Nisi Shawl (born 1955) is an African-American writer, editor, and journalist. They are best known as an author of science fiction and fantasy short stories who writes and teaches about how fantastic fiction might reflect real-world diversity of gender, sexual orientation, race, colonialism, physical ability, age, and other sociocultural factors. Writing the Other, short stories, and awards/memberships Shawl is the co-author (with Cynthia Ward) of Writing the Other: Bridging Cultural Differences for Successful Fiction, a creative-writing handbook derived from the authors' workshop of the same name, in which participants explore techniques to help them write credible characters outside their own cultural experience. Reviewer Genevieve Williams of speculative fiction magazine Strange Horizons summed up about this guidebook: "The practices advocated and concepts presented in Writing the Other may seem PC to some, but following them will help to ensure that an author gives more than lip service to diversity and is thoughtful about the creation and development of societies, cultures, and characters (which we all should be anyway). Much of what Shawl and Ward advocate is, quite simply, good practice: the avoidance of cliches, flat characters, unintended effects, and other hallmarks of lazy writing." Shawl's short stories have appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, the Infinite Matrix, Strange Horizons, Semiotext(e) and numerous other magazines and anthologies. Brian Charles Clark of the fiction review site, Curled Up With a Good Book, praised their debut collection, Filter House (2008) – which gathered 11 previously published and three original short fiction pieces – saying that: "Shawl’s keen sense of justice and their adamant anti-colonialism always ride just beneath the surface of their stories. Never didactic, Shawl possesses the gift of a true storyteller: the ability to let the warp and weft of plot and character do their moral work for them." Shawl is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and a 1992 graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop. They are a board member of Clarion West and one of the founders of the Carl Brandon Society. Their stories have been shortlisted for the Theodore Sturgeon Award, the Gaylactic Spectrum Award, and the Carl Brandon Society Parallax Award, and Writing the Other received special mention for the James Tiptree Jr. Award. In 2008, they won the James Tiptree, Jr. Award for Filter House, which was also shortlisted for a World Fantasy Award. In 2009 their novella Good Boy was additionally