Arwen Spicer was raised in the wine town of Glen Ellen, California, and holds a PhD in English literature from the University of Oregon (2005). She also has a BS in biology from Humboldt State University (1997), and this interdisciplinary background informs her interest in science fiction, as a reader, scholar, and novelist. Her doctoral work focused on evolution and ecology in utopian science fiction, touching on the works of H. G. Wells, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Octavia Butler, among others. In more recent scholarship, she has focused on climate change, the Anthropocene, and indigeneity in science fiction. In addition to teaching in the Physics Department, she teaches writing and literature at Clark College in Vancouver, WA.