Gwendolyn Maia Hicks

Gwendolyn discovered writing at the age of six when she realized she really wanted Ash Ketchum and Misty to kiss and wrote her first Pokémon fanfiction in purple gel pen. As a chaotic teen, she attended Marin School of the Arts at Novato High School, studying Creative Writing for four years. She went on to major in French with a minor in Creative Writing at St. Mary's College of California and studied abroad in Aix-en-Provence. She is currently pursuing her Master of Fine Arts degree in Fiction at San Francisco State University.Gwendolyn was an Editorial Intern at National Novel Writing Month in 2015. She worked for several years at Copperfield's Books in Marin County, and was an Assistant Editor on the first two issues of the National Magazine Award-winning Stranger's Guide magazine. She was admitted to the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers' Workshop in early 2020 and attended in 2022 with her cohort, the "ghost" class. She will attend the 2025 Futurescapes workshop in Florence, Italy.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 Small Wonders, Hearth Stories, and others. They also still write and post plenty of shippy fanfiction, as their six-year-old self would have wanted.They are on a personal journey to memorize every Mountain Goats song. They are a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and will see a free Palestine in their lifetime. Their biggest cheerleader was their father, who passed away in 2011. They live in San Francisco with their incredibly smart husband and their two less smart cats.She speaks English, French, and Italian.Some of Gwendolyn's favorite writers who are also friends are:

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