Natalie Zina Walschots is a writer and game designer. She is the Author of Hench (William Morrow, 2020), a novel about the mistreated and undervalued employees of supervillains. The direct sequel, Villian, will be released on May 19, 2026. Hench was a finalist on the 2021 season of Canada Reads and was nominated for a Locus Award for Best First Novel. Natalie is the Narrative Director at Double Rex Studios, currently at work on their debut title, Thumbsplitter. Her work also includes LARP scripts, heavy metal music journalism, video game story bibles, and weirder things classified as “interactive experiences.” Her poetic exploration of the notes engine in Bloodborne was featured in Kotaku and First Person Scholar, and her writing on the interactive adventure The Aluminum Cat won an IndieCade award for Innovation in Experience Design. She is (unfortunately) the author of two books of experimental poetry: Thumbscrews, which won the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry; and DOOM: Love Poems for Supervillains. Natalie plays a lot of TTRPGs, participates in a lot of Nordic LARPs, watches a lot of horror movies and reads a lot of speculative fiction. She lives in Nova Scotia with her partner and their four morally bankrupt cats.
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