Natasha Ali
Natasha Ali is a biologist with an MSc in Human Molecular Genetics (Imperial College London) and a BSc in Biological Sciences (University of Durham). She aims to utilise her science background to write compelling speculative horror centered on bio-ethical issues. Natasha has previously been published in F(r)iction, Fusion Fragment, and was a finalist for the 2026 Kurt Vonnegut Speculative Fiction prize. When she isn't writing, she works at the Francis Crick Institute as a genomics researcher. She is a graduate of the 2024 Faber 'Writing a Novel' course, and Reasons I'm Not Human is her first novel.
REASONS I'M NOT HUMAN
After helping her friend (and sometimes lover) Keira sabotage the unusual reproductive method on the deteriorating spaceship, the Estate, Lila must avoid being forced into a pregnancy while searching for a now missing Keira, and learn why her friend thought it might be better if they didn't exist...
That's the thing about messing with genetics. There are always unanticipated effects.
Somewhere far from Earth, a deteriorating ship called the Estate is harbouring a skeleton crew of genetically modified humans, edited to survive in the harshest conditions. These are the last of Earth's descendants.
The Estate is brought to the brink when a resident commits a radical act of sabotage. In order to silence the rumblings of anarchy, one woman is to be given the dangerous task of carrying the first pregnancy in the mission's history. Eighteen-year-old Lila, already implicated in the saboteur's plot, knows she will be chosen.
But soon Lila realises that all on the ship is not as it seems, and everything she thought she knew about her and the residents' existance is called into question.
This is a future dystopian classic that asks: what does it mean to be a 'human being' when humanity as we know it is gone?
Publication
US, Canada: Simon and Schuster (Avid Reader Press)
UK, Comm: Hachette (Brazen)
Release date: Summer 2027
