Selah Tay-Song started writing a story about unicorns when she was six years old, on her mother’s typewriter. From that day, she knew she wanted to be a writer. When she was 14, she started drafting her first novel. In college, her interests shifted to the sciences, and though she kept writing and and mentoring writers by working as a writing tutor, she earned her undergraduate degree in biology from The Evergreen State College.
After graduating, Selah continued drafting novels and fantasy stories, and in 2014 she published the first book in the Dreams of QaiMaj series. She continued publishing fantasy novels and short story collections while working for her family’s restaurant. During this time she took evening classes and workshops in creative writing, and co-founded a writing group that ran for seven years. She also traded editing work with other independent authors and volunteered to mentor young writers.
In 2021, Selah’s family closed their restaurant due to COVID. This opened an opportunity to evaluate what she wanted to do next with her life. She had always dreamed of pursuing an MFA in creative writing, and this seemed like the natural next step. In 2022, she earned her Editing Certificate from the University of Washington, and moved to Michigan to attend Northern Michigan University. During her time in the MFA mines, she continued writing fantasy, but also broadened out to writing literary realism, creative non-fiction, and even a few poems. She served as Associate Fiction Editor and Managing Editor for Passages North, a literary journal. She attended AWP as a representative of Passages North several years in a row. She discovered a love of teaching writing, whether Freshman Composition or Creative Writing Field Classes. She piloted nature writing programming for undergraduates and graduates on Granite Island in Lake Superior. She wrote a literary climate-fiction novel for her Masters thesis that combines one woman’s personal journey through grief with sweeping global conflicts driven by climate change.
After graduating, Selah stayed in Michigan, where she is a Contingent Assistant Professor at Northern Michigan University. She continues writing fiction and creative non-fiction. She is currently working on a memoir about her family’s restaurant, while seeking representation for several fantasy novels and her thesis, The Swimming Pool At The End Of The World. She is a founding member of the Waxing Crescent Writer’s Salon, a group of current and post-MFA students who meet weekly for both generative and critical workshops. When she’s not writing, teaching, or editing, Selah is either swimming in the frigid waters of Lake Superior, or shoveling snow.
Contact Selah
email: staffchronicles@gmail.com
Book website: www.dreamsofqaimaj.com
Learn more about Selah from interviews:
Selah J Tay-Song on Dreams of QaiMaj:
Q: What was your inspiration for the Dreams of QaiMaj series?
A: The initial idea for Dreams of QaiMaj came out of a combination of re-reading “The Secret Garden” and dreaming about wandering through narrow tunnels, searching for something elusive. Of course, it evolved considerably from there! Once the characters started to materialize on the page, the story took on its own life.
Q: How do you create such realism in a fantastical story-world setting?
A: Even though I’ve wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember, when I went into college, I started to worry about making a living. I was interested in biology, and a career in biology seemed like it would be much more stable than an English degree. So I majored in biology. While I didn’t end up pursuing science after college, studying math, biology, physics and chemistry grounded my writing a great deal. While I love writing fantasy, fantasy is always better when it follows rules that make sense to the reader. Studying the rules of our world gave me a foundation for creating realistic rules for my fantastical worlds and creatures to follow. The other piece of the puzzle is observing and, at least attempting to understand, human nature. If the characters ring true, the readers will forgive a lot.
Q: What does the future hold for the Dreams of QaiMaj series? Do you have a project planned after the series is complete?
A: Dreams of QaiMaj will almost certainly be a five book series. I will be releasing the last two books over the next few years. After that I’ll be taking a break from this universe and working on another project, probably a more traditional medieval fantasy. Eventually, I may return to QaiMaj to write some prequels and sequels. I’ll miss these characters! But I have so many other ideas for stories that I want to explore.
Q: Why did you choose to Indy-publish the Dreams of QaiMaj Series?
A: Indy-publishing was a way for me to get my books in the hands of readers and start getting feedback right away. It doesn’t preclude the possibility of eventually working with a traditional publisher, but for this epic fantasy series, Indy-publishing made the most sense. I am lucky enough to be in a community of a lot of other Indy authors who are extremely supportive. I’ve learned a ton about writing, marketing and publishing from this that I can apply to Indy-publishing additional books in the future, or working with a traditional publisher.
Q: What authors have influenced your work, and how?
A: I grew up reading the Chronicles of Narnia and George MacDonald and fairy tales, among many other things. When I was older and started being able to digest epic fantasy, I fell in love with Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. He was my very favorite for a very long time and through most of my early writing career, I aspired to write like him. But as all things do, my tastes evolved. Just a few years ago I discovered Robin Hobb, and she unseated RJ. The development of the characters in her novels is exquisite, and as I started to realize that it is characters who carry the reader through story, I started trying to write deeper characterization. But honestly, I pick up a little bit from every writer I read. Cinematic brutality from GRR Martin. Conflict and tension between allies from Robert Jordan. World-building from Brandon Sanderson. How to convey otherworldly magical realms from Tad Williams. Character development from Hobb. It all goes into the pot, and comes out, I hope, into something uniquely me.
Q: What draws you to epic fantasy, rather than some other genre?
A: Epic fantasy differs from other types of fantasy in several ways: It generally takes place in a completely author-designed story-world (think Middle Earth, Narnia, Westeros, etc.), it involves high stakes (usually the destruction or enslavement of the entire world) and it weaves together a complex cast of highly developed characters. I love creating whole worlds from scratch; I love the intensity of such high stakes, and most of all I love being able to work with a diverse cast of characters. Also, epic fantasy usually incorporates elements of other genres; often there’s a mystery to solve that relates to the eventual success of the heroes; inevitably romance is a strong element in the story.