Simon Jimenez

Simon Jimenez is a contemporary speculative-fiction writer with an MFA from Emerson College. His short fiction has appeared in Canyon Voices and the flash-fiction anthology Nothing Short Of. His first novel, The Vanished Birds, was published in 2020, followed by The Spear Cuts Through Water in 2022.

Jimenez moves freely between science fiction and fantasy while returning to questions of time, identity, power and belonging. The Vanished Birds crosses vast stretches of interstellar history but keeps its attention on the connections among displaced people. The Spear Cuts Through Water follows Jun and Keema as they carry a dying goddess across a country ruled by the Moon Throne. Its shifting voices and frame narrative make storytelling itself part of the action.

The Vanished Birds was a Locus Award finalist, and Jimenez was a 2021 Astounding Award finalist for Best New Writer. The Spear Cuts Through Water won both the 2023 Robert Holdstock Award for Best Fantasy Novel and the IAFA Crawford Award. It was also shortlisted for the 2023 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction.

Start with The Spear Cuts Through Water. It offers the clearest introduction to Jimenez’s formal daring: an epic journey staged through competing voices, remembered stories and the dreamlike Inverted Theater. Readers who enjoy its blend of myth, violence and tenderness can continue with The Vanished Birds for a similarly ambitious story on a galactic scale.