Hole in the Sky: A Deep Dives Conversation with Daniel H. Wilson and Nisi Shawl

Join us at this launch event for science-fiction author and roboticist Daniel H. Wilson's new novel Hole in the Sky, pitched as an alien first contact story set on a Cherokee reservation. GeekWire's Alan Boyle hosts the conversation.

DANIEL H. WILSON is a Cherokee citizen and the multiple New York Times bestselling author of techno-thrillers such as Robopocalypse, The Andromeda Evolution, and How to Survive a Robot Uprising, as well as a former television host and robotics engineer holding a B.S. in computer science from the University of Tulsa and a Ph.D. in robotics from Carnegie Mellon. His next novel A Hole in the Sky is forthcoming from Penguin Random House in October 2025. He currently resides in Portland, Oregon.

NISI SHAWL (they/them) is the multiple award-winning author, co-author, and editor of more than a dozen books of speculative fiction and related nonfiction, including the standard text on diverse representation, Writing the Other: A Practical Approach.  A prolific writer of short stories, Shawl’s best known long-form fiction is the Nebula Award finalist novel Everfair.  Recent books include the middle grade fantasy novel Speculation, and The Day and Night Books of Mardou Fox, a Beat-era fantasy novella inspired by the life of Black poet Alene Lee. Editing credits include the anthology New Suns 2: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color, which opens with a Daniel H. Wilson short story titled “Ocasta.”  New Suns 2 is the sequel to the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning anthology New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color. Shawl has spoken at Duke University, Spelman College, Sarah Lawrence College, and many other institutions, and they teach online and in-person courses on respectful representation, dialogue and dialect, culturally inclusive worldbuilding, and diverse narrative voices. For over two decades they have served on the boards of the Clarion West Writers Workshop and the Carl Brandon Society, a nonprofit supporting the presence of people of color in fantastic literature.

Science journalist ALAN BOYLE contributes stories about space exploration and the physical sciences to GeekWire and Universe Today. During his time as science editor for NBCNews.com, he won science communication awards from the National Academies, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Space Frontier Foundation and other professional organizations. He's the author of The Case for Pluto: How a Little Planet Made a Big Difference, the creator of Cosmic Log and the Fiction Science podcast, and a past president of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.

The Deep Dives conversation series brings speculative fiction authors to Seattle for conversations with local and international experts on the real-world intersections of sci-fi and science and how each can inspire and inform the other.