Kiini Ibura Salaam is a writer, painter, and traveler from New Orleans, Louisiana. The middle child of five, she grew up in a hardscrabble neighborhood with oak and fig trees, locusts and mosquitoes, cousins and neighbors. The house no longer exists, having been reduced to rubble along with almost all of the houses in a six-block radius after the 2005 levee break in the Lower Ninth Ward.
Kiini’s work encompasses speculative fiction, erotica, creative nonfiction, and poetry. Her writing is rooted in eroticism, speculative events and worlds, and women’s perspectives. Preferring to operate outside of the separation of genres, she has published speculative fiction in erotic anthologies and erotic works in speculative fiction anthologies. Her fiction has been included in such publications as: Dark Matter, Mojo: Conjure Stories, Dark Eros, FEMSPEC, Ideomancer, infinitematrix.com and PodCastle.org. One of her earlier (and most distinctive) stories “Of Wings, Nectar, and Ancestors” was translated into Polish and two of her short stories “Desire” and “Rosamojo” were praised in Publishers Weekly reviews.
Kiini’s creative nonfiction speaks to her two passions: the freedom of women and the freedom of the creative spirit. In essays about date rape, sexual harassment, and the power of the word no, Kiini explores the complex layers of societal norms that negatively impact women’s lives. These essays have been published in Essence, Ms., and Colonize This! Her article “Navigating to No,” sparked a spate of radio interviews, a television appearance, and a college seminar, as well as earned a personal commentary award from the National Association of Black Journalists. Her essay “No,” which appeared in both Ms. magazine and Utne Reader, was included in the Longman Publishers composition guide, Reading Into Writing. Her creative nonfiction has been included in college curricula in the areas of women’s studies, anthropology, history, and English.
For the past ten years, Kiini has written the KIS.list, an e-column that explores the writing life and encourages readers to fulfill their dreams. She works as an editor and copy editor in New York. She and her daughter live in Brooklyn.
Ancient, Ancient: Short Fiction
Click to order via Amazon
Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: Aqueduct Press; First edition (May 1, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1933500964
ISBN-13: 978-1933500966
Aqueduct Press is pleased to announce the release in May 2012 of Ancient,
Ancient, a collection of short fiction by Kiini Ibura Salaam, as a trade
paperback. Acclaimed author and critic Nalo Hopkinson writes, “Salaam treats
words like the seductive weapons they are. She wields them to weave fierce,
gorgeous stories that stroke your sensibilities, challenge your preconceptions,
and leave you breathless with their beauty.” Indeed, Ms. Salaam’s stories are so
permeated with sensuality that in her introduction to Ancient, Ancient, Nisi
Shawl, author of the award-winning Filter House, writes,
“Sexuality-cum-sensuality is the experiential link between mind and matter, the
vivid and eternal refutation of the alleged dichotomy between them. This
understanding … is the throbbing glistening heart of Kiini’s body of work. This
book is alive. Be not afraid.”
A new voice in the field, Ms. Salaam, as Jack Womack writers, “deserves to be
considered as one of today’s most promising contemporary genre writers. With
writing that challenges assumptions on gender, the nature of fantasy, the uses
of myth and much more, she offers the readers stories that they will not soon
forget. [Ancient, Ancient is] a marvelous introduction to a marvelous writer.”
“Salaam’s unusual settings and lonely characters will call to readers who hunger
for sex, identity, or just a place to belong.”—Publishers Weekly, March 5, 2012
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