Ginger Lee Thomason

Ginger is writing a short story collection and an accompanying academic commentary focusing on food imagery in speculative fiction and its subsequent effect on the reader and critically within the setting, characterization, and world-building of a text.

Ginger's website

Background

Before coming to the UK from Salt Lake City, Utah, Ginger completed her BA in Creative Writing and English at Southern New Hampshire University in 2014 and her MFA with Fairleigh Dickinson University in 2016. She has a professional background in public education administration, higher education administration, and with the United States Federal Government.

Her creative writing mostly focuses on speculative fiction, but she also dabbles into food writing, poetry, and some contemporary fiction as well. Her research will not only include analysis of the writer’s craft but also the sociological, anthropological, and cultural history of food and food in fiction.

Research interests

• Food in fantasy and science fiction literature
• Food writing, including cookbooks, memoir, and poetry
• History of food and cooking
• Academic study of speculative fiction

Born out of a lifetime love of science fiction and fantasy literature, TV, and movies, Ginger’s academic focus merged with a more recent love of food writing during her MFA studies. Her master’s craft paper “Mise en Place: Where World Building Starts with a Feast” focused on the trope of the feast and the descriptions of food as a bridge in bringing readers into the constructed worlds of J.K. Rowling, J.R.R. Tolkien, George R.R. Martin, and Suzanne Collins.

Memberships, editorial boards

• Student member of the Centre for Science Fiction and Fantasy
• British Science Fiction Association
• British Fantasy Society
• Science Fiction Research Association
• Reader for The Literary Review

Selected recent publications

 “Salt Lake City, Utah” Reaching Beyond the Saguaros: A Collaborative Prosimetric Travelogue, Serving House Press, 2017
“The Pearl Farm” Yellow Chair Press, 2016
“Ode to Margarine” Icarus Down Review, 2016