About
C.L. Clark, dubbed the "Patron Saint of Sword Lesbians" by Reactor Magazine, is a BFA award-winning editor and the Nebula-nominated author of a few essays, several short stories, and a handful of books.
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When I was younger, I wanted to be a hero. To be like Drizzt Do’Urden or Xena. Like Tanis Half-Elven (okay, maybe more like Kitiara). I wanted to be an Aiel, a warder, and an Aes Sedai. At the same time.
So I became a writer.
But it wasn’t enough to live my adventures in my head alone.
I traveled the world. I put myself in new situations, met new people, learned new languages.
Sahara, Morocco. 2019.
I worked my body hard, to know what it felt like to strain beyond my capacity. To learn what I was capable of. What I wasn’t. To grow.
And as soon as I had the means, I bought myself a sword. Or two.
I’m a novelist, a short story writer, sometimes even an essayist. I love poetry. I am obsessed with the difficult choices we make for love. I write about war because it still shapes so much of our lives. I’ve been praised for the intensity of my writing and condemned for it. I write about shitty—sorry, complicated—relationships and I’m good at it. I write about people trying their best to disastrous results—and I write about people becoming heroes, with all the complications that entails. Courage, honor, hope, failure. Redemption.
I write about bodies, training them, how they build and break and hold us up anyway, how the world is nothing without them, our love and our hatred for them, the ecstasy and the agony of them. Yes, that includes sex. It also includes dancing and running and falling and fighting and feeling the rain on your skin and the taste of sweat and new foods.
I build worlds and write about the people in them, the beasts and the monsters, how they come together to make cultures, make societies, make alliances and conflicts. I write about how we’re all connected and always will be, for better but also for worse.
The notion of heroism is more complicated in the real world than I ever reckoned with as a kid. It looks different than it does in the books I loved. There are fewer swords, but the stakes are just as high. The core of it is the same, though: Be brave. Be true. Be just.
I write to inspire myself as much to understand it all.
Because I still want to, you know. Be a hero. Maybe you do, too? The world needs us now more than ever.
Stay sharp.