fiction and creative non-fiction from Brennan Quenneville
I don't take the words of Ursula K. Le Guin lightly. So when a review of Nnedi Okorafor's Lagoon pushed me to learn more about the book, I soon found myself reading the Le Guin quote that sits atop Joey Hi-Fi's magnificent cover art. "There's more imagination in a page of Nnedi Okorafor's work," says [...]
Before reading The Silmarillion, there are some questions that you should probably ask yourself: Do you know the basic stories of Gil-Galad and Beren One-Hand? Do you recognize names like Barahir, Grond and Fëanor and want to know more about them? Have you figured out, through context alone, what (fictional) words like dagor and ithil [...]
"As long ago as forever, as far away as Selidor..." It's fitting that Ursula K. Le Guin's The Farthest Shore has its own vernacular for "once upon a time" because, of all of Le Guin's heroic tales, The Farthest Shore is perhaps the most archetypal. The story traces the arc of young Arren, a rural [...]
Worldbuilding is exhausting. It requires a massive amount of mental energy to imagine and then codify an entirely new world with all its nooks and crannies, its politics and customs. To expedite this process, many works of fantasy rely on familiar tropes as a shortcut, allowing vast institutions to be explained away by a few [...]
Songs & Stories 