Brian Charles Clark of the fiction review site, Curled Up With a Good Book, praised their debut collection, Filter House (2008) – which gathered 11 previously published and three original short fiction pieces – saying that: 'Shawl’s keen sense of justice and their adamant anti-colonialism always ride just beneath the surface of their stories. Shawl's short stories have appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, the Infinite Matrix, Strange Horizons, Semiotext(e) and numerous other magazines and anthologies. Much of what Shawl and Ward advocate is, quite simply, good practice: the avoidance of cliches, flat characters, unintended effects, and other hallmarks of lazy writing.' Reviewer Genevieve Williams of speculative fiction magazine Strange Horizons summed up about this guidebook: 'The practices advocated and concepts presented in Writing the Other may seem PC to some, but following them will help to ensure that an author gives more than lip service to diversity and is thoughtful about the creation and development of societies, cultures, and characters (which we all should be anyway).

Shawl is the co-author (with Cynthia Ward) of Writing the Other: Bridging Cultural Differences for Successful Fiction, a creative-writing handbook derived from the authors' workshop of the same name, in which participants explore techniques to help them write credible characters outside their own cultural experience. Writing the Other, short stories, and awards/memberships They are best known as an author of science fiction and fantasy short stories who writes and teaches about how fantastic fiction might reflect real-world diversity of gender, sexual orientation, race, colonialism, physical ability, age, and other sociocultural factors. Nisi Shawl (born 1955) is an African-American writer, editor, and journalist. Residential College, University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts

Everfair by Nisi Shawl