Thalen Vale

Thalen Vale writes literary science fantasy and philosophical poetry. The poetry collections include Violence, a debut meditation on violence as a primordial force, and the ongoing From Void, To Void series — four volumes tracing a single philosophical arc from annihilation to transcendence. Starwoven, a science fantasy novel more than ten years in the making, is currently on submission.

The work draws from three traditions at once: Western fantasy, Chinese and Korean cultivation fiction, and the open-world sensibility of long-running RPGs. What these share, and what has always drawn Thalen Vale to them, is the willingness to build a system of rules complex enough to hold a real question.

Thalen Vale writes from the United States and returns often to Romania, where much of the poetry takes shape. The Romanian language, slow, hard-won, still arriving, threads through the novel as well, where it belongs to a character whose name is worth keeping to the page.

Between drafts: baking (mostly sweets like cake), long books read slowly, and two cats who disagree about nearly everything.