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New Suns

Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color

edited by Nisi Shawl

by (author) Rebecca Roanhorse, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Darcie Little Badger, Tobias S. Buckell, Minsoo Kang, Jaymee Goh, Indrapramit Das, E. Lily Yu, Karin Lowachee, Kathleen Alcalá, Steven Barnes, Chinelo Onwual, Alex Jennings, Alberto Yáñez, Anil Menon, Andrea Hairston & Hiromi Goto

foreword by LeVar Burton

Publisher
Solaris
Initial publish date
Mar 2019
Subjects
Short Stories, High Tech, Urban Life

Library Ordering Options

Description

Winner of the 2020 Locus, World Fantasy, British Fantasy, Ignyte, and Brave New Words Awards.

“There’s nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns,” proclaimed Octavia E. Butler.

New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color showcases emerging and seasoned writers of many races telling stories filled with shocking delights, powerful visions of the familiar made strange. Between this book’s covers burn tales of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and their indefinable overlappings. These are authors aware of our many possible pasts and futures, authors freed of stereotypes and clichés, ready to dazzle you with their daring genius.

Unexpected brilliance shines forth from every page.

Includes stories by Kathleen Alcala, Minsoo Kang, Anil Menon, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Alex Jennings, Alberto Yanez, Steven Barnes, Jaymee Goh, Karin Lowachee, E. Lily Yu, Andrea Hairston, Tobias Buckell, Hiromi Goto, Rebecca Roanhorse, Indrapramit Das, Chinelo Onwualu and Darcie Little Badger.

About the authors

Nisi Shawl is an African American writer and editor best known for the first multiple award-winning New Suns anthology and for their 2016 Nebula finalist novel Everfair. In 2019 they received the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award for distinguished service to the genre. Prior to putting together New Suns, they edited and co-edited WisCon Chronicles 5: Writing and Racial Identity; Bloodchildren: Stories by the Octavia Butler Scholars; Strange Matings: Science Fiction, Feminism, African American Voices, and Octavia E. Butler; and Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany. Shawl lives in Seattle, where they take frequent walks with their cat.

Nisi Shawl's profile page

Rebecca Roanhorse is the New York Times bestselling author of Trail of LightningStorm of Locusts, Black Sun, and Star Wars: Resistance Reborn. She has won the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Awards for her fiction, and was the recipient of the 2018 Astounding (formerly Campbell) Award for Best New Writer. The next book in her Between Earth and Sky series, Fevered Star, is out in March 2022. She lives in New Mexico with her family.

Rebecca Roanhorse's profile page

Mexican by birth, Canadian by inclination. Silvia’s debut novel, Signal to Noise, about music and magic, won a Copper Cylinder Award and was nominated for the British Fantasy, Locus, Sunburst and Aurora awards. Her second novel, Certain Dark Things, focuses on narco vampires in Mexico City. It was selected as one of NPR’s best books of 2016 and is a finalist for the Locus and Sunburst awards.

Her third novel, The Beautiful Ones, will be out in the fall of 2017.

Silvia’s first collection, This Strange Way of Dying, was a finalist for the Sunburst Award. Her stories have also been collected in Love & Other Poisons.

She has edited several anthologies, including She Walks in Shadows (World Fantasy Award winner, published in the USA as Cthulhu’s Daughters), Sword & Mythos, Fungi, Dead North and Fractured. Silvia is the publisher of Innsmouth Free Press. She also co-edits The Jewish Mexican Literary Review with Lavie Tidhar and the horror magazine The Dark with Sean Wallace.

She has an MA in Science and Technology Studies from the University of British Columbia. Her thesis can be read online and is titled “Magna Mater: Women and Eugenic Thought in the Work of H.P. Lovecraft.”

Silvia Moreno-Garcia's profile page

Darcie Little Badger is a Lipan Apache writer with a PhD in oceanography. Her critically acclaimed debut novel, Elatsoe, was featured in Time as one of the best 100 fantasy books of all time. Elatsoe also won the Locus Award for Best First Novel and is a Nebula, Ignyte, and Lodestar Finalist. Her second fantasy novel, A Snake Falls to Earth, received a Nebula Award, an Ignyte Award, and a Newbery Honor and is on the National Book Awards longlist. Darcie is married to a veterinarian named Taran.

