Ai Jiang was born in Fujian, China, and moved to Canada with her family at age four. As a child, she briefly lived in Chinatown in downtown Toronto, then moved to Scarborough, Ontario. She later returned to Toronto to earn a BA in English Literature at the University of Toronto St. George; she also earned a Creative Writing Certificate from Humber School for Writers. After a stint in Markham, Ontario, she relocated to Scotland to earn her MSc in Creative Writing from the University of Edinburgh. “I think I never thought to move elsewhere because my family is based here, but also the fact that I didn’t have any money. There’s something quiet and safe about the areas I lived in—though some might say otherwise because in downtown Toronto and Scarborough, the crime rate can be high for specific things. But because it was familiar, it never felt unsafe to me.” Besides these, Jiang attended the Gotham Writers’ Workshop and the Your Personal Odyssey workshop. She is TESOL certified to teach English as a second language.

Jiang became a full-time writer upon completion of her Master’s. Before this, she’d had a number of jobs, including being a ghost writer, a badminton coach, an English Literature tutor and an ESL tutor, working at Kumon, and being a waitress. Jiang has dabbled in a variety of activities, from competitive badminton to competitive Tetris. Before committing to a career in writing, she’d gone from humanities courses to wanting to be a neurosurgeon; and then to dipping into psychology and philosophy. She landed in English Lit with thoughts of being a teacher—her parents had been teachers in China.

“I think the highest ‘honor’ I’d gotten before becoming a writer was in middle school when, during the summer, I’d gone to magic camp and got ‘Camper of the Week’.” Ai Jiang’s first fiction publications were in 2020 with magazines Maudlin House, Button Eye Review, and Quail Bell. In 2021 her stories found homes with a number of notable genre venues, including Luna Station and The Dark. In fact, all four of her 2021 stories in The Dark captured the attention of notable reviewers. Her 2022 short story “Give Me English” (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction) was a Locus and Nebula finalist. In 2023 Shortwave published a slender book, I Am Ai, a novelette. That novelette earned Jiang nominations for Locus, Aurora, BSFA, Nebula, and Hugo Awards. That same year, Dark Matter Ink published Jiang’s novella Linghun, which earned her a Locus nomination and gave her Nebula and Bram Stoker Award wins. To-date, Jiang has published over fifty stories and nearly twenty poems. In 2024 she was a finalist for the Astounding Award for Best New Writer.

A Palace Near the Wind is the first book in her Natural Engines series, due from Titan this month.

How old were you when you started reading and writing fiction?

I remember I started reading essentially the moment I landed in Canada, or at least that’s as far as I remember because I can’t remember much of my education in China. I loved ordering books from Scholastic, and at first it was just an excuse to get the plushies that came with certain books, but eventually it became just the books. I do remember when I was in senior kindergarten though, I was obsessed with The Powerpuff Girls, and my teacher showed a bit of favoritism and would gift me Powerpuff Girl books and Halloween costumes that were a bit too big for me. I still have those books, and it’s something I’ve never forgotten. In the second grade, I wrote my first book about a girl going to dark magic school and riding on flying wolves, which I hand illustrated then tried to illustrate using Microsoft Word, and my mom took it to the travel agency she was working at to print the book out and bind it (it was something like 25 pages long).

When I had just graduated from undergrad, and I was at a culinary school’s food event to take pictures for a foodie Instagram account my sister and I ran back then, I met a man who may or may not have been a part of some kind of mafia, or “interesting business” rings at the event. He asked me, and I quote, “Do you want to learn how to drink coffee the Italian way?” We sat at the bar with paper cups (which he complained about because he needed ceramic), talking about my goals in life. At that point, I was about twenty-one or twenty-two and he was maybe about sixty, and it was clear he’d worn a great many hats in his life—did things like sold Chinese workbooks, knew Margaret Atwood, was lovers with one of her editors at some point, opened and closed many doors, and was enjoying a well-connected retirement.

I remember him asking me what I planned on doing, and I’d told him I was trying to be a teacher, but he asked if that was what I really wanted to do. At that moment, I realized that what I really wanted was to become a writer, and I told him this. At that point, I hadn’t written for a while. He told me to find him again once I’d written a novella, to meet him at the same spot we had coffee with the finished novella in three months’ time. We didn’t exchange contact information; all he gave me was a name: “Vince.” I returned three months later, with a half-finished novella that included every beginner mistake you could ever make in writing, waited at the exact same spot, for five hours; but he never came.

