First job: Ice cream scooper

Bionic enhancements: Cerebral shunt

Favorite punctuation mark: The em dash—

Vice: Coffee. Lots of coffee. 

I was born and grew up in southeastern Massachusetts (my family having landed there by way of São Miguel Island). I started writing as a kid on an old Apple IIe desktop that, at the end of its life, made clanking noises when we turned it on, until we released it on a farm to roam free with other ancient devices. I went to college and majored in English. I waited tables (poorly) for a while. I went to grad school. Etc., etc. (I also say etc., etc., a lot). 

I write fiction. Sometimes things I write about include benevolent frauds, young immortals, the terrible and/or wonderful things people do for/to each other, and time travel. I don't get too hung up on categorizing things: speculative fiction/fantasy/literary fiction/etc. 

Sometimes I sit in front of marigold backgrounds. Headshots by Eric Richard Magnussen.

I like: video games (the Final Fantasy series and the Assassin's Creed series are among my favorites), SciFi/fantasy-ish movies and TV shows (Buffy, Black Mirror, especially “San Junipero,” Battlestar Galactica...), traveling (but I hate flying), photography (especially of abandoned places/buildings), mythology, and, if this bio is any proof, parenthetical explanations.    

Short bio:

Nathan Tavares is a writer from Boston, Massachusetts. He grew up in the Portuguese-American community of southeastern Massachusetts and developed a love for fantastical stories at an early age, from superheroes to mythology. He studied English in college and received his MFA in creative writing from Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His editorial work celebrates queer culture and historically excluded communities, with pieces appearing in GQ, Conde Nast Traveler, and elsewhere.