Draft:Claudie Arseneault

Claudie Arseneault
Language	English
Nationality	Canadian
Genre	Fantasy
Years active	2015 - present
Website
https://claudiearseneault.com/

Claudie Arseneault is a French Canadian fantasy author and aromantic and asexual activist. She writes and self-publishes fiction featuring queer characters and themes, with an aim toward increasing representation and awareness in fiction. She also writes fantasy inspired by her home city of Quebec City.

Arseneault is a champion for self published fiction in particular, as she found that it was after leaving more traditional models behind that she found the activist fiction she craved.

Writing

Although Aseneault is a native Quebecois speaker, nearly all of her fiction is in first written in English. She says this is because most of the science fiction and fantasy she read was in English, and it seemed easier to build and audience in English. Knowing that translations would leave parts of her work behind, she chose to craft her stories in English.

Arseneault like fantasy and science fiction in part because of the way adventure parties in the genres often do not focus on blood bonds or romantic relationships, which she says is "essential" to herself.

Arseneault is also known in solarpunk circles, both for her anthology Wings of Renewal and for advocating for fiction to portray a future that looks possible. Arseneault believes that portraying a future where realistic difficulties are handled communally can create a blueprint for the future. As she prefers ecology to astronomy, she says solarpunk is "everything" she wants in science fiction.

Activism

Much of Arseneault's queer activism takes the form of promoting aromantic and asexual representation and themes in fiction. Arseneault has said that representation in fiction "can really give you a sense of community, of being less alone, of being human and valued, too." Seeing a lack of spaces for aromantic stories in particular, she worked with other aromantic writers to create the anthology Common Bonds to focus on them. Her novel Baker Thief was written hoping to challenge ideas of what defines romance, and she actively seeks stories about platonic relationships.

Arseneault has been a repeat speaker at CAN-CON, discussing love in fiction, and whether it needs to be romantic and other aspects of writing queer characters without romance. She has also been a speaker at the WriteHive Annual Conference.

She helped found The Kraken Collective, which describes itself as a group of independently published queer authors including queer representation in their works.

Her first novel, Viral Airwaves, was in part inspired by a protest she attended that "went wrong," although she has not specified what the protest was for.

Recognition

In 2022, Baker Thief was an Indie Ink Award winner for "This Book Made Me Hungry/Thirsty" and was a finalist in the categories for "Asexual Representation" and "Nonbinary Representation". It was also a semi-finalist in the Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off in 2022.

Bibliography

Novels and novellas

• Viral Airwaves (2015)
• The White Renegade (2015)
• City of Strife (2017)
• City of Betrayal (2017)
• Baker Thief (2018)
• City of Deceit (2022)
• City of Exile (2023)
• Awakenings (2024)
• Flooded Secrets (2024)
• The Sea Spirit Festival (2024)

Collections

• Snowstorm & Overgrowth (2022)

Short stories

• "Le carré rouge" (2016)
• "Lemon & Salt" (2017)

As an anthology editor

• Wings of Renewal (2015)
• Common Bonds (2021)