As to what happened with that half-finished novella? I used parts of it to unsuccessfully apply to MFA programs and ended up shelving it. But I’m glad to have met Vince, and I hope I’ll meet him again someday. And maybe he’ll see something I’ve written in a newspaper he reads, though he says he mainly only looks at the culture and economics sections.

Who are some of the authors, or what are some of the pieces that you feel have been important to you as a writer, and why?

To the Lighthouse—for the way Woolf delicately unravels the inner tensions and intricacies of a family through a carefully woven situation that allows for unspoken subtleties.

The Kite Runner—for Hosseini’s illuminating story of friendship and betrayal and forgiveness, and the way violence shatters the closest of bonds.

To Kill a Mockingbird—for Lee’s tender and sharp exploration of the reality of misunderstanding and the way humans fear what they do not understand and the unknown they cannot control.

Beloved—for the devastating and masterful way Morrison explores dark histories through metaphor that is presented by the physical embodiment of trauma, violence, and loss.

1984—for Orwell’s critical gaze into the choicelessness of the individual and the struggle for an impossible freedom under oppression.

Never Let Me Go—for Ishiguro’s contemplative and meditative dystopia that philosophizes what it means to be human and to be alive.

More recently: The Vegetarian, Earthlings, The Memory Police because of the way these works explore the individual within suffocating societies as well as their place in the collective and how it all changes interpersonal relationships and our senses of self.

Your first publications were not that long ago—in 2021—but you’ve had quite a lot come out in a short span of time. What has your journey in publishing been like so far?

Sometimes when I look back, it feels like I was desperately sprinting ahead and being whisked along by the wind, not knowing quite what direction I was running towards and how I was going to get there. But I swallowed every bit of information I could get about publishing, the short fiction industry as a whole, as well as the different journals and magazines, the literary and genre outlets, trying to figure out what exactly it was that I loved to write and loved about writing itself and where I wanted it all to take me.

I suppose, at the time, the only thought in my mind was that I wanted to succeed, but I wasn’t quite sure what that meant outside of publication, and the only thing I could control was how much I’d written and what I could try to do to improve it. So I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I’m a person who works very hard but not very smart, and a good part of how far I’ve come resulted from luck. A thing I always like to keep in mind is that every challenge and obstacle can become an opportunity, and that was the kind of mindset I kept as I tried to work through the industry and figure out how I could turn passion into something sustainable and something that could feed me for the rest of my life without giving up artistry in favor of broader audience appeal.

ISFDB lists over fifty stories published, plus poetry, an anthology, novellas, and a collection. What, for you, is the key to this level of productivity, as well as to selling this much work in a few years?

I think for me it was not to be too precious with my work, in that what I learn from one piece I’ll take and apply it to the next rather than going back and endlessly editing something before I send it off. I’m also someone who can be quite impulsive and compulsive and lose interest quickly, so once a story is finished, I don’t often revisit it, or if I do, it’s usually after a long period of time has passed, but by then, I already sent it out on submission. I think there was also a need for quantity, because my thought process at the time was that if I got more work out more quickly, perhaps editors would be more familiar with my name, and it raises my chances of getting published if I have more pieces that can be considered. The need to unpack tangled thoughts is also something that drives my writing.

Looking at your body of work to-date, including your forthcoming title with Titan, do you feel that there are themes, topics, or motifs that you often come back to?

Absolutely. Identity, immigration, the concept of home and family, rebellion and submission, I think these are things that will consistently appear in what I write. But I’ve discovered that the ways I explore them have been evolving over the years, which is interesting to see. In terms of motifs, I find that I often include things like rivers and other bodies of water, mountains or other towering entities, masks and disguises whether visible or invisible.

When you sit down to write a story, what are the things you are initially most focused on?

It depends on the story—sometimes it comes from a single inspired line, sometimes it’s an image, sometimes it’s a concept, sometimes it’s a person, and sometimes it’s a memory. But when I begin writing, I focus on what resonates with me first in the story that begs to be written. If I’m taking a very technical approach, what usually comes first is imagery, metaphor, and character woven into a single sentence.

A Palace Near the Wind is your next release. What are the things that stand out to you as different from your work to-date, and what are the things that, to you, are classic Ai Jiang storytelling?

It’s interesting because A Palace Near the Wind was written during the same year as Linghun so the two definitely share more similarities than to my writing now I’d say. I feel like with Linghun, I focused far more on imagery and the metaphors they served as; what the descriptions revealed about the state of the characters and places. But with Palace, especially being my first long form fantasy, I found myself floundering when it came to balancing everything that came more naturally in short fiction. I always have a tendency towards elaborate imagery and the way it might reveal character interiority—yet, what I have always lacked is the clean-cut plot structures that some readers might look for. Writing to a specific structure has never been a strong suit of mine as I work mainly based on intuition. Unless there’s something very experimental I’m attempting to do; but even then, I go by gut feeling. Even when I know the general storytelling rules that people say we should learn before going on to break them. From my readers, they say my writing is bleak but hopeful, lyrical but readable. For myself, I guess classic Ai Jiang storytelling is chaos and sleep deprivation at its finest.

