Saladin Ahmed


Saladin Ahmed is an Eisner Award winning American comic book and science fiction and fantasy writer. His 2012 book Throne of the Crescent Moon was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel and won the Locus Award for Best First Novel. He has also been a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award, the Nebula Award for Best Novel and the Nebula Award for Best Short Story. Ahmed's fiction has been published in anthologies and magazines including Strange Horizons, Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show, Clockwork Phoenix 2 and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. He is also the author of Black Bolt, Exiles and from Marvel Comics.

Personal life

Ahmed was born in 1975 in Detroit, Michigan to parents of Lebanese, Egyptian, Irish, and Polish descent. His father, Ismael Ahmed, formerly in the merchant marine, worked both in a factory and as a community organizer. His mother was a political activist.
After graduating from high school, Ahmed attended Henry Ford Community College before transferring to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. After receiving a B.A. in American Studies, Ahmed earned an MFA at Brooklyn College and an MA in English from Rutgers University. Ahmed is Muslim.

Career

Writer

Ahmed's science fiction and fantasy stories have been published in magazines and anthologies including Strange Horizons, Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show, Clockwork Phoenix 2, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. In 2010, he was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.
Ahmed's story "Hooves and the Hovel of Abdel Jameela", originally published in Clockwork Phoenix 2, was a finalist for the 2010 Nebula Award for Best Short Story. His story "Where Virtue Lives", originally published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, was a finalist for the 2009 Harper's Pen Award.
His novel trilogy The Crescent Moon Kingdoms is currently being published by DAW Books. The novels are fantasies inspired by One Thousand and One Nights. The first book in the series, Throne of the Crescent Moon, was published by DAW Books in February 2012.
Ahmed's poetry has been published in various literary journals and books and has been awarded fellowships from the University of Michigan, Brooklyn College, and the Bronx Council on the Arts.
In October 2017 gained media attention for a Twitter post addressed to the cereal company Kellogg's: "why is literally the only brown corn pop on the whole cereal box the janitor? this is teaching kids racism." Kellogg's indicated they would change the artwork on future Corn Pops shipments.

Awards and honors

Throne of the Crescent Moon was a finalist for both the 2012 Nebula Award for Best Novel and the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Novel. Ahmed won the Locus Award for Best First Novel for the novel.
He was also a finalist for the 2010 and 2011 John W. Campbell Award and the 2009 Nebula Award for Best Short Story.
Ahmed's comic Black Bolt, with Christian Ward as the artist, won the 2018 Eisner Award for Best New Series while the graphic novel collection of the comic, Black Bolt, Volume 1: Hard Time, was a finalist for the 2018 Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story.

Works

Novels

Ahmed's poetry has appeared in the following journals and anthologies: