L.R. Lam
Writing Coach
El (L.R.) Lam is the USA Today bestselling and award-winning author of epic fantasy romance, gaslamp fantasy, cyberpunk, near-future thrillers, and space opera novels. El’s ground-breaking debut Pantomime won the Bi Writers Association Bisexual Book Award for Speculative Fiction and was a Top Ten Title for ALA’s Rainbow List. It was nominated for the UKYA Book Award in Sci-Fi and Fantasy, the British Fantasy Society Best Newcomer Award, the ALA Popular Paperbacks GLBTQ category, the Cybils Award, and the NE Teen Book Award. This trilogy will be re-released across 2025 and 2026. Dragonfall hit the Sunday Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists. It was the top-selling Barnes & Noble Speculative Monthly Pick of 2025, a Locus Recommended Read, and was longlisted for the British Science Fiction Best Novel Award. Accolades for El’s other novels include BBC Radio 2 Book Club Selection, Romantic Times Top Pick, Summer Reads picks for Wired and Marie Claire, Amazon Editor’s Best SFF Pick, a Kirkus star, and the Waterstones Best of 2020 list. El studied English and Creative Writing at California State University and the University of Aberdeen before lecturing on the Creative Writing MA at Edinburgh Napier University for seven years.
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El, or L.R. Lam, is the USA Today and Sunday Times bestselling, award-winning author of nine novels, including the bestselling epic fantasy romance Dragonfall, the Micah Grey trilogy (Pantomime, Shadowplay and Masquerade), cyberpunk near-future thrillers False Hearts and Shattered Minds, space operas Seven Devils and Seven Mercies, co-written with Elizabeth May, and near-future thriller Goldilocks.
They also come from an academic background, having studied English and Creative Writing at undergraduate (California State University East Bay) and postgraduate level (University of Aberdeen) before lecturing for seven years on the Creative Writing MA at Edinburgh Napier University.
Over the years, El has worked with most of the big SFF publishers across both sides of the pond: DAW, Hodderscape, Wildfire, Orbit, Tor, and Angry Robot. Their work has been praised by authors such as Robin Hobb, Leigh Bardugo, Andrea Stewart and Samantha Shannon.
El’s work runs the gamut of speculative fiction and takes them from researching cutting-edge science to write books set a blink from now, to crafting fantasy secondary worlds and dreaming up elaborate history, languages, and societies. Their work aims to make the Other familiar, straddles boundaries, and breaks binaries. Many of their protagonists are queer and trans, and Pantomime was the first Young Adult novel in any genre to have an intersex protagonist. Their work often focuses on themes of identity, bodily autonomy, and the corruption of power. El also writes queer romance as Laura Ambrose.
When not writing, El reads, lifts weights inconsistently, and is regularly distracted by their cats. El would be an ideal coach for writers playing in most science fiction and fantasy sub-genres. One of their favorite parts of mentoring is when they see someone’s eyes light up as they realize exactly how to fix a particular problem and are creatively revitalized and ready to continue tackling their story.
If you’re seeking a writing coach to help you tackle the challenges of your exciting speculative fiction ideas, El is the coach for you.
El’s Genres
- Fantasy
- Science Fiction
‘Science fiction and fantasy can be escapist and entertaining but also deeply subversive: warning us of future danger, or helping us imagine a world freed of certain constraints.’