Jes Battis (they/them) writes in the genres of fantasy, mystery, and horror, with an emphasis on LGBTQ characters and found families. They are the author of the Occult Special Investigator series and the Parallel Parks series, both with Ace/Penguin. Night Child, the first novel in the OSI series, was shortlisted for the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, and nominated for the Endeavour Award. Jes also teaches medieval literature and creative writing. They’ve published work on growing up queer, nonbinary and autistic in The Los Angeles Review of Books and Strange Horizons. Jes loves mystery novels with a queer and supernatural twist, as well as YA novels focusing on trans and neurodivergent characters.Their new novel, The Winter Knight, will be released with ECW in early 2023. This is a mystery/urban fantasy novel focusing on the knights of the round table as they play out dangerous dramas in modern-day Vancouver. They’re also working on an upbeat queer romance/fantasy novel about a detective who returns to his hometown full of witches, in order to solve a mystery at a magical department store.
Jes loves pop culture,and has published academic books on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Farscape, and Game of Thrones. Their most recent nonfiction book–a hybrid of academic writing and queer autistic memoir–is Thinking Queerly: Medievalism, Wizardry, and Neurodiversity in Young-Adult Texts.
Jes splits their time between the prairies and the ocean.