Nicky Drayden

Nicky Drayden is a South African science-fiction and fantasy writer. Her 2017 novel The Prey of Gods, an Africanfuturist coming-of-age story set in a near-future South Africa, follows children who develop godlike powers alongside a demigoddess seeking to conquer the world and an emerging population of sentient robots; the book won the 2019 Lambda Literary Award for Speculative Fiction. Drayden's second novel, Temper (2018), is set in a South African village where twin brothers each host one of a set of ancient rival gods, and was praised by Publishers Weekly for its ambitious handling of prophecy and identity. She has also written the novel Escaping Exodus, short fiction collected in the Delightfully Twisted Tales series, and media tie-in fiction for the Overwatch and Minecraft franchises.