Gwendolyn M. Hicks

Gwendolyn M. Hicks writes emails by day and fiction about feelings by night. An alum of the Clarion Workshop and the Lambda Literary Retreat, they are currently earning their MFA in Fiction at San Francisco State University. Their writing has appeared in Kaleidotrope, Small Wonders, Trollbreath, and others. When not writing fiction or contemplating relationships, they like leaving apple cores on tables, collecting sticks and rocks, and swimming in the Eel River.

Photo: Sierra Warrick

Gwendolyn discovered writing at the age of six when they realized they could make Ash Ketchum and Misty fall in love using only binder paper and a purple gel pen. They went on to study French at St. Mary's College of California and spent a semester in Aix-en-Provence. They are currently pursuing their Master of Fine Arts degree in Fiction at San Francisco State University, and are Co-Lead Fiction Editor for Fourteen Hills. They now live on the ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone, and grew up in the territories of the Lekatuit and Huukuiko.Gwendolyn was an Editorial Intern at National Novel Writing Month in 2015. They worked for several years at Copperfield's Books in Marin County, and were an Assistant Editor on the first two issues of the National Magazine Award-winning Stranger's Guide magazine. They were admitted to the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers' Workshop in early 2020 and attended in 2022. In 2025, they attended the Futurescapes Summer Intensive in Florence, Italy and were a Speculative Fiction Fellow at the Lambda Literary Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices.Gwendolyn loves to write about feelings, emotions, sentiments, and vibes. Their work tends to focus on themes of connection and the self and also the joyful agony of falling in love, often set in fantastical worlds. Their fiction and poetry have appeared in Kaleidotrope, Trollbreath, Heartlines Spec, Small Wonders, Hearth Stories, and others.They are also still on AO3, somewhere.They speak English, French, and Italian. They have been in situationships with Gaelic, Czech, Greek, Welsh, Japanese, Arabic, Persian, Swahili, Tagalog, and Russian.

Forthcoming

  • “Six Views of a Speedster,” Uncanny

Long Fiction

Short Fiction

Poetry

Interviews

Readings & Appearances

2024 Awards Eligibility

“The Heart That Beats Behind the Bones”: Short story. Published in Hearth Stories, Issue 2. Deep in the forest, a mysterious priestess names and genders the village children (called eiken) by interpreting their dreams. One eik, whose bond with the priestess runs deep, begins to question everything as the years pass and she does not give eik a name.LP Kindred called this a “story of Queer Love, community expectation, social responsibility, FOMO, and individuation with lush prose and characters whose pulses ring like bells.” It was featured on Frivolous Comma’s Stories You Missed.“How Islands are Named”: Novelette. Published in June by The Lit Nerds. There is not an island in Lake McDermott, until there is: overnight, it appears fully formed in the water. Two sisters whose father has recently died find themselves called to name it, even as the world around them tries to render it ordinary.“Change Your Mind”: Poem. Published in Small Wonders, Issue 16. Great news: the multiverse comes in pill form now. Swallow it, and you can slip into another life for a while: maybe even one where the person who loved you didn't change their mind. An elegy for friend break-ups, SSRIs, and the obsessive longing to do things over.

2026

2025

2022

2025 Awards Eligibility

“It's Charli's Body, You're Just Living In It"
Short Fiction
In high school, Harriet and Charli stumbled into a portal on the soccer field and found themselves the prophesied saviors of a world beset by an unfathomable curse. Now in their twenties and back in their own world, they're trying to figure out how to live. Heartlines Spec, Issue #8 - July 2025“Leygr"
Short Fiction
Teinn is thousands of years old, cannot die, and has just experienced loss for the first time. Her siblings entreat her to rise from the underground altar that can mend her body, but not her heart. Trollbreath, Issue #4 - December 2025“One Hundred Thousand Legends and the Longing Undernearth"
Long Poem
Two lovers bound by fate start again, and start again, and start again. Dangerous to Go Alone! 2: Another Anthology of Gamer Poetry, February 2025. Appears on the Nebula recommended reading list.“Hand Signs"
Long Poem
A son addresses his estranged father, trying to rationalize his absence through the lens of an alien abduction. Cottonmouth Journal, Volume 1, Issue #4, September 2025