Adam R. Shannon is a firefighter/paramedic, speculative fiction writer, amateur cook, and steadfast companion of dogs. His work has appeared in magazines and anthologies including Apex, Nightmare, and Glitter + Ashes: Queer Tales of a World That Wouldn't Die. His story “On the Day You Spend Forever With Your Dog” was a finalist for the 2019 Sturgeon Award for best science fiction story of the year, and appeared in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019.
You can find his recent publications here.
Hi, this is Adam, and that was me talking about myself in the third person.
If you have time to read more, here’s what you really should know. I visited the Emergency Room a lot as a kid. There was no unifying theme to these events, other than occasional carelessness and rotten luck. I was stung by a swarm of bees after running over their nest in a Radio Flyer wagon. I failed to buckle my seat belt before a violent car accident. I broke my arm in a pickup game of football, trying to tackle someone laughably larger than myself.
I remember the relief I felt when someone helped me during those frightening, painful events, on what were some of the worst days of my young life.
Nowadays, I'm a career Firefighter/Paramedic in the northern Virginia area. I see many other people on the worst day of their lives. I meet some of them on their last day. I do what I can to be that person who was there for me long ago.
I'm also a fiction writer. Words have the power to reach into our most desperate and lost parts, bypassing the everyday to tap into something important. They are tools with an astonishing capacity to wound or heal.
Speculative fiction allows me the freedom to tinker with impossible worlds, places where readers can wander outside the boundaries of normal life.
In 2017 I attended Clarion West, a workshop for writers of speculative fiction. I recommend it wholeheartedly for aspiring and emerging authors.
Join my mailing list for occasional updates on new fiction and other happenings. I won't email you every time I post here, just when there's some interesting news to share.
SLICES
Some topics I revisit from time to time: writing, temporal distortion, odd license plates, EMS, recursion, our snail, old growth forests. Some of my favorite entries are starred.