Nicky Penttila has spent her entire life collecting the wrong credentials for a sci-fi author — and using every single one.

She copy-edited breaking news at the Hartford Courant. Covered news and wrote editorials at the San Francisco Examiner and Baltimore Sun. Spent sixteen years at the Dana Foundation translating cutting-edge brain research for hundreds of thousands of curious readers. Earned a Masters in Writing from Johns Hopkins. Then she pointed all of it at fiction and never looked back.

Her acclaimed historical novels — set against the Peterloo Massacre and the Napoleonic Wars — drew praise from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and USA Today, which called her work "powerful, disturbing, heartbreaking, smart." Now her Cooperative Realm space opera series channels three decades of razor-sharp storytelling craft and real neuroscience into defiantly hopeful adventures with unforgettable characters, found families, and moments that ambush you at 2 AM weeks later.

You know that feeling when you finish a book and want to live in that universe? That's what she's going for. The Cooperative Realm is a place where people try to do right by each other (even when they mess up), where second chances actually stick, and where the future deserves more heart — not less.

Nicky came to science fiction sideways, but the through-line was always the same: stories are how we practice for the future.

These days she writes from Maryland, where she lives with her endlessly patient spouse, two rescue cats who provide quality control by sitting on her keyboard, and roughly too many books. When she's not sending characters into space, she's probably arguing about whether coffee counts as a meal or researching obscure historical facts for her next novel.

She loves hearing which characters readers connect with, what scenes made you laugh, or why that one plot twist didn't work for you. Find her on Bluesky [@nickypenttila] where she mostly posts about writing, cats, and definitely-not-procrastination.

Your story matters too. Drop her a line, join the newsletter for behind-the-scenes glimpses of the Cooperative Realm, or just come yell about books.

Everybody doing their favorite thing on a Sunday afternoon: Nicky reading, Lilo lounging on her pillow in the sun, Maddie supervising the neighborhood.