Sienna Tristen
poet, philosopher, psychonaut, prunella plant
Hello friends & fleurs!
Sienna Tristen (they/them) is an author, poet, and literary organizer living in Treaty 3 territory who explores queer platonic partnership, the nonhuman world, and mythmaking in their work. The first installment of their award-winning fantasy duology The Heretic’s Guide to Homecoming came out from indie arts collective The Shale Project in 2018; the sequel released in October 2022. You can find their poetry in Augur Magazine and Plenitude, and their chapbook hortus animarum: a new herbal for the queer heart is out with Frog Hollow Press.
Latest Release
The Heretic's Guide to Homecoming
Book Two: Practice
"All good theory stands up to the test of practice."
Freshly-risen from the underworld of his insecurities, Ronoah Genoveffa Elizzi-denna Pilanovani is halfway through his journey to the fabled Pilgrim State. But the world this side of the Iphigene Sea is not an easy one: violence and subterfuge litter the way forward, and something meaner stalks the edges of Ronoah’s certainty, something that threatens to turn the very reason for his pilgrimage to dust.
To survive, he will have to be clever and kind in equal measure. To ask for help from the acrobats and queens-to-be and foreigners’ gods that cross his path. To confront that beguiling, bewildering companion he travels with, the one whose secrets are so vast and unforgivable. He will have to draw on every story he knows in order to make it to the Pilgrim State with his soft heart intact—and then make it home again.
Mythic and multilayered, the final installment of the Heretic’s Guide to Homecoming duology is a love letter to losing and regaining faith in the ways you move through the world.
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Tristen’s ambitious fantasy debut combines a coming-of-age tale, an obsessive love of words and stories, and an opulent created-world setting. …fans of detailed fantasy worldbuilding will revel in this voluminous story.
Publishers Weekly
It’s intense and true and heartwringing, it’s an embrace that promises you’re not alone, it’s a mirror and an outstretched hand and magic. Tristen wields language like they invented it, effortlessly imbuing the smallest of details with beauty and meaning that transforms them into something mythic.
Every Book A Doorway (full review)
Compelling and complicated in all the right ways. …beautifully written, not just in mythos but also in its treatments of its characters. Tristen writes on these emotions in a way that is rich with understanding and empathy.
Reader Views Awards (2019 Winner for Fantasy)
Praise & Reviews
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