Three finalists for the 2026 Nebula Awards—Amy Chu, Somto Ihezue, and Annalee Newitz—discuss their craft, why they write, and the state of speculative fiction today. Moderated by Tananarive Due, Toastmaster of the 2026 Nebula Awards, which are given annually by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.
Featured writers and their 2026 Nebula Award nominations include:
- Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz (Nebula Award for Best Novella)
- Carmilla Volume 3: The Eternal by Amy Chu (Nebula Award for Best Comic)
- “We Begin Where Infinity Ends” by Somto Ihezue (Nebula Award for Best Novelette)
This program was part of the 2026 American Writers Festival. Co-hosted by the American Writers Museum and Chicago Public Library, the American Writers Festival is a free literary event featuring in-depth conversations with diverse writers from across genres and backgrounds. This conversation took place June 7, 2026 and was recorded live at the Harold Washington Library Center.
About the writers:
AMY CHU is a multi-genre writer for graphic novels and animation. Her most recent book is the Nebula Award nominated Carmilla: The Eternal (Dark Horse / Berger Books) the final chapter in the award-winning Carmilla the First Vampire trilogy. She teaches at the Kubert School and the School of Visual Arts, and is a board member of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. A frequent convention speaker, she has also judged the Harvey, Ringo and MoCCA awards. Amy holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a double bachelor’s degree in Architectural Design from MIT and East Asian Studies from Wellesley College.
TANANARIVE DUE is an award-winning author who teaches Black Horror and Afrofuturism at UCLA. A leading voice in Black speculative fiction for more than 20 years, Due has won an American Book Award, an NAACP Image Award, and a British Fantasy Award, and her writing has been included in best-of-the-year anthologies. Her books include The Reformatory (winner of a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Chautauqua Prize, Bram Stoker Award, Shirley Jackson Award, World Fantasy Award, and a New York Times Notable Book), The Wishing Pool and Other Stories, Ghost Summer: Stories, My Soul to Keep, and The Good House. She and her late mother, civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due, co-authored Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights.
SOMTO IHEZUE is a writer and filmmaker. He is an MFA fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Maryland. His writes about boyhood, land, disruption, and joy in Igbo communities. His work has been a finalist for the Nebula Award, the Locus Award, the British Fantasy Award, the ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award, and has appeared in Clarkesworld, POETRY, Uncanny, Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Sauúti, and others. He has received residencies and fellowships from the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Tin House, Clarion West, Sundress Academy for the Arts, Rabbit Island, and more. He was assistant editor of the Publishing Taught Me Anthology (SFWA & NEA) and co-editor of Will This Be a Problem? The Anthology.
ANNALEE NEWITZ writes science fiction and nonfiction. They are the author of four novels: Automatic Noodle, The Terraformers, The Future of Another Timeline, and Autonomous, which won the Lambda Literary Award. As a science journalist, they are the author of Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind, Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age and Scatter, Adapt and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction, which was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize in science. They are a writer for the New York Times and elsewhere, and have a monthly column in New Scientist. They have published in The Washington Post, Slate, Scientific American, Ars Technica, The New Yorker, and Technology Review, among others. They were the co-host of the Hugo Award-winning podcast Our Opinions Are Correct, and have contributed to the public radio shows Science Friday, On the Media, KQED Forum, and Here and Now. Previously, they were the founder of io9, and served as the editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.