Charles W. Powell (he/him) writes about people who break things trying to fix them, and the ones left behind to write it down.

A historian by training and a storyteller by compulsion, he holds a Master's in Education with a History focus and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He has spent years studying the way civilizations construct meaning — and the catastrophic things that happen when those constructions fail. It turns out fiction is a better place to explore that than a thesis.

He lives in Seattle with his partner Emmy and three dogs of escalating chaos, a watch collection that has gotten out of hand, and enough coffee to sustain the kind of hours serious world-building requires. He has traveled to more than sixty countries, which is either research or a problem, depending on who you ask.

THE HERETIC ENGINE is his debut novel — a bisexual author's love story about two men who broke the world, and the woman who refused to let it be forgotten. It took the better part of his adult life to write something worthy of the ideas. He thinks he got there. Talla Vei remains unconvinced.