On November 26 & 27 we’re hosting our second-ever AugurCon, our virtual celebration of speculative literatures! We’re joined by over 45 amazing guests, including authors, poets, editors, and publishing professionals, to explore the intersections of the world we know—and the ones we dare to imagine.

We connected with Premee Mohamed, Nebula and Aurora award-winning Indo-Caribbean scientist and speculative fiction author, who is a panelist at this year’s AugurCon.

Get your ticket to attend her panel:

Stories for the Futures We Need; Or How to Write with Hope
Saturday, November 26 at 3:30–4:30 PM EST / 12:30–1:30 PM PST

To see the full weekend program schedule, visit our website.

What’s it like having been nominated for basically every cool SFF award in such a short span of time? Has the recognition been validating? Daunting? Both?

Extremely terrifying and confusing! At this point whenever I start writing something I think, “Oh no, now when people read this they’ll be expecting something award-caliber, whatever that means, and then they’ll read it and be horribly disappointed, and I can’t explain to them that they should not have expected that, because that’s not how the system works, I guess I should stop working on this.” And then I do stop. The last several things I’ve turned in have been written in a kind of fugue state of panic and denial. I feel like everything I publish now will never measure up to the pressure of expectation. Someone call my therapist.

You’re on the Stories for the Future We Need; Or How to Write with Hope panel, which should be fantastic. What’s a little teaser or nugget of wisdom you can give regarding the topic without giving too much of your panel away?

I think this is one area of literature where we’d all benefit hugely from rethinking the kind of black-and-white, Western story structure thinking—a truly hopeful story is better told without villains and heroes, but a gradual shift in actions and worldviews that may turn off readers used to certain types of stories.

Scenario time: you’re talking to a writer who’s just starting out, just penned their first poem or short story. What is the number one thing you would tell them that you wish someone had told you—of both the good and the maybe-not-so good?

Number one thing is remember to keep your writing life and publishing life separate! Not every story has to exist to be submitted, rejected, sold, read, and criticized in public. Some stories are just for you.

Which of your written works was the hardest for you to complete? Why was it?

Probably the sequel to my debut novel, because I had never written a sequel before and I had a bad case of Second Book Syndrome — again, panicking about what imaginary readers would say about the book before I even started writing it, because I had all these expectations from the first book, for the first time in my writing life. The first book was also written without a sequel planned or set up for it, so it was like I was trying to create a narrative arc out of nothing. It ended up nominated for a couple of awards but I’m genuinely surprised I actually finished it, I was so paralyzed by nerves.

Hear more from Premee: Get your ticket to AugurCon 2022

Premee Mohamed is a Nebula and Aurora award-winning Indo-Caribbean scientist and speculative fiction author based in Edmonton, Alberta. She is an Assistant Editor at the short fiction audio venue Escape Pod and the author of the ‘Beneath the Rising’ series of novels as well as several novellas. Her short fiction has appeared in many venues and she can be found on Twitter at @premeesaurus and on her website at www.premeemohamed.com.

Join Premee at AugurCon! Our panel on Stories for the Futures We Need; Or How to Write with Hope takes place on Saturday, November 26. Get your ticket to AugurCon 2022 now!