About Naseem - Naseem Jamnia

Hi! I'm Naseem—queer, nonbinary, Persian, trans, Chicagoan, writer, neuroscientist, baker, nerd, gamer.

An image of Naseem, laughing and bent over. They are a light-skinned West Asian person with brown hair and a headband, wearing jean shorts and a Captain America shield shirt.

Pronouns:they/them/their/themselfPronunciation:NA-seem JAM-knee-ah

Born to Iranian immigrants, I was raised in the North Side of Chicago, which I still call home even though I no longer live there. My writing has appeared in The Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, The Rumpus, The Writer's Chronicle, and other venues. I was the 2018 Bitch Media Fellow in Technology, a 2019 Lambda Literary Fellow in Young Adult Fiction, and a 2022 Otherwise Fellow, and was named the inaugural Samuel R. Delany Fellow. My debut novella, The Bruising of Qilwa, was released by Tachyon Publications in 2022 to critical praise.
 
My favorite personal essays that I've written are for The Rumpus. I'm also proud of what I produced for Bitch Media while they were still around.

More About Me

I did my undergraduate at the University of Chicago and my master's at DePaul University. Until January 2017, I balanced my writing with my work as a neuroscientist, where I studied rodent models of both concussions and psychiatric disabilities. I left my PhD program at the University of Pennsylvania after the 2016 US presidential election to pursue my lifelong love of writing full time. 
 
I currently live in Reno, Nevada (unceded territory belonging to the Numu, Wašiw, Newe, and Nuwu peoples), where I graduated from the MFA program in fiction at the University of Nevada, Reno, and received a graduate certificate in Gender, Race, and Identity. I write speculative fiction, primarily (secondary world) fantasy, across all ages (adult and kidlit (MG/YA) both). I also write both creative and journalistic nonfiction; for the latter, I focus mainly on science and science literary, academia, social justice, and public health. I'm represented by Erica Bauman at Aevitas Creative Management at Aevitas Creative Management.

Last but not least, I'm also an editor!

See my hire me page for more information about my freelance services, which includes developmental and copyediting, authenticity/sensitivity reads, and speaking events.

I'm the managing editor at Sword & Kettle Press, a tiny press of feminist speculative writing. We've run successful Kickstarters for both the Cup & Dagger Mini Speculative Chapbook series and the Hansel and Gretel chapbook Bewildered. We host the magazine Corvid Queen for feminist fairytales in addition to our handmade books.
I used to be (but am no longer) the managing editor at Sidequest, an independent gaming criticism website which publishes writers of marginalized genders that grew out of the. gaming vertical at WWAC. (One of the coolest (and funniest) things to have happened to me is that my Mystic Messenger Trash series on Sidequest is officially linked on the Mystic Messenger Wikipedia page.) 
My favorite games are JRPGs, I love cooking and baking, and I am always hankering for my next tattoo.