Kiini
Ibura
Salaam

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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. Kiini's work delves into spheres of human liberation, human connection, and evolution. She employs speculative fiction and creative nonfiction to take readers through mind-bending journeys into the transcendent, the mystical, and the fantastic.

Winner of the 2012 James Tiptree, Jr. Award Ancient, Ancient collects the short fiction by Kiini Ibura Salaam, of which 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… »

Artwork

Commune

Posted on 10 February 2013

Acrylic on canvas, 2013

Fiction Speculative FictionForeign Land // Otherworldy // Yearning

Of Wings, Nectar, & Ancestors

Posted on 6 February 2013

1 On deep purple-black nights, when the whole house has pushed itself into slumber, WaLiLa’s energy flits around her room like a moth. It leaps up to do jumping jacks & turns cartwheels, then clings to the ceiling. It bounces off the walls & jiggles its knees impatiently. WaLiLa is a jitterbugging ball of need… »

Fiction Speculative FictionDanger // Otherworldy // Touched by a Stranger

At Life’s Limits

Posted on 6 February 2013

1. Musicians, practicing an age-old tradition, scatter syncopated rhythms across the night sky. Through rapid hand movements and homemade instruments, they pay homage to fierce gods. The music tattoos the sky’s surface with patterns of prayer, patterns that transform themselves into welcome mats for beings in realms the musicians have no knowledge of. One such… »

Anthology