About this ebook
About the author
LAUFISO TIALAVEA is a speculative fiction author and writing craft educator with over two decades of experience in the publishing industry. Born in Apia, Samoa, and based in Auckland, New Zealand, Tialavea brings a distinctive Pacific Islander perspective to the space opera genre, challenging Western-centric models of galactic civilization and exploring themes of diaspora, navigation, and communal identity against the backdrop of the stars.
Tialavea's own published work includes the Navigator's Wake trilogy (Orion Press, 2018–2021), which won the Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Novel in 2019 and was shortlisted for the Hugo Award for Best Series in 2022. The trilogy follows a displaced starfaring people searching for a new homeworld, drawing on Polynesian voyaging traditions and oral storytelling structures to create a space opera that feels both ancient and radically new. His short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Strange Horizons, and his essay collection, Beyond the Gravity Well: Reimagining Space Opera for a New Century, was published by Academic Press in 2023.
Beyond his own writing, Tialavea has served as a mentor for the Clarion West Writers Workshop and the Odyssey Writing Workshop, and he teaches world-building and narrative architecture through his online course platform, The Story Forge. He is a passionate advocate for diverse voices in speculative fiction and speaks regularly at conventions including Worldcon, World Fantasy Con, and the Auckland Writers Festival.
He lives in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland, with his partner and two children, and is currently at work on a new space opera trilogy set in a galaxy where FTL communication exists but FTL travel does not—a constraint that forces his characters to confront the loneliness of deep space and the fragile threads that connect distant human communities.
