Laura Lucas

Laura Lucas is a writer and editor of African and Eastern European descent who was born and raised in the Albany area of upstate New York. Her great-grandparents’ farm and orchard is still in the family, even though every building erected on the property catches fire after suffering a lightning strike. She sometimes writes about thunderstorms, or the structure of the universe, and sees the past as inherently subject to outside alteration. Most of her fiction contains an escape route. The women in her stories are always in motion, accelerating toward greatness, adventure, or eternity with equal measures of personal magic and unflinching self-preservation. She believes in fairy tales.

Laura received a 2017 GAP Award to complete a full-length collection of twelve short genre stories, combining fantasy, myth, horror, and science fiction. These stories will be driven by female characters in lead roles, including stories led by women of color. The traditional genre canon is dominated by white male authors and characters of a certain age, and while occasionally a Mary Shelley or an Octavia Butler is able to carve out a space, female authors and stories with a majority of female characters are by no means common.

Artist Trust thanks the Amazon Literary Partnership for underwriting this award through Artist Trust’s Corporate Partnership program. For information about supporting Washington State artists, visit here.