommended Reading List

“A beautiful story of an Earth visited by aliens and the complex lines of help and love. The piece is careful while still showing people with their messy edges and I just really like this one a lot.”

– Charles Payseur, Quick Sip Reviews

Little Cat from the Bronx

UNCANNY BODIES anthology, Luna Press; 2020

Meules

WE WERE ALWAYS HERE anthology, 404 INK; 2018

superfine

SHORELINE OF INFINITY #14; 2019

METASTELLAR; 2021 (free to read/listen)

The Archivist

F, M, OR OTHER anthology, Knight Errant Press; 2018

FUSION FRAGMENT #3; 2021

The Collector of Cursed Objects

ESOTERICA JOURNAL; 2018

SCRUTINY JOURNAL; 2018

ASTRAL WATERS REVIEW #3; 2019

It Brought the Snow

BEWILDERING STORIES MAGAZINE; 2017

EXPANDED HORIZONS; 2018

DEFENESTRATIONISM!; 2021 (free to read/listen)

Finalist, 2021 DEFENESTRATIONISM! short story competition

short nonfiction

"Nonbinary Thinking" with Blair Hodges

FAMILY PROCLAMATIONS PODCAST

11/JUNE/2024

Travelling as a Nonbinary Person

SIX-TWO TRAVEL MAGAZINE

19/JUNE/2024

How Writing a Book Brought Me Closer to My Partner

RESIDENCE 11

2022

How to Avoid LGBTQ+ Stereotypes in Fiction

NOVELISTS, INC.

2022

What it's like to live as a trans person in Scotland

THE NATIONAL, with Kez Rush and Purina Alpha

2021

interview with Torrey Peters on Detransition, Baby

THE SKINNY

2021

Seven Things Writers Get Wrong About Language

MYTHCREANTS

2018

my books

Ace Voices

How do we experience attraction?
What does love mean to us?
When did you realise you were ace?
This is the ace community in their own words.
Drawing upon interviews with a wide range of people across the asexual spectrum, ACE VOICES is an empowering, enriching journey through the rich multitudes of asexual, aromantic, demi and gray-a life.
With chapters spanning everything from dating, relationships and sex, to mental and emotional health, family, community and joy, the inspirational stories and personal experiences within these pages speak to aces living and loving in unique ways. Find support amongst the diverse narratives of aces sex-repulsed and sex-favourable, alongside voices exploring what it means to be black and ace, to be queer and ace, or ace and multi-partnered – and use it as a springboard for your own ace growth, or to better support the ace and ace-spectrum people in your own life.

They/
Them/
Their

‘The go-to book on everything non-binary’ MEG-JOHN BARKER
‘A succinct tour through the non-binary and genderqueer experience’ PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

In this insightful and long-overdue book, Eris Young explores what it’s like to live outside of the gender binary and how it can impact on one’s relationships, sense of identity, use of language and more.

Drawing on the author’s own experiences as a nonbinary person, as well as interviews and research, it shares common experiences and challenges faced by those who are nonbinary, and what friends, family and other cisgender people can do to support them. Breaking down misconceptions and providing definitions, the history of nonbinary identities and gender-neutral language, and information on healthcare, this much-needed guide is for anyone wanting to fully understand nonbinary and genderqueer identities.

freelance services

I offer editorial and sensitivity-reading services at the rates listed below, and am available for speaking engagements about any of my work. I also run creative writing workshops around various topics including building tension in genre fiction by controlling the flow of information (a sold-out workshop held at cymera festival in 2022), writing dialogue, and fantasy worldbuilding.

If you'd like to engage my services please get in touch via email.

I was a 2023 finalist for the IPSE freelancer awards, for my work as a sensitivity/authenticity reader for transgender, nonbinary, queer, ace-spectrum and neurodivergent (ADHD) characters/themes. I offer SR services at the following rate:
£.01 / word for works up to 100,000 words, minimum £50

I also offer short story critiques (up to ~10,000 words):
£.008 / word, minimum £25

If you're looking to arrange an author visit or event related to my nonfiction books, please copy in my publicist, Harry Taylor, or my agent, Alex Cochran.

contact, presskit, and about me

contact and socials

I am represented by Alex Cochran at C&W Agency, London.

instagram

twitter

author bios

for speculative fiction:

Eris Young is a queer, transgender writer of speculative fiction. Their work has appeared in Pseudopod, Fusion Fragment, Escape Pod and Metastellar, as well as anthologies including the Immigrant Sci Fi Short Stories anthology from Flame Tree Press. Their short story, All That Water, won first prize in the 2021 British Fantasy Society short story competition. They are an editor at Shoreline of Infinity magazine, were the writer-in-residence at Lighthouse, Edinburgh's radical bookshop, from 2019 – 2022, and in 2020 received a Scottish Book Trust New Writer Award for fiction.

for nonfiction:

Eris Young is a queer, transgender writer of fiction and nonfiction. Their books They/Them/Their: A guide to nonbinary and genderqueer identities (2019) and Ace Voices: What it means to be asexual, aromantic, demi or gray-ace (2022), are published by Jessica Kingsley. They were the writer-in-residence at Lighthouse, Edinburgh's radical bookshop, from 2019 – 2022, in 2020 received a Scottish Book Trust New Writer Award for fiction, and are a 2023 IPSE Freelancer Award finalist, in the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion category.

a little more about me

I split my time between Santa Ana, California (lands first inhabited by the Tongva and Acjachemen people) and Edinburgh, Scotland. My interests besides writing include cooking and mycology, and if I'm not at my desk you can often find me in the woods looking for interesting fungus.

I'm currently the fiction editor at Shoreline of Infinity, Scotland's sci fi magazine. I was the Writer in Residence at Lighthouse, Edinburgh's radical bookshop, from 2019 - 2022. In 2020, I was awarded a Scottish Book Trust New Writer Award for fiction. In 2023, my novel-in-progress, Idomeneja, Or, The Death Mask, was longlisted for the Cheshire Novel Prize.

past event recordings

Speaking on Technology, Identity and Desire at the Edinburgh Futures Institute, March, 2023

Sold-out Book Launch for Ace Voices at the Assembly Roxy in Edinburgh, January, 2023

Instagram Live session with Relationship Coach Ali Hendry, February, 2023

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