Sascha Stronach

1 universe Last reviewed 2026-08-26

Sascha Stronach is a New Zealand author of Māori descent, affiliated with the Kāi Tahu iwi and the Kāti Huirapa Rūnaka ki Puketeraki hapū. Based in Wellington, New Zealand, he has also spent significant time living in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore, experiences that inform the layered, cross-cultural worldbuilding of his fiction. Before pursuing fiction writing full time, Stronach worked as a technical writer and initially explored short fiction before shifting his focus toward novel-length work. His debut novel, The Dawnhounds (2024), a biopunk fantasy blending queer identity, ecological themes, and richly inventive worldbuilding within a fungal, decaying port city, won the Sir Julius Vogel Award, New Zealand's premier prize for science fiction and fantasy, at Worldcon 78. He followed it with The Sunforge (2024), continuing the story begun in his acclaimed debut, alongside an earlier work, The Endsong (2019). Stronach's fiction draws distinctively on his lived experience across Aotearoa New Zealand and Southeast Asia, resulting in speculative settings that diverge sharply from conventional Anglo-European fantasy traditions, incorporating biological horror, indigenous perspectives, and postcolonial themes. His rapid rise, marked by major award recognition for his debut novel, has established him as one of the most distinctive emerging voices in contemporary Pacific and biopunk-inflected fantasy fiction.

Universe(s)

Books

• The Dawnhounds (2022) · The Endsong Core Canon
• The Sunforge (2024) · The Endsong Core Canon

Aggregate across all universes

• Total Core Canon books across all universes: 2 books
• Award recognitions across all universes: 0 (None recorded)

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