Su J Sokol is a social rights advocate and a writer of speculative and interstitial fiction. Originally from Brooklyn, xe now makes Montréal xyr home. Sokol is the author of three novels: Cycling to Asylum, which was long-listed for the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, Run J Run, and Zee (2020), a finalist for the Janet Savage Blachford Prize for Children’s and Young Adult Literature. Sokol's short fiction and essays have appeared or are upcoming in various magazines and anthologies including in The Future Fire, Spark: A Creative Anthology, Glittership: an LGBTQ Science Fiction and Fantasy Podcast, After the Orange: Ruin and Recovery (B Cubed Press), Chronicling the Days, Amazing Stories, and Solaris. Les lignes invisibles, the French translation of Cycling to Asylum, was published in August 2022 by VLB Imaginaire.
I have given presentations on a variety or topics including how speculative can be used as a tool of social change, on speculative fiction in general, and on being a writer. I have also given more specific presentations on my young adult novel, Zee, in both French and English, and how to use that story as a learning tool in the classroom. I have also given presentations in French and English to high school classes on writing and empathy.
I have taught workshops on writing speculative fiction and have expertise in fiction writing, particularly long fiction. These workshops have covered numerous topics including worldbuilding, voice and tone, structure, pacing, good beginnings and good endings, and meaning and themes in fiction. My special expertise is teaching people how to write dialogue.
I like to talk to students about how writing fiction can help work out problems in the real world. My particular expertise is using speculative fiction for thinking about social change and current political and social problems and solutions. I also like to talk about being a writer, what that's like, and the different ways you can make writing (and reading) a part of your life.