Darcie Little Badger's profile page

Tobias S. Buckell is a Caribbean-born speculative fiction writer who grew up in Grenada, the British Virgin Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. He now lives in Ohio.He has published stories in various magazines and anthologies. He is a Clarion graduate, Writers of The Future winner, and Campbell Award for Best New SF Writer Finalist. His work has appeared in the Year's Best Science Fiction anthologies. His novel Ragamuffin was nominated for the Nebula and Prometheus awards.

Tobias S. Buckell's profile page

Minsoo Kang is the author of the short story collection Of Tales and Enigmas, the history book Sublime Dreams of Living Machines: The Automaton in the European Imagination, and the translator of the Penguin Classic The Story of Hong Gildong. His stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Azalea, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and two anthologies. He is an associate professor of history at the University of Missouri St. Louis.

Minsoo Kang's profile page

Jaymee Goh is a writer, poet, critic, reviewer, and editor of science fiction and fantasy. She graduated from the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop in 2016, and holds a PhD from the University of California, Riverside. She has been published in places like Strange Horizons, Lightspeed Magazine, and Science Fiction Studies. She coedited The Sea is Ours: Tales of Steampunk Southeast Asia (Rosarium Publishing), and edited The WisCon Chronicles Vol. 11: Trials By Whiteness (Aqueduct Press).

Jaymee Goh's profile page

Indrapramit Das (aka Indra Das) is a writer from Kolkata, India. He is a Lambda Literary Award-winner for his debut novel, The Devourers (Penguin India / Del Rey), and has been a finalist for the Crawford, Tiptree and Shirley Jackson Awards. He is an Octavia E. Butler Scholar and a grateful graduate of Clarion West 2012. He has lived in India, the United States, and Canada, where he completed his MFA at the University of British Columbia.

Indrapramit Das' profile page

E. Lily Yu received the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2012 and the Artist Trust LaSalle Storyteller Award in 2017. Her stories have appeared in McSweeney’s, Boston Review, F&SF, Clarkesworld, and Terraform, among others, as well as multiple best-of-the-year anthologies, and have been finalists for the Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, Locus, and World Fantasy awards.

E. Lily Yu's profile page

Karin was born in South America, grew up in Canada, and worked in the Arctic. She has been a creative writing instructor, adult education teacher, and volunteer in a maximum security prison. Her novels have been translated into French, Hebrew, and Japanese, and her short stories have been published in numerous anthologies, best-of collections, and magazines. When she isn't writing, she serves at the whim of a black cat.

Karin Lowachee's profile page

From Roots; to Star Trek: The Next Generation; to the Emmy-winning PBS series Reading Rainbow, LeVar Burton has captivated audiences worldwide with his authentic charm and his passion for storytelling, for over 40 years. As well as a beloved and acclaimed actor, he is an accomplished producer, director, and writer. LeVar’s most recent triumph is his popular podcast LeVar Burton Reads, now in its second season. Through his company LeVar Burton Kids he is creating content that harnesses a child’s unique curiosity, using stories as ways of exploring the world.

LeVar Burton's profile page

Kathleen Alcalá is a Clarion West graduate and instructor, the award-winning author of six books, a recent Whitely Fellow, and a previous Hugo House Writer in Residence. Her latest book, The Deepest Roots: Finding Food and Community on a Pacific Northwest Island, explores relationships with geography, history, and ethnicity. Ursula K. Le Guin said of Alcalá’s story collection Mrs. Vargas and the Dead Naturalist: “Not one tale is like another, yet all together they form a beautiful whole, a world where one would like to stay forever.”

Kathleen Alcalá's profile page

Steven Barnes was born in Los Angeles, California and attended Pepperdine University, majoring in Communication Arts. He has published over three million words of science fiction, fantasy, suspense, and mystery, comprising some 33 novels, as well as writing for film, stage, and television. He lives in Los Angeles with his son Jason and his wife, British Fantasy Award-winning author Tananarive Due.