What was the initial inspiration for A Palace Near the Wind , and did the book change in significant ways from initial concept through edits and revisions and ultimately, to final product?

The initial inspiration for Palace was a Bluebeard-esque story that had nature as the wives and industrialism as Bluebeard, where progress is antagonized from the jarring point of view of a personified nature. There were far fewer plot twists and turns, and more focus on the concept of an unwilling contract between nature and humanity, and the way we’ve reshaped the planet to better suit our livelihoods. But then a second book was introduced, and I’d wanted to explore the other side of the argument where moral greyness seeps in. I decided to divide the two books so they could be read as contrasting against one another and offer two very different but immersive reading experiences before piecing the two together. That said, it’ll be interesting to see how my writing has changed and how the story might take a different turn because books one and two were written roughly four years apart.

The cover may give fantasy vibes, but this book is categorized as both “fantasy” and “science fiction”, and one of the blurbs says it combines “the best of folklore and science fiction . . . ” How do you personally categorize this book, and what, for you, is the key to successfully blending folklore and science fiction?

I would categorize this as science fantasy in the way it includes steam-punk-esque technology along with more whimsical fantasy magic that feels ancient. There is also mentioning of more far-future cyberpunk elements that won’t come into play until the second book, which seems to have jarred some readers—though that is the intended effect I was attempting, without introducing too much at once in the first book. In terms of blending folklore and science fiction, truth be told, I have no idea. I am very much a do-as-I-go writer, and whatever ends up in the book is done based on instinct and what interests me at the moment, or what I thought would be fun and fascinating to include to further build on the book’s themes. I do think, however, when we look at our own world, there are elements of magic in our everyday lives, whether mundane or otherwise, as well as technology and science, so it’s something that many of us are used to; or at least that’s how it is for me, so these things often find themselves in a jumble in my work.

What for you were the biggest challenges in writing this book, and what are the things that you are happiest with?

The simple act of writing the novella was a challenge because I often struggle in the mid-point slog of long form and trying to figure out the sections that go between key plot points. I think what I’m happiest with is the fact that it’s complete, and that’s more than I could’ve hoped for at the time, when I began my foray into long form. Another challenge was keeping this book at novella length given that I had something else planned as my “debut novel.” I think because so many people place such emphasis on first novels, I thought hard about what piece of work I wanted to present to the world with this label. I love Palace, but it wasn’t a book I’d intended to make my first novel, and so it remained as a novella.

What can you tell us about a few of the central characters—including Lady Liu, of course—and what are your favorite things about them?

I think one of the things I love most, but may frustrate some readers, is how unreliable our main character Lufeng is in that she has a very narrow and flawed view of not only her own world and family, but also of the world around her and the rigidity of her values and beliefs that get called into question as the story goes on. Chiuliu was a character I had written to have a similar but different sort of naivety from Lufeng in that she is someone who has not yet been touched by the world outside of the protective bubble her family has always kept her in. With both the King and Copper, I think I’ve always been a fan of the “misunderstood antagonist,” but I won’t say too much to avoid spoilers, and I think they are both characters I want to explore more in the next installment. And for Zinc, I wanted to go for the opposite effect—a character who is seemingly kind but is cunning in disguise.

What, for you, is A Palace Near the Wind really about, beyond the blurbs?

To me, A Palace Near the Wind is about the Bluebeard-esque relationship between nature and industrialism, in how nature is often sacrificed for progress and human survivability and innovations. It is a meditation on the jarring experiences of stepping into a new culture, on unwilling contracts, on how lack of information/tightly controlled information is used as a form of oppression, and the exploration of overproduction and excessive consumption as well as challenging long believed truths.

What else do you have coming up that you’d like Clarkesworld readers to know about?

For my long form works: A River from the Sky, which is book two in the Natural Engines duology after A Palace Near the Wind, is forthcoming in April 2026; An Empire Above Opera, my debut novel, is forthcoming in September 2026, and another standalone prequel in the same series, An Opera of Salamanders, is forthcoming in September 2027. I’m diving back into horror for the next bit, so hopefully those will find homes very quickly as well! For readers who love short fiction, I have a number of stories forthcoming and recently published in various anthologies that can be found on my website!

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