Meet Weyodi Oldbear

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Weyodi Oldbear. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, so we’re so thrilled to have Weyodi with us today – welcome and maybe we can jump right into it with a question about one of your qualities that we most admire. How did you develop your work ethic? Where do you think you get it from?

I think one of the biggest misconceptions about being a writer, or any kind of artist, really, is the idea that you only work when inspiration strikes. Nothing could be further from the truth. As a writer the more you write the better you write and in the end the more likely you are to be at work when that great idea, or that great line, comes to you like a bolt of lightning. This is the reason that I sit down and work at writing every day. It’s my job and I take it seriously. When I was very young I read something Dame Margot Fonteyn said about the importance of knowing the difference between taking your work seriously and taking yourself seriously, the first one is imperative and the second one is deadly. It’s one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever heard, and it’s stuck with me and become more and more meaningful over time. A big part of taking writing seriously as work is to do it, and then to edit, repeatedly.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I’m an Indigenous Futurist writer and speaker. What that means is I write about the possible future from a distinctly Indigenous point of view. My past work includes game developing, as one of the core writers, for the table top roleplaying game Coyote&Crow. In 2024 my novel As Many Ships As Stars was released by Android Press. In 2025 Greasy Grass Press is releasing my three book series; The Root and The Seed, The Burning Lie, and The Bees Made Honey in The Rich Man’s Skull and Green Archer Comics will be releasing two issues of my comic series The Clock. I will be a panelist at this year’s World Science Fiction Convention in Seattle as well as featured speaker at this year Indigenous Pop-Culture Expo at Duke University.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

I think the three most helpful skills that have helped me so far are first, doing the work, no matter what. If you don’t do the work nothing else matters. The second most helpful thing is developing relationships with other people. I have had so many great strokes of luck because of my friendships in the fields of writing, comics, and academics. These relationships also help me to develop my craft further. Finally, a willingness to take risks and be rejected has been almost as important to me as doing the work in the first place. If I wasn’t willing to be rejected time and time again I would never have seen any of my work in print.

If you knew you only had a decade of life left, how would you spend that decade?

At the moment the biggest challenge in my life is finding a literary agent. Because Indigenous Futurism is still a relatively small subgenre many agents are either unaware or unsure of the marketability of Indigenous fiction that doesn’t fit the stereotypes. I manage to sell without an agent but it does keep me out of the larger markets where unsolicited manuscripts aren’t accepted. I am using my tried-and-true method of hammering away at my problems until eventually they crack.

Contact Info:

• Website: [email protected]
• Linkedin: Weyodi OldBear
• Twitter: [email protected]
• Other: blue sky @weyodi.bsky.social

Image Credits

The Root and The Seed- cover art -Mickey Barrett
As Many Ships As Stars – cover art -Sadekaronhes Esquivel
The Clock – art by Dale Ray DeForest – coloring by -Liezl Buenaventura