Named one of the Best Poetry Books of 2021 by The Guardian

Longlisted for the 2021 National Translation Award in Poetry. Picked for Kirkus Reviews' Best Fiction in Translation of 2020. Named a Book of the Year by NPR, Vox, and The New Statesman. Picked for Loyalty Books' Holiday List.

A new, feminist translation of Beowulf by the author of the much-buzzed-about novel The Mere Wife

Brash and belligerent, lunatic and invigorating, with passages of sublime poetry punctuated by obscenities and social-media shorthand. --Ruth Franklin, The New Yorker

The author of the crazy-cool Beowulf-inspired novel The Mere Wife tackles the Old English epic poem with a fierce new feminist translation that radically recontextualizes the tale. --Barbara VanDenburgh, USA Today

Nearly twenty years after Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf--and fifty years after the translation that continues to torment high-school students around the world--there is a radical new verse translation of the epic poem by Maria Dahvana Headley, which brings to light elements that have never before been translated into English, recontextualizing the binary narrative of monsters and heroes into a tale in which the two categories often entwine, justice is rarely served, and dragons live among us.

A man seeks to prove himself as a hero. A monster seeks silence in his territory. A warrior seeks to avenge her murdered son. A dragon ends it all. The familiar elements of the epic poem are seen with a novelist's eye toward gender, genre, and history--Beowulf has always been a tale of entitlement and encroachment, powerful men seeking to become more powerful, and one woman seeking justice for her child, but this version brings new context to an old story. While crafting her contemporary adaptation of Beowulf, Headley unearthed significant shifts lost over centuries of translation.

New York Times bestselling author Maria Dahvana Headley presents a modern retelling of the literary classic Beowulf, set in American suburbia as two mothers--a housewife and a battle-hardened veteran--fight to protect those they love in The Mere Wife.

From the perspective of those who live in Herot Hall, the suburb is a paradise. Picket fences divide buildings--high and gabled--and the community is entirely self-sustaining. Each house has its own fireplace, each fireplace is fitted with a container of lighter fluid, and outside--in lawns and on playgrounds--wildflowers seed themselves in neat rows. But for those who live surreptitiously along Herot Hall's periphery, the subdivision is a fortress guarded by an intense network of gates, surveillance cameras, and motion-activated lights.

For Willa, the wife of Roger Herot (heir of Herot Hall), life moves at a charmingly slow pace. She flits between mommy groups, playdates, cocktail hour, and dinner parties, always with her son, Dylan, in tow. Meanwhile, in a cave in the mountains just beyond the limits of Herot Hall lives Gren, short for Grendel, as well as his mother, Dana, a former soldier who gave birth as if by chance. Dana didn't want Gren, didn't plan Gren, and doesn't know how she got Gren, but when she returned from war, there he was. When Gren, unaware of the borders erected to keep him at bay, ventures into Herot Hall and runs off with Dylan, Dana's and Willa's worlds collide.

The poignant and hilarious (Newsday) story of one woman's twelve months of dating anyone -- absolutely anyone -- who asked her out

At some point every woman who's single (and not by choice) wonders whether she's not somehow responsible for her predicament. Is she too choosy? Should she have given that guy with the combover and the mother issues a shot? Maybe three full feet isnt too much of a height difference . . .? Maria Dahvana Headley had been there, cherry-picking the men shed dated based on a variety of criteria, and clearly it wasnt getting her anywhere.

The Year of Yes is the hilarious and hopeful account of Headley's quest to find a man she could stand (for longer than a couple of hours). Frustrated by her own ineffective taste, she resolved to leave her love life up to fate, dating anyone who asked her: homeless men, a millionaire, several non-English speakers, a mime, and even two women. And finally, one man whose baggage would have disqualified him in any other year . . . but this was the Year of Yes, when Headley would finally discover what was really important.

Clarkesworld is a Hugo Award-winning science fiction and fantasy magazine. Each month we bring you a mix of fiction (new and classic works), articles, interviews and art.

Our October 2014 issue contains:

• Original Fiction by Maria Dahvana Headley (Taxidermist in the Underworld), Helena Bell (Lovecraft), Rahul Kanakia (Seeking boarder for rm w/ attached bathroom, must be willing to live with ghosts ($500 / Berkeley)), and E. Catherine Tobler (Pithing Needle).
• Classic stories by K.J. Parker (A Rich, Full Week) and Alex Irvine (Wizard's Six).
• Non-fiction by Brian Francis Slattery (I Sing the Lady Electric), an interview with Robert Reed, an Another Word column by Daniel Abraham, and an editorial by Neil Clarke.

Maria Dahvana Headley is a firecracker: she's whip smart with a heart, and she writes like a dream. --Neil Gaiman, bestselling author of The Graveyard Book and Coraline

#1 New York Times bestseller Maria Dahvana Headley's soaring sky fantasy Magonia is now in paperback

Aza Ray Boyle is drowning in thin air. Since she was a baby, Aza has suffered from a mysterious lung disease that makes it ever harder for her to breathe, to speak--to live.

So when Aza catches a glimpse of a ship in the sky, her family chalks it up to a cruel side effect of her medication. But Aza doesn't think this is a hallucination. She can hear someone on the ship calling her name.

Only her best friend, Jason, listens. Jason, who's always been there. Jason, for whom she might have more-than-friendly feelings. But before Aza can consider that thrilling idea, something goes terribly wrong. Aza is lost to our world--and found, by another. Magonia.

Above the clouds, in a land of trading ships, Aza is not the weak and dying thing she was. In Magonia, she can breathe for the first time. Better, she has immense power--but as she navigates her new life, she discovers that war between Magonia and Earth is coming. In Aza's hands lies fate of the whole of humanity--including the boy who loves her. Where do her loyalties lie?

Neil Gaiman's Stardust meets John Green's The Fault in Our Stars in this New York Times bestselling story about a girl caught between two worlds, two races, and two destinies.

Don't miss Aerie, the stunning, highly anticipated sequel

The stunning sequel to Maria Dahvana Headley's bestselling, critically acclaimed Magonia tells the story of one girl who must make an impossible choice between two families, two homes--and two versions of herself.

Aza Ray is back on earth. Her boyfriend, Jason, is overjoyed. Her family is healed. She's living a normal life, or as normal as it can be if you've spent the past year dying, waking up on a sky ship, and discovering that your song can change the world.

As in, not normal. Part of Aza still yearns for the clouds, no matter how much she loves the people on the ground.

When Jason's paranoia over Aza's safety causes him to make a terrible mistake, Aza finds herself a fugitive in Magonia, tasked with opposing her radical, bloodthirsty, recently escaped mother, Zal Quel, and her singing partner, Dai. She must travel to the edge of the world in search of a legendary weapon, the Flock, in a journey through fire and identity that will transform her forever.

Told in Maria Headley's trademark John Green-meets-Neil Gaiman style, Aerie is sure to satisfy the many readers who can't wait to return to the spellbinding world of Magonia.