This week, we kick off our new exhibit and content initiative American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture with four writers of speculative fiction: N. K. Jemisin, Matthew J. Kirby, Nnedi Okorafor, and Nghi Vo. Moderated by Michi Trota, the panel of authors discuss religion in their writing, the importance of considering socio-spiritual systems when world-building, and how these influence the ways their characters move through the worlds they create.

This conversation originally took place April 22, 2025 and was recorded live at the Harold Washington Library Center in Chicago. We hope you enjoy entering the Mind of a Writer.

American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture opens November 2025 at the American Writers Museum in Chicago. Learn more about the exhibit and upcoming programming schedule here. American Prophets is supported by a grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. through its Religion and Cultural Institutions Initiative.

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More about the writers:

N. K. JEMISIN is a fantasy author and 2020 MacArthur Fellow whose fiction has been recognized with multiple Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards. Most of her works have been optioned for television or film, and collectively her novels, including the Broken Earth trilogy — The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, and The Stone Sky — have sold over two million copies. Her speculative works range widely in theme, though with repeated motifs: resistance and oppression, loneliness and belonging, and Wouldn’t It Be Cool If This One Ridiculous Thing Happened. In her spare time she’s into tabletop and video games, biking, fanfiction, and urban gardening. She lives and writes in Brooklyn, with her son and two cats.

MATTHEW J. KIRBY is the critically acclaimed and award-winning author of numerous books for young readers, including The Clockwork Three, Icefall, The Lost Kingdom, the Dark Gravity Sequence, the Assassin’s Creed series Last Descendants, A Taste for Monsters, and Star Splitter. He has also written adult titles for the Assassin’s Creed and Diablo video game franchises. He has won the Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery, the PEN Center USA award for Children’s Literature, and the Judy Lopez Memorial Award.

NNEDI OKORAFOR is the author of multiple award-winning and New York Times bestsellers, including Death of the Author, the Binti trilogy, Who Fears Death, and Lagoon, currently in development at Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment. She has won every major prize in speculative fiction, including the World Fantasy, Nebula, and Eisner Awards; multiple Hugo Awards; and the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa. Born in Cincinnati to Igbo Nigerian immigrant parents, she now resides in Phoenix, Arizona, with her daughter, Anyaugo.

NGHI VO is the author of the novels Siren Queen and The Chosen and the Beautiful, as well as the acclaimed novellas of the Singing Hills Cycle, which began with The Empress of Salt and Fortune. The series entries have been finalists for the Nebula Award, the Locus Award, and the Lambda Literary Award, and have won the Crawford Award, the I...