About Costi Gurgu
Costi’s Bio
Costi’s fiction has appeared in Canada, the United States, and Europe. He has sold 6 books and over 80 stories for which he has won 27 awards. His latest sales include the anthologies Tesseracts 17, The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk, Dark Horizons, Street Magick, Water, and Alice Unbound. His story Cosmobotica was a finalist for Aurora Awards.
His novel RecipeArium has won three European awards (Kult, Nemira, and Vladimir Colin) and it is a 2018 finalist for the Aurora Awards.
Costi’s scripts have been finalists and semifinalists in numerous competitions.
Recently, Costi started Games for Aliens, a tabletop games enterprise. His first two games are Absolutism (a dark humor dystopian premise) and Carami (based on RecipeArium).
Best Sellers
Green Corrosion
“Richly imagined post-apocalypse of mutations, humanity, and wild action.“
_BookLife Review
RecipeArium
“Not for the faint of heart or imagination, Gurgu’s RecipeArium reveals an alien realm where sex, politics, and a species’ history are fused intro terrible yet vital acts of consumption. Intense and unforgettable.”
— JULIE E. CZERNEDA, atuhor of This Gulf of Time and Stars
Servitude
“A disturbingly realistic dystopian future that will get under readers’ skin in all the best ways.“
_BookLife Review
Highlights
Costi has won 27 awards for his writing and has published over 80 stories in different magazines and anthologies across two continents.
Awards
Continents
Stories
Publications
“RecipeArium is a startling, even provocative book, yet it’s written in such clear luminous prose and peopled with such sympathetic characters that you’ll be pulled right in. Like the finest cuisine, it will leave you satisfied yet wanting more.”
— KARL SCHROEDER, author of the Virga series
Costi’s debut
The Beginnings
While I write since I was seven, my breakthrough came when I was twelve. It was my first time in a cenaclu (writers group) and they wanted me to read one of my stories as a mean of introducing myself. Two minutes into the story, the organizer interrupted me, murmuring: “Today is not your day, my friend”.
After the meeting ended, he told me conspiratorially that my story could not be read when Securitatea (the Secret Police) was attending. It had to be read in secret, in the small version of the cenaclu. Not in full attendance. Later on, I realized I have become instantly famous and professional writers were talking about the 12 years old and his dangerous story. I read my story in a very special meeting a few months later.
Fast Forward
Fast Forward a few years. Dozens of new genre publications appeared after the 1989 revolution. I began sending my stories to each of them, trying to get published. And one by one, each of them died within a month or two after receiving my stories. They called me the Terminator.
I finally debuted in April 1993, in what was to be the only weekly genre publication in the world, Jurnalul SF (the SF Journal). And a month later in Anticipatia (the Romanian Asimov’s). I got my first two awards in the same year.
And the Rest is History…
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costigurgu(at)gmail.com