Amal El-Mohtar is an award winning Canadian writer of speculative fiction, poetry and criticism who lives in Ottawa. El-Mohtar’s ancestral roots are in Lebanon.
Fiction and Poetry
The Honey Month
Papaveria Press, 2010
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
Twenty-eight days there are in the month of February, a cold month, a month in which the summer seems an endless dream one had once, long ago. We should not be tricked by the frost, for it was during the dreaming month of February that Amal El-Mohtar composed The Honey Month, a book that tastes and smells of sun. Each day she uncapped a vial of honey, letting the brew inspire the words that became this book. Amal offers us much more than poetry and prose, however. Her words wrap around us like spiderwebs, gently pulling us into the web she weaves, where honey girls tempt and tease us, where things lost return and sorrow paints the leaves. This is a colourful book, but it is by no means a frivolous one. Remember, not all honey is sweet.
Fiction
The River Has Roots
New York: Tordotcom, 2025.
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
In the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, dwells the mysterious Hawthorn family.
There, they tend and harvest the enchanted willows and honour an ancient compact to sing to them in thanks for their magic. None more devotedly than the family’s latest daughters, Esther and Ysabel, who cherish each other as much as they cherish the ancient trees.
But when Esther rejects a forceful suitor in favor of a lover from the land of Faerie, not only the sisters’ bond but also their lives will be at risk…
Fiction (Short stories)
Seasons of Glass and Iron: Stories
New York: Tordotcom, 2026.
Forthcoming March 2026.
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
With confidence and style, El-Mohtar guides us through exquisitely told and sharply observed tales about life as it is, was, and could be. Like miscellany from other worlds, these stories are told in letters, diary entries, reference materials, folktales, and lyrical prose.
Fiction
This Is How You Lose the Time War
Co-author Max Gladstone.
New York: Saga Press, 2019.
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandment finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading.
Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, becomes something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.
Except the discovery of their bond would mean the death of each of them. There’s still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win. That’s how war works, right?
Cowritten by two beloved and award-winning sci-fi writers, This Is How You Lose the Time War is an epic love story spanning time and space.
Awards and Honours
2020 Hugo Awards–Best Novella (Winner)
2019 Nebula Awards–Best Novella (Winner)
Links
Amal El-Mohtar personal website
Publisher Papaveria Press
Publisher Saga Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster
Publisher Tordotcom, an imprint of Macmillan