WRITER

Nalo Hopkinson

1960 - Today

Nalo Hopkinson

Nalo Hopkinson (born 20 December 1960) is a Jamaican-born Canadian speculative fiction writer and editor. Her novels – Brown Girl in the Ring (1998), Midnight Robber (2000), The Salt Roads (2003), The New Moon's Arms (2007) – and short stories such as those in her collection Skin Folk (2001) often draw on Caribbean history and language, and its traditions of oral and written storytelling. Hopkinson has edited two fiction anthologies: Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root: Caribbean Fabulist Fiction and Mojo: Conjure Stories. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Nalo Hopkinson has received more than 205,387 page views. Her biography is available in 18 different languages on Wikipedia. Nalo Hopkinson is the 7,167th most popular writer (down from 6,377th in 2019), the 119th most popular biography from Jamaica (down from 99th in 2019) and the 8th most popular Jamaican Writer.

Memorability Metrics

210k
Page Views (PV)
30.99
Historical Popularity Index (HPI)
18
Languages Editions (L)
2.06
Effective Languages (L*)
3.51
Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Notable Works

Skin Folk

Criticism, Canadian Science fiction, Fiction

Throughout the Caribbean there are stories about people who aren't what they seem. Skin gives these folk their human shape. When the skin comes off, their true selves emerge. And whatever the burden their skin bears, once they remove it, skin folk can fly...Nalo Hopkinson has gained universal acclaim as one of the most impressively original authors to emerge in years. Her debut novel, "Brown Girl in the Ring," won the "Locus" Award for Best First Novel, became a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award, and garnered Hopkinson the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Her second novel, "Midnight Robber," was a "New York Times" Notable Book of the Year and a finalist for both the Nebula and Hugo Awards.Now she presents "Skin Folk," a richly vibrant collection of short fiction that ranges from Trinidad to Toronto, from fantastic folklore to frightening futures, from houses of deadly haunts to realms of dark sexuality. Powerful and sensual, disturbing and triumphant, these tales explore the surface of modern existence... and delve under the skin of eternal legends.

2001

The New Moon's Arms

Literature, Grandmothers, Fiction

THE NEW MOON?S ARMS is a mainstream magical realism novel set in the Caribbean on the fictional island of Dolorosse. Calamity, born Chastity, has renamed herself in a way she feels is most fitting. She?s a 50-something grandmother whose mother disappeared when she was a teenager and whose father has just passed away as she begins menopause. With this physical change of life comes a return of a special power for finding lost things, something she hasn?t been able to do since childhood. A little tingling in the hands then a massive hotflash, and suddenly objects, even whole buildings, lost to her since childhood begin showing up around Calamity. One of the lost things Calamity recovers is a small boy who washes up on the shore outside her house after a rainstorm. She takes this bruised but cheerful 3-year-old under her wing and grows attached to him, a process that awakens all the old memories, frustrations and mysteries around her own mother and father. She?ll learn that this young boy?s family is the most unusual group she?s ever encountered?and they want their son back.

2007

2003

Brown Girl in the Ring

Fiction, Future in popular culture, Inner cities

Set in Toronto after the turn of the millennium, Brown Girl in the Ring focuses on "The Burn," the inner city left when Toronto's economic base collapsed. Young Ti-Jeanne lives with her grandmother, who runs a trade in herbal medicine that is vital to the disenfranchised of The Burn. A fascinating cast of characters combined with the dark world of Afro-Caribbean magic create an altogether original and compelling story by an intriguing new voice.

1998

The salt roads

Goddesses, Prostitutes, Fantasy fiction

Brought into being by the lamentations of three Caribbean slave women, a powerful deity begins a search to discover herself and inhabits the minds of three women throughout history.

2003

Sister Mine

Sisters, Missing persons, Roman

SISTER MINE We'd had to be cut free of our mother's womb. She'd never have been able to push the two-headed sport that was me and Abby out the usual way. Abby and I were fused, you see. Conjoined twins. Abby's head, torso, and left arm protruded from my chest. But here's the real kicker; Abby had the magic, I didn't. Far as the Family was concerned, Abby was one of them, though cursed, as I was, with the tragic flaw of mortality. Now adults, Makeda and Abby still share their childhood home. The surgery to separate the two girls gave Abby a permanent limp, but left Makeda with what feels like an even worse deformity: no mojo. The daughters of a celestial demigod and a human woman, Makeda and Abby were raised by their magical father, the god of growing things--a highly unusual childhood that made them extremely close. Ever since Abby's magical talent began to develop, though, in the form of an unearthly singing voice, the sisters have become increasingly distant. Today, Makeda has decided it's high time to move out and make her own life among the other nonmagical, claypicken humans--after all, she's one of them. In Cheerful Rest, a run-down warehouse space, Makeda finds exactly what she's been looking for: an opportunity to live apart from Abby and begin building her own independent life. There's even a resident band, led by the charismatic (and attractive) building superintendent. But when her father goes missing, Makeda will have to discover her own talent--and reconcile with Abby--if she's to have a hope of saving him . . .

2013