Yume Kitasei w/ Wendy N. Wagner, SALTCROP

Yume Kitasei, the author of The Stardust Grail and The Deep Sky, visits the store to discuss her latest novel, Saltcrop, the epic tale of two sisters who sail across oceans to find their missing third sister—and Earth’s environmental salvation.

In Earth's not too distant future, seas consume coastal cities, highways disintegrate underwater, and mutant fish lurk in pirate-controlled depths. Skipper, a skilled sailor and the youngest of three sisters, earns money skimming and reselling plastic from the ocean to care for her ailing grandmother.

But then her eldest sister, Nora, goes missing. Nora left home a decade ago in pursuit of a cure for failing crops all over the world. When Skipper and her other sister, Carmen, receive a cryptic plea for help, they must put aside their differences and set out across the sea to find—and save—her. As they voyage through a dying world both beautiful and strange, encountering other travelers along the way, they learn more about their sister's work and the corporations that want what she discovered.

But the farther they go, the more uncertain their mission becomes: What dangerous attention did Nora attract, and how well do they really know their sister—or each other? Thus begins an epic journey spanning oceans and continents and a wistful rumination on sisterhood, friendship, and ecological disaster.

Yume Kitasei is the author of Saltcrop, The Stardust Grail, and The Deep Sky. She is Japanese and American and grew up in a space between two cultures—the same space where her stories reside. She lives in Brooklyn with two cats, Boondoggle and Filibuster.

Wendy N. Wagner is a hiker, trail runner, and nature lover. She’s the author of the horror works Girl in the Creek, The Deer Kings, and The Secret Skin, and the SF thriller An Oath of Dogs. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Theodore Sturgeon and Shirley Jackson awards, and her short stories, poetry, and essays have appeared in more than seventy venues. She serves as the editor-in-chief of Nightmare Magazine (for which she’s a two-time Locus Best Editor award-nominee) and is part of the Hugo award-winning editorial team behind Lightspeed Magazine. She lives in Oregon with her very understanding family, a large cat, and a Muppet disguised as a dog.

Order your copy of Saltcrop here.

Host or Publisher Elliott Bay Book Company