Marian Womack


Marian Womack is a bilingual Spanish-British writer, translator and editor of Weird Fiction, Horror, Speculative Fiction, Science fiction and Fiction of the Anthropocene. She lives in Cambridge, UK. As a translator in Spain she has worked mostly for independent publishing houses. She writes both in English and Spanish. Womack has been included in various collective works in Spain and Latin America, the UK, the US and Australia. Her writing is characterised by mixing elements from the Gothic, Science Fiction and Horror, creating a hybrid genre that Womack uses to highlight the uncanny. She often uses fragmentation, writes experimental prose, and mixes genres.
Womack has published two collections of short fiction and three novels in English, as well as two novels in Spanish. Her ecological fiction has been included in international art installations, translated to Italian and Norwegian, and shortlisted for two British Fantasy Awards and one British Science Fiction Association Award.

Early life and education

Womack was born in Cádiz and studied in the UK. She studied English Literature with Film Studies, holds a Master's in European Literature, a DEA in Literatura Comparada, a Master's in Creative Writing and a PhD in Creative Writing.

Career

In her work as a publisher, Womack co-founded, together with British translator and poet James Womack, the indie press Nevsky Prospects, specialising in Russian Literature. The press mainly published Russian and Soviet genre fiction together with classic authors such as Pushkin, Dostoevsky or Dmitri Grigorovich, offering a wide and non-mainstream understanding of this literature. Womack coordinated the imprint Fábulas de Albión, which she used to publish, for the first time in Spanish, female speculative fiction authors such as Nina Allan, Lisa Tuttle, Anna Starobinets or Karin Tidbeck. In 2015, Spanish magazine Leer included Womack in its list of the most influential people under forty in Spanish publishing.
Womack has worked in academic libraries and archive collections for more than a decade, including Oxford University's Bodleian Library, and the Modern and Medieval Faculty Library at Cambridge University, where she worked as Hispanic and Lusophone Librarian for five years. She also works intermittently as editor, translator, and bookseller. Womack has taught creative writing, publishing studies and book history in Spain and the UK. Womack is the first Spanish person to attend the Clarion Workshop.

Critical reception

Womack published her first collection in English, Lost Objects, in 2018. Nina Allan wrote in Interzone: "he themes of climate change and ecological destruction are more urgently expressed in this short book than in any other I have recently read... This book, with its sharp edges and its thematic urgency and its painful admissions of weakness and of fear, is a collection that highlights everything that speculative fiction, of all possible modes of literature, excels at." Laura Mauro wrote in Black Static that "Lost Objects is a gorgeous, intelligent collection, both masterfully written and cannily prescient." Timothy J. Jarvis wrote in the Los Angeles Review of Books that Lost Objects addresses "humankind's senseless despoliation of its home in subtle, profoundly affecting ways."
Womack's first novel in English, The Golden Key, was described by Publishers Weekly as an "ethereal debut novel, precise and eerie... Patient readers willing to wade through Womack's murky, off-kilter world will be rewarded with moments of disquieting beauty." Womack's second novel The Swimmers was given a Starred Review in Publishers Weekly. ''The Guardian said it was "a richly imagined eco-gothic tale", and The Times'' said it was "exquisitely realised", selecting it as one of the ten best science fiction novels of 2021.

Personal life

Womack is married to British poet and translator James Womack. They met while they were both students at Wadham College, Oxford. Womack cannot vote in the UK, but she is a member of the Green Party of England and Wales. Womack studied at a convent school, and has written about her rejection of Catholicism as an institution.

