Benjanun Sriduangkaew


Benjanun Sriduangkaew is a Thai author of science fiction and fantasy, who is also known for controversial online criticism. She was a finalist for the 2014 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and the 2014 BSFA Award for Best Short Fiction, for Scale-Bright.

Life

Sriduangkaew was born in Pattani Province in southern Thailand. After attending university in Bangkok, she worked in Manila, Jakarta and Hong Kong.

Work

Sriduangkaew began publishing short fiction in 2012, with "Courtship in the Country of the Machine Gods", and established a name for herself with a string of high-profile short stories in Clarkesworld Magazine and elsewhere, which led to her nomination for the John W. Campbell Award.
Her first long-form publication was the urban fantasy novella Scale-Bright, published in 2014. A follow-up to her three Sun-Moon Cycle stories, it is a love story about a young woman from Hong Kong who has to rescue her sister from Heaven. Reviewing the novella for Tor.com, Niall Alexander described it as "an achievement without equal", appreciating its "delicately drawn characters", "affecting narrative" and the author's prose skills.
Her second novella, Winterglass, was published in 2017. It is a science-fantasy retelling of the story of the Snow Queen. Publishers Weeklys reviewer considered that the "promising novella" provided "variations on the theme of strong female characters" but was marred by an "uneven plot and some missed opportunities for complex worldbuilding".
Her third novella, And Shall Machines Surrender, was published in 2019. It is a science fiction story focusing on artificial intelligences and their relationships to humanity. Reviewing the novella in The Future Fire, J. Moufawad-Paul wrote “And Shall Machines Surrender is the perfect example of how much can possibly be packed into a novella. The equal depth of style, story, characterization, and world-building is quite striking” and “Due to the strength of And Shall Machines Surrender––its clarity and intricacy, its ability to compress complexity into a minimalist structure––it is almost criminal that Sriduangkaew is not a household name”
Most of Sriduangkaew's work is queer-normative and trans-inclusive and foregrounds lesbian relationships and South East Asian themes or influences.

Online activity

In 2014 Sriduangkaew was revealed to have been the controversial blogger and book reviewer "Requires Hate". Using these Internet identities, she published violently intimidating and harsh critiques, which included death and rape threats, of many writers she claimed to have paid insufficient attention to racism, sexism, heteronormativity, or colonialism in their fiction. Many of her targets were themselves young, female, transgender, and/or persons of color.
A blog post about Sriduangkaew's behavior by fellow writer Laura J. Mixon won Mixon the 2015 Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer. In reporting on Sriduangkaew's online activities, the Daily Dot wrote that it is not certain whether or not she is indeed a Thai writer, or whether Benjanun Sriduangkaew is a pseudonym or her real name.
In a blog post in 2015, Sriduangkaew wrote that she had become the target of harassment and cyberstalking campaigns after her Internet identities were revealed, while conceding that "I’ve been shitty in the past".