Octavia Cade is a New Zealand writer. She’s constantly bouncing between science and horror and can never decide which one she likes writing about best. On the one hand science is full of wonder and learning, and on the other there’s never been a terrifying monster she didn’t love and low-key root for. More and more she’s getting into writing terrifying eco-fiction and cli-fi, purely because this means she doesn’t have to choose. Runner-up to both science and horror is food, and while she’s written a lot on food and horror—editing a collection of food horror stories, The Sharp and Sugar Tooth, for Upper Rubber Boot Books, and writing a series of award-winning columns on food and horror for The Book Smugglers—she’s also written on science and food as well. A novelette, “Eating Science with Ghosts”, was published by Asimov’s, and she’s slowly working on turning it into a pop science book. 

Cade is currently living and writing at Square Edge Community Art in Palmerston North as part of her timely residency. Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Massey University, Dr Thom Conroy, points out, ‘We can’t imagine a better time to host New Zealand speculative fiction writer Octavia Cade. Of The Stone Wētā, a reviewer wrote, “a near future scifi book that cuts deep into our present reality of climate change, politicians ignoring and silencing scientists, and global resistance.” Twenty-twenty seems like the perfect time to welcome Cade, one of New Zealand’s finest contemporary speculative fiction writers, to Palmerston North.’