A.M. Dellamonica

Alyxandra Margaret (Alyx) Dellamonica was born on February 25, 1968, in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. A creative person from her earliest years, as a child and a young woman, Dellamonica did a great deal of work in local and community theater before she embarked on her writing career in earnest. She published her first short story, "Lucre's Egg" in the Autumn 1994 issue of Crank! Magazine. in 1995 she attended the storied Clarion West science fiction writers workshop in Seattle, WA, and began writing numerous short stories. (Some were mysteries written under the name 'Ashley Craft'.) She has published over 40 stories to date in numerous periodicals and anthologies, along with numerous essays and book reviews.

In 2009 Dellamonica published her first novel: Indigo Springs, an intense fantasy chronicling the fallout from the introduction of magical substance first into a small Oregon town, and then into the larger world. The novel won the 2010 Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. It was followed by a sequel, Blue Magic, in 2012. In 2014 Dellamonica embarked on a new series, which takes place on the island-dotted oceanic world of Stormwrack. The three novels in the series, Child of A Hidden Sea(2014), A Daughter of No Nation(2015), and The Nature of A Pirate(2016) tell the story of Sophie Hansa, a marine biologist from San Francisco who is swept into Stormwrack and its complicated variety of cultures and nations and the political and religious intrigues that drive them. The middle work won the 2016 Prix Aurora for Best English Novel. She also wrote several stories set in the same universe, "Among The Silvering Herd" (2012), "The Ugly Woman of Castello di Putti" (2014), and "The Glass Galago" (2016).

Under the pseudonym L.X. Beckett, Dellamonica has written a near-future novel Gamechanger, set on an Earth emerging from a long period of environmental collapse and political unrest into a brighter, virtual reality-driven collective future (the "Bounceback"). Gamechanger was a finalist for the 2020 Sunburst Award, and was followed by a sequel, Dealbreaker, in 2021. Beckett has also published two novellas set in the Bounceback universe: "Freezing Rain, a Chance of Falling" (2018), a finalist for the 2019 Theodore Sturgeon Award for Best Short Science Fiction; and "The Immolation of Kev Magee" (2020). Most recently as Beckett, she has written the 2022 story "Salvage Blossom".

Dellamonica had a James Bond story, "Through Your Eyes Only", published in the anthology Licence Expired: The Unauthorized James Bond(ChiZine, November 2015). She was also the co-editor of Heiresses of Russ 2016: The Year's Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction. She has published a number of other works of short fiction, including "A Key to the Illuminated Heretic" (2005), which was nominated for the 2005 Sidewise Award for Alternate History for Best Short Form; "The Town on Blighted Sea" (2007); "The Color of Paradox" (2014); "The Boy Who Would Not be Enchanted" (2016); and (as Beckett) "The HazMat Sisters" (2021), nominated for the 2022 Asimov's Readers Award for Best Novelette. As Beckett, she also writes poetry: her 2021 poem "What The Time Travellers Saw" was nominated for the 2022 Rhysling Award for Best Short Poem.

Dellamonica is married to author Kelly Robson, and lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.