Darcie Little Badger


Darcie Little Badger is an author and an Earth scientist. As an author, she specializes in speculative fiction, especially horror, science fiction and fantasy. Further, as a Lipan Apache, she develops her stories with Apache characters and themes. She has also added her voice to Indigenous Futurisms, a movement among Native artists and authors to write science fiction from their historical and cultural perspectives. At the same time, some of her works feature characters who reconfirm the presence and importance of LGBTQ+ community-members.

Family and education

Little Badger’s father, Patrick Ryan, was an English professor; her mother, Hermelinda Walking Woman, is the Education Director of the Lipan Apache Tribe. She also serves as a delegate for the Tribe to the National Congress of American Indians. After graduating with honors from high school in Texas, she attended Princeton University in New Jersey, where she earned the bachelor’s of Geoscience. Little Badger graduated cum laude and was honored by her department with the Arthur F. Buddington Award for Overall Excellence as an undergraduate student. She subsequently enrolled in the doctoral program in oceanography at Texas A&M University, College Station, where she earned the Ph.D. She wrote her dissertation on the genomics of Karenia brevis, a species of plankton that causes toxic red tide in the Gulf of Mexico. For her valuable research, she received a Ford Dissertation Fellowship and TAMU's Chapman Award for Graduate Student Research.

Short fiction and Apache influence

Little Badger’s short fiction has appeared in a range of publications, including Strange Horizons, Fantasy Magazine, Mythic Delirium, and The Dark, among others. Notably, Little Badger enriches her short stories with Apache history and lore. For example, two Apache sisters reunite in “Whalebone Parrot”, a Victorian horror story set in the late 19th century on an island in the Atlantic. During the conflict between their tribe and the U.S. Army, the women were orphaned and grew up together in a residential “Indian school.” Thus, as Little Badger notes, her story is rooted in Lipan Apache history, a history that “few remember.” Similarly, in “Owl vs. the Neighborhood Watch”, she revives Native legend when she places Owl, a shape-shifting supernatural harbinger of evil, in a story set in contemporary Appalachia.

Comics and graphic novel

Little Badger published her debut comic “Worst Bargain in Town” in Moonshot Volume 2. She is co-author with Magdalene Visaggio of a comic series, Strangelands, published by H1 Universe Humanoids Publishing in 8 issues. In this comic series, she introduces an Apache superhero. She has recently signed a contract to write her first graphic novel featuring four Lipan Apache friends on a mission to save a kidnapped baby.

Debut novel, Elatsoe

Little Badger’s debut novel Elatsoe is to be published in summer 2020 by Levine Querido. The story is set in modern-day Texas; the main character Ellie is a seventeen-year-old Lipan Apache. Ellie is accompanied by the ghost of her pet dog Kirby. She has used her grandmothers’ traditional techniques to bring him back to life. Kirby and Ellie are joined by Ellie’s friend and classmate Jay as they work to solve the murder of her cousin. At the same time, they confront an enclave of vampires plaguing people near Willowbee, a mysterious town in South Texas.

Indigenous Futurisms

Indigenous Futurisms is a growing movement in the arts and literature in which Native writers create science fiction and fantasy with characters and themes drawn from indigenous cultures. In 2012, Prof. Grace Dillon formalized the study of Indigenous Futurisms with publication of Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction. With much of her science fiction, Little Badger has contributed to Indigenous Futurisms. In Strangelands, for example, Little Badger introduces an Apache comic book superhero. In her short story “Né łe!” the main characters are a Navajo interplanetary ship’s captain and a Lipan Apache veterinarian accompanying 40 chihuahuas on their way to forever homes on Mars.

Published works

Novel