It’s a potentially sinister day in the neighborhood

Are you a speculative fiction fan? If so, you likely know who Ann Leckie is. If not, she’s the author of the critically acclaimed “Imperial Radch space opera.”

The trilogy is set in a futuristic space empire in which Leckie imagined gender-less humans controlled by artificial intelligence.

Leckie’s most recent novel is "The Raven Tower." Kirkus writes that it “aims her philosophical musings about politics, power, and revenge at a new subgenre: epic fantasy.”

She reads here from her short story “The Justified” and seems to delight in answering the many questions she receives in the Q&A.

After attending The Clarion West Writers Workshop in 2005, where she studied with Octavia Butler, Leckie published her first novel “Ancillary Justice.” Her website notes that she “has worked as a waitress, a receptionist, a rodman on a land-surveying crew, and a recording engineer." She lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Leckie gave this reading on July 30 at the Seattle Public Library Central Library in the final night of the Clarion West Summer Reading Series.

KUOW’s Sonya Harris recorded the event.