Kiini
Ibura
Salaam

Writings

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, erotica, and creative nonfiction to take readers through mind-bending journeys into the transcendent, the sensual, the mystical, and the fantastic.

Reviews

Seattle Review of Books: The Future Alternative Past: Besties

When the World Wounds (Third Man Books) is Kiini Ibura Salaam’s second short fiction collection. Her first,Ancient, Ancient, won the 2012 Tiptree Award with its fantastical and exuberantly sensual depictions of nonstandard gender roles. In language as richly raunchy as ever, she writes here of sentient wolves on the prowl, swamp witches caught up into the… »

Locus.com: New & Notable Books, December 2016

This debut collection by the one of our most original and dazzling new talents, author of Tiptree Award winner Ancient, Ancient, gathers six unforgettable stories of dystopian prisons, volcano women, wars between gods, and desolate contemporary landscapes.

Writing While Distracted: Review: When the World Wounds

In October I had the good fortune to meet Kiini Ibura Salaam at a writer’s conference. She gave a wonderful keynote address and I was able to spend some time with her talking about our mutual love of short stories and travel. Her latest collection of short fiction When the World Wounds (2016) is as seductive as her… »

Modern Griots: When the World Wounds

BREAKING OPEN THE BOUNDARIES OF SELF Who we think we are is a fluid concept. We might have a stable image of ourselves but in reality we are constantly in flux as we come into contact and collide with others. And it’s not just other bodies but other possibilities of your self that disrupts who… »

Bogi Reads the World: When the World Wounds by Kiini Ibura Salaam

I really enjoy Kiini Ibura Salaam’s writing, so when I heard that she’d soon have a new collection out, I started to spread the word about the preorder right away. The author sent me an ebook ARC, but I ended up just buying the physical book myself, because I read the beginning and felt that I… »

B R Sanders Reviews Ancient, Ancient

Salaam is a lovely, poetic writer. From her language choice to the actual structure of the stories themselves, most of the stories in this collection are lyrical and haunting.

11 Sci-Fi Books Every Woman Should Read

You might call Kiini Ibura Salaam something more like a “sci-fi erotica writer.” All of her stories in Ancient, Ancient are tied up in sexuality. From the story about time travel as punishment to the one about aliens who feed on human sexual energies, each story is doused in sexuality and identity, not unlike our own… »

Mosaic Magazine Reviews Ancient, Ancient

All in all, readers will find themselves captivated by this fascinating collection of stories and enthralled by the author’s ability to elevate our notions of what is real or not in a way that’s nuanced. Each story in Ancient, Ancient makes us believe, if only for the time it takes to read them, that there… »

AALBC Reviews Ancient, Ancient

The stories in this book are sensual, unique, and thought-provoking. In fact, it’s easy to imagine many of the stories as the basis for short films instead of a book. Many of the stories that deal with issues of sexuality, desire, and even revenge (including some not mentioned in this review) will have you wishing… »

Book Discussion: Kiini Ibura Salaam’s Ancient, Ancient

I first found out about Ancient, Ancient from an announcement posted by Cheryl Morgan who runs Wizard’s Tower Books. It looked interesting, and so I thought I would check it out. A little later, I heard that it was co-winner of the Tiptree Award, which is a prize given to books/stories/collections that explore gender in… »

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