# Arkady Martine

AnnaLinden Weller, better known under her pen name Arkady Martine (born April 19, 1985), is an American author of science fiction literature. Her first novels A Memory Called Empire (2019) and A Desolation Called Peace (2021), which form the Teixcalaan series, each won the Hugo Award for Best Novel.

## Personal life

Weller was born and grew up in New York City. Her parents are classical musicians of Russian Jewish heritage: her mother is a professor of violin at Juilliard and her father played for the orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera; she has described herself as an "assimilated American Jew" and noted that, in the 1930s, Jews who moved to the United States from Europe "were basically playing classical music and inventing the Anglophone discipline of science fiction at the same time".
She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico with her wife, author Vivian Shaw.

## Academic career

Weller obtained a Bachelor of Arts in religious studies at the University of Chicago in 2007, a Master of Studies in classical Armenian studies at the University of Oxford in 2013, and a Ph.D. in medieval Byzantine, global, and comparative history at Rutgers University in 2014. Her dissertation was titled "Imagining Pre-Modern Empire: Byzantine Imperial Agents Outside the Metropole". She was a visiting assistant professor of history at St. Thomas University from 2014–15 and a postdoctoral researcher at Uppsala University from 2015–17. She has published writings on the topic of Byzantine and medieval Armenian history.

## Fiction writing

As Arkady Martine, Weller has been publishing science fiction since 2012.

### A Memory Called Empire

Martine's first novel, A Memory Called Empire, published in 2019, is the beginning of her Teixcalaan series. It is set in a future where the Teixcalaanli empire governs most of human space, and is about to absorb Lsel (apparently from Armenian "lsel" translating to "listen"), an independent mining station. Lsel ambassador Mahit Dzmare is sent to the imperial capital to prevent this, and finds herself embroiled in the empire's succession crisis. Martine said that the book was in many respects a fictional version of her postdoctoral research on Byzantine imperialism on the frontier to Armenia in the 11th century, particularly the annexation of the Kingdom of Ani.
In The Verge, Andrew Liptak praised the novel as a "brilliant blend of cyberpunk, space opera, and political thriller", highlighting Martine's characterization and worldbuilding. In Locus, Russell Letson appreciated the novel's "absorbing and sometimes challenging blend of intrigue and anthropological imagination", as well as its sense of humor. Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews both gave the novel a starred review, noting the facility with which Martine brought the worlds of her "gorgeously crafted diplomatic space opera" to life, and comparing Martine's novel to the works of Ann Leckie and Yoon Ha Lee.

### A Desolation Called Peace

The second installment of the Teixcalaan series, A Desolation Called Peace was first published in 2021. It picks up several months after the events of Empire. Mahit is back on Lsel station, Three Seagrass is promoted-but-bored on Teixcalaan, and the new emperor is on the throne. Mahit is trying to process all of the events of the previous book when she is quickly thrown into a series of political intrigues that forces her to leave the station with Three Seagrass, who shows up on Lsel Station to take Mahit to an outlying area of space to try to communicate with a species of incomprehensible aliens and avert a war of total destruction. Back on Teixcalaan, political schemes are brewing, and the very young heir to the throne is in the middle of them.

## Awards and nominations

* A Desolation Called Peace, Tor Books, 2021 - Winner 2022 Hugo Award for Best Novel, Winner 2022 Subjective Chaos for Best Science Fiction Novel, 2021 Nebula Award Finalist for Best Novel, 2022 Locus Award Finalist for Best Science Fiction Novel, Longlisted for the BSFA Award for Best Novel.
* A Memory Called Empire, Tor Books, 2019 - Winner 2020 Hugo Award for Best Novel, Winner 2020 Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel, 2020 Locus Award Finalist for Best First Novel, 2019 Nebula Award Finalist for Best Novel, Shortlisted for the 2020 Arthur C. Clarke Award.