Lucinda Roy
THE FREEDOM RACE
VOLUME I of THE DREAMBIRD CHRONICLES
For me, stories about the future work best when the far is made near, and the near is made nearer. I didn’t write The Freedom Race because I wanted to imagine the future, I wrote it because I wanted the future to re-imagine us—to reveal something we may not have understood about ourselves before. I hadn’t expected to find hope in a young, enslaved girl from a deeply troubled future, but that is what happened. — Lucinda Roy reflects on Juneteenth, equality, and writing — The Mary Sue
Lucinda writes about drawing the maps for
THE FREEDOM RACE
Every fantasy world needs a map, right? But what happens when the map needs to come from the hands of the characters you’ve written? Lucinda Roy, author of upcoming speculative fiction novel The Freedom Race, discusses her journey to drawing the maps in her book and how her characters helped shape the art she created.
THE AUDIO VERSION OF THE FREEDOM RACE, Macmillan Audio, available from Audible.
Adjoa Andoh of the Royal Shakespeare Company and Bridgerton fame is the narrator for The Freedom Race
Available at Bookstores
“Every now and then a work comes along that makes you wonder whether you are reading or dreaming. And you’re not sure it matters which.”—Nikki Giovanni
“If ‘resilience’ was a book, it would be The Freedom Race. It has a prescience about it in the tradition of Octavia Butler.” —Maurice Broaddus
“American magic-realism meets the outcome of the Second U.S. Civil War in a well-told, brutally jolting, strangely prescient, and soul-haunting narrative.”—L. E. Modesitt, Jr., bestselling author of the Saga of Recluce series
“Roy’s comprehensive worldbuilding and immersive language creates a tapestry that blends realistic fantasy with the Black experience in the United States. The deliberate pacing and visceral descriptions of planting life will not suit all readers, but the investment is worthwhile. Ji-ji’s journey is a story of resilience and hope rooted in a place where Octavia Butler and Rivers Solomon intersect with The Handmaid’s Tale.”—Booklist
This gut-wrenching read takes place in a near-future United States where white people once again enslave African Americans….This powerful, riveting novel provides a glimpse into a nightmarish future that’s all too similar to our past.–Buzzfeed (A pick for Buzzfeed’s “Best Books of July 2021.”)
