Seattle Worldcon 2025 today announced Brandon O’Brien as their Poet Laureate.

Poet laureate is a new special guest category for our convention. Appointment of a poet laureate will elevate our proceedings and help us spotlight and emphasize the craft and literary tradition of speculative poetry at this Worldcon. If you aren’t already familiar with Brandon and his work, prepare to be thrilled!

Brandon O’Brien is a writer, performance poet, teaching artist, and tabletop game designer from Trinidad and Tobago. His poetry has been published in Uncanny Magazine, Fireside Magazine, Strange Horizons, and New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean, among others. He is the former poetry editor of FIYAH. His work has been shortlisted for the 2014 and 2015 Small Axe Literary Competitions and the 2020 Ignyte Award for best in speculative poetry. His debut poetry collection Can You Sign My Tentacle? won the 2022 Elgin Award and is available from Interstellar Flight Press.