Steven Barnes' profile page

Chinelo Onwualu is a Nigerian writer and editor living in Toronto, Canada. She is editor and cofounder of Omenana, a magazine of African speculative fiction, and a graduate of the 2014 Clarion West Writers Workshop, which she attended as the recipient of the Octavia E. Butler Scholarship. Her writing has appeared in Uncanny, Strange Horizons, and The Kalahari Review.

Chinelo Onwual's profile page

Alex Jennings is a writer/teacher/performer living in New Orleans. He was born in Wiesbaden (Germany) and raised in Gaborone (Botswana), Tunis (Tunisia), Paramaribo (Surinam), and the United States. He constantly devours pop culture and writes mostly jokes on Twitter (@magicknegro). He also helps run and MCs a monthly literary readings series called Dogfish. He is an afternoon person.

Alex Jennings' profile page

Alberto Yáñez lives in Portland, Oregon. His work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Toasted Cake, and PodCastle. He is a graduate of Clarion West, and was awarded a 2018 Oregon Literary Fellowship. Alberto went to Portland to become a registered nurse, and has since learned more about people, bodily fluids, and himself than anticipated. He draws on his Mexican and Jewish roots to inform “Burn the Ships.” A native Californian, he misses easy sunshine, San Francisco, Chinese delivery, and other Mexicans.

Alberto Yáñez's profile page

Anil Menon’s short fiction has appeared in a variety of magazines including Albedo One, Interzone, LCRW, and Strange Horizons. His stories have been translated into Chinese, Czech, French, German, Hebrew, and Romanian. His debut YA novel, The Beast with Nine Billion Feet, was shortlisted for the 2010 Vodafone-Crossword Award. Along with Vandana Singh he coedited Breaking the Bow, an anthology of speculative fiction inspired by the Ramayana. His most recent work, Half of What I Say, was shortlisted for the 2016 Hindu Literary Award.

Anil Menon's profile page

Andrea Hairston is author of Will Do Magic for Small Change, finalist for the Mythopoeic Award, Lambda Award, and Tiptree Award, and a New York Times Editor’s pick. Other novels include: Redwood and Wildfire, winner of the Tiptree Award, and Mindscape. She has also published essays, plays, and short fiction, and received grants from the NEA and the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations. Andrea is the L. Wolff Kahn 1931 Professor of Theatre and Africana Studies at Smith College.

Andrea Hairston's profile page

Hiromi Goto is the award-winning author of many books for youth and adults. Her adult novel, Chorus of Mushrooms (1994) was the recipient of the regional Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book as well as co-winner of the Canada-Japan Book Award. Her second adult novel, The Kappa Child, was awarded the James Tiptree Jr. Award. Hopeful Monsters was her first collection of short stories and in 2009, she co-wrote, with David Bateman, her first book of poetry, Wait Until Late Afternoon. More recently her YA novel, Half World, was winner of the 2010 Sunburst Award and the Carl Brandon Parallax Award and was longlisted for the IMPAC-Dublin Literary Award. Her latest YA publication is Darkest Light. Hiromi is also a mentro at Simon Fraser University's The Writer's Studio, an editor, and monther of two grown children. She is at work on graphic novels and short stories.

In honour of its 20th anniversary, NeWest Press released a special edition of her seminal Chorus of Mushrooms in Spring 2014.

Hiromi Goto's profile page

Editorial Reviews

“An earnest compilation of voices from many ethnicities and backgrounds, exploring their experiences as people of colour, and as marginalised people.” -- Tor.com

“A celebration of people of color” -- Lightspeed Magazine

“Varied, rich, and delightful” -- Los Angeles Review of Books

“A great choice for people entirely new to genre fiction and a solid read for anybody” -- Book Riot

New Suns does more than offer a diverse group of writers of colour from different backgrounds: it also offers a diversity of the futures that can be possible in the speculative canon.” -- Strange Horizons

“Powerful” -- Locus

“This book’s wide range of stories is its greatest strength; though no reader will love them all, every reader will find something worth rereading.” -- Publishers Weekly, starred review