Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Rachel: I’m obsessed with Zohar Jacobs’ short stories, and every time she publishes one, I have to send the link around to everyone I know and yell at them until they read it. Today, she’s joined us to tell our readers about her work!

Zohar: I write science fiction and slipstream, and so far have had stories published in the Sunday Morning Transport, Small Wonders, Analog and Clarkesworld. I also have a story forthcoming in Asimov’s.

Rachel: I’m always impressed by the religious and cultural questions you address in your writing, whether it’s about the role of religion on a Soviet lunar base or the question of whether a paired intelligence counts as one person or two in a minyan. Religion is such an under-explored concept in sci-fi—what draws you to exploring it?

Zohar: Mostly I’m getting back at Gene Roddenberry for how badly he dealt with religion in Star Trek. Although I’m an agnostic, religion has always been part of my life, and it’s one of the most complex social and intellectual systems that humanity has created. Why assume that we’d leave all that behind? You could actually argue that the feeling of being unmoored by distance from Earth and the scale of the universe might make people turn to religion more.

Rachel: Another theme I see in your writing is the engagement with real-world issues such as the climate crisis or the war in Ukraine? What are the challenges of writing about a future that is so grounded in our present?

Zohar: Oddly I’ve never thought of it as a challenge. I sometimes think that I’m not a very creative person: reality is always where I get my inspiration, because it comes up with much more complex and bizarre scenarios than I ever could. By hewing close to reality, I can expect my readers to bring their own set of rich, independent associations to my work. I guess the challenge is that I can’t predict how people will take my writing – but I’m not sure I could do that anyway.

Rachel: How important is literary voice in science fiction?

Zohar: Many SF readers prefer transparent, pacy prose that doesn’t get in the way of the story: think Andy Weir’s The Martian. So maybe it’s not that important. On the other hand, some of SF’s best writers have been great prose stylists – Ursula le Guin, Samuel R. Delany, M. John Harrison – so it’s clearly no obstacle to success either. Literary voice is important to me, but then I sometimes joke that I’m actually a literary author who just likes spaceships too much.

Rachel: What’s your next writing project?

Zohar: Funnily enough, a literary novel. It feels odd to temporarily step back from the SFF community, but this is a story that I’ve been wanting to tell for nearly 20 years. (It has spaceships too.)

Rachel: Tell us where the Night Beats community can find you and find your work!

Zohar: Apart from the magazines where I’ve been published, you can find me on Twitter @zoharjacobs and BlueSky @zoharjacobs.bsky.social. One of these days I will set up a website but this is not that day yet.

Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Rachel: I’m a sucker for intelligent, literary sci-fi, so when I finished reading North Continent Ribbon, I immediately asked Ursula if they’d be interested in telling our readers about it so that I’m not screaming about how good it is all by myself.

Ursula: North Continent Ribbon is a collection of connected, queer short stories that’s coming out in August.

Here’s the blurb:

“On Nakharat, every contract is a ribbon and every ribbon is a secret, braided tight and tucked behind a veil. Artificial intelligence threatens the tightly-woven network. Stability depends on giving each machine a human conscience—but the humans are not volunteers.”

Rachel: I was struck by the theme of connection and relationship, both visible and hidden, in North Continent Ribbon. Did this theme emerge organically or did you intentionally build the stories around it?

Ursula: It’s organic! The intentional organizing theme is different parts of Nakharat society—I wanted it to be clear why one person would hate the judges or the army or the Companies but another person might try to join up. But I wrote queer romances while thinking through facets of my own identity, and I was curious about the role bigger social groups like student clubs and groups of drinking buddies play in social change, so I’m not surprised you see a more intricate web.

Rachel: The collection covers multiple eras of Nakharat history, which feels very rich and lived-in. How much worldbuilding exists off the page?

Ursula: In some places there’s a ton, while other parts of the world are more of a mystery. I have lots of thoughts about the culture of the titular North Continent, plus miscellaneous facts (ask me about ocean ecology or grammatical genders!) Other locations are wide open.

Rachel: My absolute favourite element of your world was the grim wire technology in the trains and spaceships, and what it says about labour, class, and automation. Where did that idea originate?

Ursula: The very first writing I did about Nakharat involved an even more furious adult version of the “Last Tutor” protagonist, Isekendriya. I knew that Isekendriya grew up on a mountain estate overlooking wide, empty plains, that the thought of their parents filled them with rage and guilt, and that nevertheless they wore a ribbon in the family colors hidden in their hair. I asked myself what kind of wealth leads to an estate in the middle of nowhere, and the answer was transportation—specifically, trains. 

The combination of ribbon imagery, train tracks, my character’s fury at their complicitness, and my own feelings about the US justice system led to the creepy technology you see in the book. I’m glad you found it compelling! I definitely did—compelling enough that I kept writing stories set on Nakharat, and eventually wrote my way back around to Ise.

Rachel: One of the challenges of short stories is creating characters that the reader can bond with, and who experience growth and change, within a very limited number of words. How do you balance economy of storytelling with creating complex and compelling characters?

Ursula: I cheat and write novelettes! As a poet, I expected that my natural fiction range would be very short. But I love the freedom that a novelette (about twice the length of a traditional short story) allows me to explore the psyches of characters who are uncertain or conflicted about what they want.

Rachel: Will you be revisiting Nakharat? What are you working on now?

Ursula: Right now I’m working on a couple of different historical fantasy projects (Napoleonic wars? Byzantium?) But I haven’t ruled out a return to Nakharat! One of the stories is about an artificially intelligent book, and I’m curious about whom else the book might meet.

Rachel: Tell us where the Night Beats community can find you and find your work!

Ursula: You can pre-order a hardcopy of North Continent Ribbon from Neon Hemlock Press.

If you want an alert the moment the ebook pre-order goes live, or you’re curious about what else I’m working on, you can subscribe to my newsletter:

And I’ve been spending lots of time hanging out on Bluesky ( @yarntheory.bsky.social ).