In beautifully vivid journal entries, Black poet Mardou Fox chronicles her 1950s and '60s experiences with the Beat Generation--and her adventures in the mysterious, otherworldly realm over the fence. Characters based on star Beat authors like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac fight alongside Mardou or battle against her as she challenges racism and sexism to win happiness, freedom, and respect for her work. Are the answers she's seeking shrouded in the mists of magic? Inspired by the true story of Alene Lee, whose crucial role is often left out of Beat Generation lore.

From acclaimed short fiction writer Nisi Shawl comes a brilliant alternate history set in the Congo, where heroes strive for a Utopia and endeavor to live together despite their differences.

Now with a beautiful new cover and a foreward from award-winning author Cadwell Turnbull.

In this re-imagining of Belgium's disastrous colonization of the Congo, African American missionaries join forces with British socialists to purchase land from the Congo Free State's owner, King Leopold II. This land, which they name Everfair, is set aside as a safe haven for native populations of the Congo as well as settlers from around the world, including dream-eyed Europeans attempting to create a better society, formerly enslaved people returning from America, and Chinese railroad builders escaping hard labor. Using the combined knowledge of four continents, Everfair becomes a land of spying cats and gulls, nuclear dirigibles buoyed by barkcloth balloons, and silent pistols that shoot poison knives.

With this technology, Everfair will attempt to defeat the Belgian tyrant Leopold II. But even if they can defeat their great enemy, a looming world war and political infighting may threaten to destroy everything they have built.

A book with gorgeous sweep, spanning years and continents, loves and hates, histories and fantasies... Everfair is sometimes sad, often luminous, and always original. A wonderful achievement. -- Karen Joy Fowler

Octavia E. Butler said, There's nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.

New Suns 2 brings you fresh visions of the strange, the unexpected, the shocking--breakthrough stories, stories shining with emerging truths, stories that pierce stale preconceptions with their beauty and bravery. Like the first New Suns anthology (winner of the World Fantasy, Locus, IGNYTE, and British Fantasy awards), this book liberates writers of many races to tell us tales no one has ever told.

Many things come in twos: dualities, binaries, halves, and alternates. Twos are found throughout New Suns 2, in eighteen science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories revealing daring futures, hidden pasts, and present-day worlds filled with unmapped wonders.

Including stories by Daniel H. Wilson, K. Tempest Bradford, Darcie Little Badger, Geetanjali Vandemark, John Chu, Nghi Vo, Tananarive Due, Alex Jennings, Karin Lowachee, Saad Hossain, Hiromi Goto, Minsoo Kang, Tlotlo Tsamaase, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Malka Older, Kathleen Alcalá, Christopher Caldwell and Jaymee Goh with a foreword by Walter Mosley and an afterword by Dr. Grace Dillon.

Starting an interstellar penal colony could be an extremely practical idea, right? It could even provide a sponsoring corporation a good Return on Investment--though of course their initial investment would be massive. Making Amends is a novel-in-stories that tells how a corporate government tries to put this idea into action. Beginning with the selection of the first mission's volunteer crew and culminating with the idea's lovely and unforeseen consequences, Making Amends immerses readers in strange new worlds, worlds precious to discover, tricky to explore, and beautiful to behold.

A wonderful middle-grade fantasy debut about Black families, family history, family curses ... and a really marvelous pair of spectacles.

After Winna's little sister breaks her glasses, her grandfather gives her an old-timey pair of spectacles that belonged to her great-aunt Estelle. The specs are silver and perfectly circular, with tiny stars on the bridge and earpieces that curl all the way around her ears.

Best of all, they're magic.

Because when Winna makes a wish beginning with the words What if--that is, when she speculates--the spectacles grant it. Winna wishes she could see ghosts ... and soon she meets not only the real Estelle, but Estelle's mother, Winona. Nearly a century before, Winona escaped from slavery and ran north with her baby, Key. But Key was stolen from her under mysterious circumstances, and now Estelle and Winona have a mission for Winna: Find Key.

He's still alive. He doesn't know the whole truth. And unless Winna can solve the mystery and bring him home, a powerful curse called the Burden will smother out their family's lives--and Winna's mom could be its next victim.

This beautifully written historical fantasy by an award-winning science fiction author offers new twists and turns in every chapter and will leave you looking at your own family's roots with new eyes.

Named a Best Fantasy and Sci-Fi Book of The Year by Elle!

Kinning, the sequel to Nisi Shawl's acclaimed debut novel Everfair, continues the stunning alternate history where barkcloth airships soar through the sky, varied peoples build a new society together, and colonies claim their freedom from imperialist tyrants.

The Great War is over. Everfair has found peace within its borders. But our heroes' stories are far from done.

Tink and his sister Bee-Lung are traveling the world via aircanoe, spreading the spores of a mysterious empathy-generating fungus. Through these spores, they seek to build bonds between people and help spread revolutionary sentiments of socialism and equality--the very ideals that led to Everfair's founding.

