Amal El-Mohtar

1 universe Last reviewed 2026-08-19

Amal El-Mohtar is a Canadian author, poet, and critic of Lebanese descent, born December 13, 1984, in Ottawa, Ontario. She spent two years of her childhood in Lebanon, ages six to eight, where she developed her love of science fiction and fantasy and wrote her first poem. As of 2026 she has been pursuing a PhD in English at Carleton University and has taught creative writing at both Carleton and the University of Ottawa. Since 2006 she has edited Goblin Fruit, a magazine devoted to fantastical poetry, and since February 2018 she has served as a science fiction and fantasy book reviewer for the New York Times Book Review; she also appeared as a guest instructor on Brandon Sanderson's Writing Excuses podcast in its thirteenth season (2018). Her best-known work is This Is How You Lose the Time War (2019), an epistolary science fiction novella co-written with Max Gladstone about rival time-traveling agents who fall in love across warring timelines, which has been optioned for television. Her other works include the novella The River Has Roots (2025) and the collection Seasons of Glass & Iron: Stories (2026). El-Mohtar has won multiple Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards, including the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Novella and the 2025 Nebula Award for Best Novella. She has been married to Stu West since 2015, is bisexual, and divides her time between Ottawa and Glasgow.

Universe(s)

Books

• The River Has Roots (2025) · The River Has Roots Core Canon

Aggregate across all universes

• Total Core Canon books across all universes: 1 book
• Award recognitions across all universes: 3 (2 won, 1 finalist mention)

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