[Post originally published: Jun 05, 2026]

Today I have Hugo and Locus winning author, Ray Nayler, here in the Hyperspace. His novel Palaces of the Crow is forthcoming in a couple of months. He is also the author of an impressive number of short stories and poetry, and also Locus Award-winning The Mountain in the Sea and Hugo Award-winning The Tusks of Extinction. As a fellow writer and a fan of his work, it’s a huge honor to have him here! You can also find him on his Instagram.

My fantasy piece about lost (and found) love and the consequences of war, Prayskin (that features a woman with terracotta skin that lends her body to the people’s prayers), is now out in Trollbreath #8! You can get a Trollbreath subscription for just $5 every quarter or $20 a year. My story will be free to read on July 3rd.

In other news, I'm leaving the Hyperspace for a few weeks, but I'll get back to it as soon as possible (most likely in mid-July or early August). If you're liking these mini-interviews, don't hesitate to spread the word to your friends so more people know the amazing artists I've been inviting for a chat!

Tell me more about Palaces of the Crow and what made you write it.

My editor for this book is Sean McDonald, and he calls it a “speculative novel of the near past,” which I think is a good description. At the simplest level of description: Palaces of the Crow tells the story of four young people banding together to survive World War II in the forests of Lithuania. All of them are driven, for one reason or another, into the woods. There, they build a community together in order to survive. That community includes a flock of very intelligent crows who are hiding their own secrets deep in the forest.

I know that crows and forests are often associated with magical realism or fantasy. This book is not either of those things. It is precisely what Sean called it: a work of speculative fiction, set in the near past.

What made me write it? This is a book about relationships of community and care, in times of peril. It is about care that cuts across all boundaries, including species boundaries, and a commitment to one another that transcends the individual.

I don’t know if there is ever a single reason for writing a book, but I wrote Palaces to express something that I believe is true: that we can be about more than just our own selfish need, that generosity exists even under the most terrible of conditions, and that there is a place in the world for even the most lost and broken people, if they can find it.

The book was directly inspired by Prince Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, which was written in direct response to Charles Darwin and his theory of competition and the survival of the fittest, on which an entire pseudoscientific tradition of racist and exploitative rhetoric would be built. It was also written in reaction, in some ways, to William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, and to the entire tradition of “people are inherently evil,” and “nature is cruel” literature. There is plenty of human cruelty in the book, but also its counterpoint.

In the book, you have a roster of protagonists from different cultures and distinct ways to live but united by the harshness of the world around them. How was it to write these different perspectives? Which were the main challenges?

For me, writing is an opportunity of openness and curiosity about the world. Writing mostly consists of listening and observing, the main and probably most neglected elements of the craft. For this book I traveled to Lithuania, and at one point I was down on my hands and knees in a forest meadow, photographing and cataloguing every wild herb and flower. The amount of research I do is meticulous, but that is also because I love writing as an opportunity to learn. The book is set, as well, in a region with which I have experience, though it is not one of the regions—Russia, Central Asia, and the Caucasus—with which I have the most experience. So I had to work harder. I went to many museums, I visited many places, I spoke to many people, and I read many books to make this book. None of this ever feels like a challenge: writing is just a scaffolding I have constructed around the core structure, and the core structure is curiosity about the world.

What is a piece of fiction that you think didn’t get enough attention?

William Sloane’s two novels To Walk the Night and The Edge of Running Water are beautiful works of art. Maybe they don’t get talked about enough. But getting attention often means a reduction in the quality of the conversation around something. I think of the way in which Patricia Highsmith’s posthumous popularity led mostly to a sad stereotype of her and to a series of awful, reductive versions of The Talented Mr. Ripley that completely failed to get to the heart of that book. William Sloane said that a book is a conversation between two people – one writer, and one reader. Sometimes it’s better if things stay small and feel private and intimate.

Show me an illustration that you love and tell me why!

This is the Polish cover for my novel Where the Axe is Buried, and if someone asked me “what is this book about?” I could simply show them this cover to answer that question. If that’s not what defines a perfect book cover, I don’t know what is.


Let us show the newer writers that they are not alone! I asked several authors about things that made they feel bad on their journey and how did they overcome it, but I’m going to ask something broader to you. You’ve been publishing since the late 90s if I’m not wrong. How was your journey up to now?

I have been writing since I was very young. At fifteen years old, I decided I wanted to “be” a writer. I had no idea, of course, what that meant – and how could I? After all, there is no such thing as “being” a writer: there is only writing. I wish I had known that from the start, and understood better that the rewarding part of all of the work is the work itself. Understanding that would have helped me be less worried about the things that do not matter, like publication and awards and all the rest of the business of the thing.

But in the end, maybe it’s something that one has to learn for oneself. Everything is process, endless process, and thirty-five years from deciding I wanted to be a writer, I am still writing. So I am glad that fifteen-year-old version of myself had the stubbornness to stick with this craft, through all of the challenges, and even though he never got to “be” a writer, because such a thing does not exist, he’s still writing.

Writing is a wonderful thing. It is creation, it is making, which is why they used to call poets “makers.” My mantra for the why of what I do is making makes the maker – writing is a craft that improves the artisan, helping me learn, grow, think, and work through the complex challenges of this world. I am grateful to the process for helping me to live better.