AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR-JOURNALIST | BROADCASTER | SPEAKER | WORKSHOP LEADER
SHORTEST BIO
Minister Faust is an award-winning novelist, award-winning print journalist, radio host-producer, television host and associate producer, sketch comedy writer, video game writer, playwright, and poet. He has spoken and taught workshops widely.
SHORT BIO
According to The Routledge Companion to Literature and Science, “Since 1960s, Afrodiasporic authors including Samuel R. Delany, Octavia E. Butler, Nalo Hopkinson, and Minister Faust have become luminaries within the SF community.”
The critically-acclaimed author of The Alchemists of Kush and the Kindred Award-winning and Philip K. Dick runner-up Shrinking the Heroes, Minister Faust first won accolades for his debut The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad, shortlisted for the Locus Best First Novel and Philip K. Dick awards.
Minister Faust’s short stories have appeared in Cyber World, Edmonton on Location, Fiery Spirits, Griots: A Sword and Soul Anthology, Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond, and elsewhere. iO9, Adventure Rocketship, Canada 150: Stories of Reconciliation Connecting Us All, Engineer Magazine, The Globe & Mail, Greg Tate’s Coon Bidness, and more have published his articles.
Minister Faust's Afritopianism draws from myriad ancient African civilisations, explores present realities, and imagines a future in which people struggle not only for justice, but for the stars.
WHAT HAS HE WRITTEN?
Novels
The critically-acclaimed author of The Alchemists of Kush and the Kindred Award-winning and Philip K. Dick runner-up Shrinking the Heroes, Minister Faust first achieved literary accolades for his debut novel, The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad, which was shortlisted for the Locus Best First Novel, Philip K. Dick, and Compton-Crook awards.
The New York Times Review of Books praised The Coyote Kings for its “jumpy, hold-nothing-back style,” saying that the author “anatomises [Edmonton] with the same loving care Joyce brought to early-20th-century Dublin…. fresh and stylish entertainment.” The National Post called it the “most exciting Canadian debut in decades,” and director Ernest Dickerson (Juice, The Walking Dead, The Wire) said, “Minister Faust is Samuel Delaney, Harlan Ellison and Ishmael Reed all rolled into one. His writing is biting, insightful and hugely entertaining.” Robert J. Sawyer says, “Minister Faust is a genius.”
Video Games
Minister Faust contributed to BioWare’s Mass Effect 2, co-wrote the Kasumi DLC for Mass Effect 2, and wrote BioWare’s Gift of the Yeti and Maxis’s DarkSpore.
Stage Writing and Sketch Comedy
He wrote the children’s play The Wonderful World of Wangari about the Kenyan scientist, feminist, pro-democracy activist and Nobel Peace Laureate Dr. Wangari Maathai for the Edmonton Sprouts Festival, wrote and performed sketch comedy for Edmonton’s 11:02 Show and Gordon’s Big Bald Head, and wrote and directed the science fiction play The Undiscovered Country for Montreal’s Creations, Etc. when he was 17.
Print Journalism and Short Writing
Minister Faust’s articles have appeared in numerous magazines, newspapers, and websites, including on iO9 and Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), and in Alberta Views, Adventure Rocketship: Let’s All Go to the Science Fiction Disco, the ACSW Advocate, Greg Tate’s Coon Bidness, the Del Rey Internet Newsletter, Engineer Magazine, Food for Thought, The Globe & Mail, New Trail, SEE Magazine, Unlimited, Vue Weekly, WestWord, and Your Health.
His short stories and poetry have appeared in anthologies including Canada 150: Stories of Reconciliation Connecting Us All, Cyber World, Edmonton on Location: River City Chronicles, Fiery Spirits and Voices, Griots: A Sword and Soul Anthology, High Level Lit Anthology, Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond, and Poetry Nation.
Podcasting, Radio, and Television
Minister Faust hosts MF GALAXY, a podcast for writers about the craft and business of writing and story creation in every field from novels, stageplays, and screenplays, to lyrics, graphic novels, video games, poetry, journalism, and improvisational comedy. His guests have included Tobias Buckell, Jennifer Brissett, Bill Campbell, Chuck D., Colleen Brown, Marty Chan, Tananarive Due, Milton Davis, Ernest Dickerson, Anthony Q. Farrell, Cheryl Foggo, Tom Fontana, Andrea Hairston, Nalo Hopkinson, Tasha Hubbard, Reginald Hudlin, Ice-T, N.K. Jemisin, John Jennings, Joy Lusco Kecken, Mur Lafferty, A. Lee Martinez, Hugh Masekela, Nnedi Okorafor, Eden Robinson, Robert J. Sawyer, Gil Scott Heron, Titilope Sonuga, J. Michael Straczynski, Vern Thiessen, Thomas Wharton, Kenneth T. Williams, Gene Luen Yang, and many more.
A former national television host and associate producer, Minister Faust also hosted and produced Canada’s longest-running global African news and public affairs programme, Africentric Radio (originally The Terrordome) between 1991 and 2012, for which he interviewed luminaries such as Tariq Ali, Molefi Kete Asante, Martin Bernal, Noam Chomsky, Chuck D., Austin Clarke, Angela Davis, Karl Evanzz, Tom Fontana, Glen Ford, Nalo Hopkinson, Reginald Hudlin, Ice-T, Janine Jackson, Michael Parenti, Ishmael Reed, Gil Scott-Heron, Vandana Shiva, David Simon, Scott Taylor, and many more.
As a radio and print journalist, he has gone as far as the 1995 Million Man March in Washington, DC, and to the Ain-al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon, to collect stories and hear directly from people living and making history.
In 2007-8, he hosted and associate produced HelpTV, Canada’s highest-rated live national daily programme produced outside Toronto, and for two seasons was a celebrity judge on Book TV’s 3 Day Novel Contest. He also freelanced for CBC’s OutFront and DNTO.
TEACHING
At TEDx Edmonton, Minister Faust presented “The Cure for Death by Smalltalk” on the importance of questions and stories in genuine conversation, which has been viewed online more than 800,000 times.
He has also has presented at the National Conference of State Legislatures in Los Angeles, at California State University at Los Angeles, Diaspora Dialogues in Winnipeg, the Science Fiction Research Association Conference in Detroit, African History Month celebrations in Durham, Ontario, at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, and at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and at many other events and locations.
In addition to having been the Writer in Residence for the University of Alberta’s Department of English and Film Studies, Minister Faust has taught creative writing at Shared Worlds in Spartanburg, South Carolina, at the prestigious Clarion West (the leading science fiction and fantasy residential writing workshop in the world), with YouthWrite in Edmonton and at Bragg Creek, among many other venues. In Edmonton, he taught high school and junior high school English for a decade, and worked as mentor and trainer for the Keshotu Leadership Academy, an Africentric organisation whose manual he also wrote.
He earned his English and Education degrees with distinction in the previous millennium at the University of Alberta with a focus on creative writing.
SCIENCE FICTION, FANTASY AND AFRITOPIANISM
According to The Routledge Companion to Literature and Science, “Since 1960s, Afrodiasporic authors including Samuel R. Delany, Octavia E. Butler, Nalo Hopkinson, and Minister Faust have become luminaries within the SF community.” Minister Faust's Afritopianism draws from myriad ancient African civilisations, explores present realities, and imagines a future in which people struggle not only for justice, but for the stars.
A WRITER IN RESIDENCE FIRST?
Minister Faust was honoured to be serve the people of Alberta during 2014-2015 Writer in Residence at the University of Alberta. To the best of his knowledge, he was the first Kenyan-Canadian to be appointed writer in residence at any university in the world, and is one of the few African-Canadians to be appointed writer in residence at any Canadian university or college.
WHAT BOOKS CAN TEACH CREATIVE WRITING?
For anyone who’s completed at least one novel and is at any career stage (from unpublished or to a many publications), Minister Faust strongly recommends Chris Roerden’s Don’t Murder Your Mystery: 24 Fiction-Writing Techniques to Save Your Manuscript from Turning Up DOA (Bella Rosa Books).
Don’t Murder Your Mystery is an acclaimed writing manual from an editor with decades of experience in the publishing industry, featuring entertaining examples and clear instructions on what can go wrong in a novel and how to make it right. Any novelist, regardless of genre (one doesn’t have to be a mystery writer) or career stage, can benefit from Roerden’s fun and educational text.
Minister Faust says that writers in any form should learn from writers in all other forms. Novelists in particular, he argues, have much to learn from journalists and screenwriters. And so….
For screenplay writers, Minister Faust recommends the irreverent Writing Movies for Fun and Profit: How We Made a Billion Dollars at the Box Office and You Can, Too! (Simon and Schuster) by Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon, and Save the Cat! and Save the Cat! Strikes Back by Blake Snyder.
Both books are by screenwriters with actual success in Hollywood. Writing Movies for Fun and Profit offers helpful writing advice, but is better suited to understanding the career of Hollywood screenwriters; Snyder’s books are detailed and demystifying instruction manuals on how to write commercial screenplays, but the advice is absolutely applicable to structuring novels and graphic novels.
