Genre

Maurice Broaddus

An award-winning Afrofuturist, editor, and librarian, Maurice Broaddus has had more than a hundred short stories published in such places as Lightspeed Magazine, Black Panther: Tales from Wakanda, Out There Screaming (edited by Jordan Peele), The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand, Asimov’s, Weird Tales, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Apex Magazine. Broaddus has more than a dozen novels in print; his latest include Black Panther: T’Challa Declassified, Unfadeable, Sweep of Stars, Breath of Oblivion, and A City Dreaming. Born in London, he moved to Franklin, Indiana, when he was six years old and to Indianapolis a couple years later.

2026 Genre Shortlist: Breath of Oblivion

Breath of Oblivion is sci-fi novel which follows several citizens of an interplanetary empire experiencing renewed threats to their progress.

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2024 Middle Grade Winner: Unfadeable

A wiser-than-her-years graffiti artist known for tagging walls and bridges in her Indianapolis neighborhood, the Land, Bella plans to spend her summer break laying low and steering clear of anyone who might tip off to social services that she’s living on her own. But keeping a low profile is all but impossible when Bella discovers people in high places are trying to defund the Land. She has to find a way to fight back.

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2024 Genre Shortlist: Sweep of Stars

Maurice Broaddus’s Sweep of Stars is the first in a trilogy that explores the struggles of an empire. Epic in scope and intimate in voice, it follows members of the Muungano empire – a far-reaching coalition of city-states that stretches from O.E. (original earth) to Titan – as it faces an escalating series of threats.

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2020 Genre Winner: Pimp My Airship

All the poet called Sleepy wants to do is spit his verses, smoke chiba, and stay off the COP’s radar—all of which becomes impossible once he encounters a professional protestor known as (120 Degrees of) Knowledge Allah. They soon find themselves on the wrong side of local authorities and have to elude the powers that be.

When young heiress Sophine Jefferson’s father is murdered, the careful life she’d been constructing for herself tumbles around her. She’s quickly drawn into a web of intrigue, politics and airships, joining with Sleepy and Knowledge Allah in a fight for their freedom. Chased from one end of a retro-fitted Indianapolis to the other, they encounter outlaws, the occasional circus, possibly a medium, and more outlaws. They find themselves in a battle much larger than they imagined: a battle for control of the country and the soul of their people.

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