Day 9: Tlotlo Tsamaase

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Tlotlo Tsamaase hails from Goborone, Botswana. She is a writer of fiction, poetry, and architectural articles and winner of the 2014 Black Crake Books prize.

Her work has appeared in Terraform, An Alphabet of Embers, and The Fog Horn.

“I Will Be Your Grave” was nominated for this year’s Science Fiction Poetry Association’s Rhysling Award in the long poem category after much debate as to if it was “speculative enough.” To me, there is no question that this dark surrealism–with its images of death, graves, and bone–fits into the horror category.

Her poem, “Constellations of You” is a haunting and challenging piece on racial identity and lack of self-love. Tsamaase’s narrator has absorbed the media’s and pop culture’s messages that their skin color and dialect made them less. And ashamed, sought to become more acceptable, even though those long-established standards of language and beauty will never allow that to happen.

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Read her poems “I Will be Your Grave” and “Constellations of You” on Strange Horizons.

Find more of Tlotlo’s work on her website and follow her on Twitter.