Meanwhile, Everfair's Princess Mwadi and Prince Ilunga return home from a sojourn in Egypt to vie for their country's rule following the abdication of their father King Mwenda. But their mother, Queen Josina, manipulates them both from behind the scenes, while also pitting Europe's influenza-weakened political powers against one another as these countries fight to regain control of their rebellious colonies.

Will Everfair continue to serve as a symbol of hope, freedom, and equality to anticolonial movements around the world, or will it fall to forces inside and out?

Named a Best Fantasy and Sci-Fi Book of The Year by Elle!

Kinning, the sequel to Nisi Shawl's acclaimed debut novel Everfair, continues the stunning alternate history where barkcloth airships soar through the sky, varied peoples build a new society together, and colonies claim their freedom from imperialist tyrants.

The Great War is over. Everfair has found peace within its borders. But our heroes' stories are far from done.

Tink and his sister Bee-Lung are traveling the world via aircanoe, spreading the spores of a mysterious empathy-generating fungus. Through these spores, they seek to build bonds between people and help spread revolutionary sentiments of socialism and equality--the very ideals that led to Everfair's founding.

Meanwhile, Everfair's Princess Mwadi and Prince Ilunga return home from a sojourn in Egypt to vie for their country's rule following the abdication of their father King Mwenda. But their mother, Queen Josina, manipulates them both from behind the scenes, while also pitting Europe's influenza-weakened political powers against one another as these countries fight to regain control of their rebellious colonies.

Will Everfair continue to serve as a symbol of hope, freedom, and equality to anticolonial movements around the world, or will it fall to forces inside and out?

In this, the final issue of Fantastic Stories of the Imagination people of color take over Special Guest editor Nisi Shawl has assembled a breath taking array of stories by some of the best writers in the science fiction and fantasy field today, and they just happen to be people of color.

People of color have been publishing some of the highest quality science fiction and fantasy since the genre's earliest days. Yet, there still persists a perception that science fiction and fantasy is somehow a white field. This special issue of Fantastic Stories should help shatter that illusion as it showcases some of the finest writer's that Science Fiction and Fantasy has to offer.

Representation matters and Fantastic Stories is proud to be able to end its run on shut an important and high note.

Contributors include: Su-Yee Lin, Stephen Graham Jones, Minsoo Kang, . Lily Yu, Jennifer Marie Brissett, Jermaine McGill, Paul Miles, Christopher Caldwell, Eliza Victoria, Alex Jennings, Nalo Hopkinson, Henry Lien, Tlotlo Tsamaase, Tonya Liburd, Irette Y. Patterson, Alberto Y ez, S. Qiouyi Lu, Erin Roberts, Terence Taylor, Darcie Little Badger, and Maurice Broaddus.

Nisi Shawl's steampunk-flavored alternate history of the Belgian Congo, Everfair, has taken the science fiction and fantasy world by storm. No surprise there. Their swift, sure, and savvy short stories had already established them as a cutting-edge Afrofuturist icon whose politically charged fiction is in the grand feminist tradition of Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler, and Suzy McKee Charnas.

In these previously uncollected stories, Shawl explores the unexpected possibilities and perils opened up by SF&F's new intersectionality. In Shawl's side-slippery world, sex can be both commerce and worship, complete with ancient rites, altars, and ointments (Women of the Doll); a virtual reality high school is a proving ground for girlpacks and their unfortunate adversaries (Walk like a Man); and a British rock singer finds an image in a mirror that reflects both future hits and ancient horrors (Something More). Also included is a presentation at a southern university, in which they patiently (and gleefully) deconstructs the academic and arcane intersections between ancient rites and modern tech. Ifa, anyone?

Plus:
Our Outspoken Interview with Shawl, in which unapologetics are proffered, riddles are unraveled, and icons are, as always, clasted.

Our Fruiting Bodies collects stories of old growth and fresh decay, of stubborn rebirth and the faint but nonimaginary paths connecting life and nonlife. From the sharp, sweet confessional of their Peter Pan-inspired Awfully Big Adventure, through the melting ambitextualities of Just Us--from the early, dizzy-eyed quest at the heart of Looking for Lilith through the newly unfurling tendrils that pierce the grounds of I Being Young and Foolish, Nisi Shawl's search for the power of fiction's truth puts pure, precious gifts right here, right in your hands, ripe and ready for reading.

Nisi Shawl is a writer whose work has been published at Strange Horizons, in Asimov's SF Magazine, and in anthologies including Dark Faith 2, Dark Matter, The Moment of Change, and The Other Half of the Sky. Her story collection, Filter House, was one of two winners of the 2009 James Tiptree Jr. Award. She is a cofounder of the Carl Brandon Society and serves on the Board of Directors of the Clarion West Writers Workshop. She lives in Seattle.

Bill Campbell is the founder of Rosarium Publishing and the author the novels Koontown Killing Kaper, My Booty Novel, and Sunshine Patriots as well as the essay collection, Pop Culture: Politics, Puns, and Poohbutt from a Liberal Stay-at-Home Dad. He coedited, with Edward Austin Hall, the groundbreaking anthology Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond. He lives in Washington, DC.