Published works

Narrative

;Novels
Science Fiction
  • The Swimmers, London, Titan Books, 2021.
The Walton & Waltraud Inquiry Agents Mysteries
  • On the Nature of Magic, London, Titan Books, 2023.
  • The Golden Key, London, Titan Books, 2020.
Spanish
  • Calle Andersen, Barcelona, La Galera, 2014. . With Sofia Rhei.
  • Memoria de la nieve Zaragoza, Tropo Editores, 2011.
;Short Fiction in English
Collections
  • Out of the Window, Into the Dark, Cambridge, Calque Press, 2024
  • Lost Objects New Extended Edition, Cambridge, Calque Press 2024
  • Lost Objects, Edinburgh, Luna Press Publishing, 2018
As editor
  • An Invite to Eternity: Tales of Nature Disrupted. 2019, Cambridge, Calque Press, 2019. With Gary Budden
  • The Best of Spanish Steampunk, Madrid, Nevsky Books. With James Womack
  • Retrofuturismos. Antologia Steampunk. Madrid, Fábulas de Albión.
Short fiction in anthologies and magazines
  • "Ready or Not", in Isolation, The Horror Anthology, edited by Dan Coxon
  • "At the Museum", in Uncertainties, Vol. 4, edited by Timothy Jarvis
  • "One, Two, Three", in The Shadow Booth, Vol. 4, edited by Dan Coxon
  • "Nox Una", in The Silent Garden, a Journal of Esoteric Fabulism, edited by Michael Kelly
  • "Mrs. Fox", in LossLit, edited by Aki Schilz and Kit Caless.
  • "Pink Footed", EcoPunk! Speculative Tales of Radical Futures, edited by Liz Grzyb and Cat Spark
  • "The ravisher, the thief", Barcelona Tales, edited by Ian Whates.
  • "Stones", SuperSonic, edited by Cristina Jurado.
  • "Orange Dogs", Weird Fiction Review, ed. Jeff VanderMeer. Reimpreso in Year's Best Weird Fiction , edited by Simon Strantzas and Michael Kelly.
  • "Black Isle", Spanish Women of Wonder. Reimpreso in A Dying Planet. Short Stories.
  • "Frozen Planet", Apex Mag Special International Issue #76
;Short Fiction in Spanish
  • "Nox una", in Aquelarre. Antología del cuento de terror español actual
  • "Help Needed", in La banda de los corazones sucios. Antología del cuento villano Madrid, Ediciones Baladí, 2010, edited by Salvador Luis. . Reimpreso en La banda de los corazones sucios. Antología del cuento villano La Paz, Editorial El Cuervo, 2010. Selección y prólogo de Salvador Luis.
  • En la tierra del lobo, in Al otro lado del espejo, Madrid, Editorial Escalera, 2010.
  • «Matrioshka», in Rusia Imaginada, Madrid, Nevsky Prospects, 2011, edited by Care Santos
  • «In a glass, darkly», Steampunk: antología retrofuturista, edited by Félix J. Palma. Fábulas de Albión, 2012.
  • «Montañas», Náufragos de San Borondón: Antología hispanoamericana de narradores Tenerife, Baile del Sol, 2012, edited by Javier Vázquez Losada.

Academic works

;Books
  • Beauty is Complicated: Essays on the Weird. Cambridge, Calque Press, 2024
  • Beyond the Back Room. New Perspectives on Carmen Martin Gaite. With Jennifer Wood. Oxford, Peter Lang, 2010.
;Essays
  • 'It's about to get crazy, it's about to get loud!: Weird Ecopoetics at the end of the world' in Writing the Future: Essays on Crafting Science Fiction. Dead Ink Books. Ed. Dan Coxon & Richard V. Hirst, 2023
  • Introduction', The Topless Tower by Silvina Ocampo. Calque Press, 2023
  • Introduction', An Invite to Eternity: Tales of Nature Disrupted. Calque Press, 2019
  • 'Nature has at last escaped from their discipline and their fetters: Ostranenie and the Ecological sublime in Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation and Brian Catling's The Vorrh'. WorldCon. The World Science Fiction Convention. Academic Track – Environmental Anxieties, 2017
  • Profile on Rosa Montero's SF novels, EuroCon Convention Book. BCon, 2016
  • 'The Invasion of the Body-Snatchers' / 'Stalker': Ciencia Ficción: Cien Películas Imprescindibles. JotDown Books, 2015

Translations