Esker Park writes speculative fiction about older women in extraordinary circumstances. She has short stories published in Plott Hound, Soul Jar: Thirty-one Fantastical Tales by Disabled Authors, and Abyss & Apex. She is an alumna of the WriteMentor program, and her first science fiction novel was long listed for the London Times/Chickenhouse competition in 2022. Her degrees—economics, graphic design, and environmental biology—reflect her varied interests, or perhaps an inability to focus. She lives in Maine where she nurtures her inner curmudgeon by deploring what's happening in the world and does her small bit to stop it.

To learn more, please visit her website: https://eskerpark.com/

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Get to know Esker!

What’s your fave reading format?

I’m a hardheaded woman who likes a hardback book, mostly because I do most of my reading while lying on my side and hardbacks are easier to hold open than paperbacks. I bring ebooks are for traveling because otherwise I’d need to take a whole ‘nother suitcase for my reading material.

Favorite contemporary author?

Martha Wells and her Murderbot series. The humor is so deadpan, the characters are so flawed and loveable, and the interplay between logical thinking and emotional yearning is so juicy. How could I not love Martha Wells! Also, what a joy to have an agendered, asexual protagonist (at least in the book)!

Favorite historical author?

Absolutely Octavia Butler. What a titan she was, and how horribly underappreciated in her own time. Her imagination was unparalleled and her work steadfastly challenged the misogynist and racist tropes of ‘classic’ science fiction. Her works stretched my thinking and my heart.

Who do you wish you could read one more story by?

Mary Doria Russell. Like me, she didn’t start writing until she was older and both of her first-contact science fiction novels: The Sparrow and Children of God, are among my faves. She also wrote incredible historical fiction like The Women of the Copper Country about furious women and their little known labor uprising in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in 1913.

What character do you wish was real?

I’m back to Murderbot here. It’s not that I want to hang out with Murderbot; that would be the height of awkward. But knowing that someone so loyal and smart and competent and curmudgeonly was in the world, that would be the cat’s meow.

What fictional world do you wish you could inhabit?

Well, I mean, that’s the joy of books, right? You get to inhabit each of them as you read? And if you write them, you inhabit them for even longer—years even for those stubborn books that gestate forever. A Planet for Reluctant Revolutionaries has been my soggy and wonderful second home for over three years.

What story fundamentally changed you?

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle was the gateway drug to science fiction for third-grade Esker. Why? Because the protagonist was a nerdy girl who took action, both of which were rare in the children’s books of my era. Representation matters, my friends.

What’s your favorite sentence or quote from your Shiraki Press story, A Planet for Reluctant Revolutionaries?

Mutinous clamheads!

What’s your idea of happiness?

Sinking the crumpled paper into the wastebasket from across the kitchen. And knowing that my community is safe from oligarchs.