Kai Ashante Wilson

1 universe Last reviewed 2026-08-18

Kai Ashante Wilson is an American writer of speculative fiction, born in Toledo, Ohio, and active in the field since 2013. He was selected as a 2010 Octavia E. Butler Scholar at the Clarion Writing Workshop in San Diego, a program that supports writers of color entering the genre. His fiction has appeared in venues including Apex Magazine, Tor.com, and PodCastle, as well as several 'Best of the Year' anthologies. His debut novella, The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps (2015), introduces a sword-and-sorcery world blending African-inflected mythology, queer romance, and dense, lyrical prose; it won the 2016 Crawford Award for best first fantasy novel and was shortlisted for the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Locus awards. Its companion novella, A Taste of Honey (2016), returns to the same setting from a different vantage point and was likewise widely praised and award-nominated. His short fiction, including 'Legendaire' (2013), 'Super Bass' (2013), 'The Devil in America' (2014), 'Kaiju maximus(r)' (2015), and 'The Lamentation of Their Women' (2017), has drawn nominations for the Shirley Jackson and Theodore Sturgeon awards among others. Wilson is known for interrogating conventions of epic fantasy through voice, structure, and explicit attention to race, sexuality, and colonialism, and for building a shared fictional universe across several of his major works.

Universe(s)

Books

• The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps (2015) · The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps Core Canon
• A Taste of Honey (2016) · The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps Core Canon

Aggregate across all universes

• Total Core Canon books across all universes: 2 books
• Award recognitions across all universes: 1 (1 won)

← All authors