The Future is Queer: 11 LGBT+ Contemporary Authors Writing Speculative Fiction That You Should Know

August 21, 2019
No Comments
guest post
akwaeke emezi, alex london, c.m. spivey, carmen maria machado, claudie arseneault, j.y. yang, kameron hurley, larissa lai, lgbt, Malinda Lo, Michelle Ruiz Keil, noelle stevenson, queer sf

From Octavia Butler, author of multiple Nebula- and Hugo-award-winning novels, to longtime Star Trek scriptwriter David Gerrold, LGBT+ creators have long played a major part in steering the direction of speculative fiction. And the canon has never been more diverse and fascinating than now, with authors from a wonderfully wide range of backgrounds and experiences.

In this post we want to particularly spotlight all the contemporary LGBT+ writers of speculative fiction who are bringing their own perspective to science fiction and fantasy. Whether it’s semi-autobiographical surrealism or a unique, intricately imagined other world, you’re sure to find something on this list that piques your interest. Perhaps you’ll even discover a new favorite author, or one who motivates you to write your own book!

So without further ado, here they are, for your enjoyment and inspiration: 11 LGBTQIA authors of contemporary spec fic that you should know.

1. Michelle Ruiz Keil (author of All of Us with Wings)

Keil just exploded onto the scene with the June release of her YA fantasy debut, All of Us with Wings. This elegantly crafted novel follows seventeen-year-old governess Xochi “” who, like Keil, is bisexual and Latinx “” after she and her young charge accidentally summon a pair of vengeful demons to attack people from Xochi’s past. If you’re looking for an own voice LGBT author whose stories involve fantastical elements, yet still feel incredibly down-to-earth and authentic, Keil is definitely one to add to your list. “My favorite books make me feel seen and known and accompanied”¦ less alone,” she noted in a recent interview with mitÃº. “My deepest hope is that is that All of Us with Wings will be that kind of company for its readers.”

2. Malinda Lo (author of Adaptation)

Like your reads dark, dystopian, and with a distinctly sophisticated voice? Lo and behold (no pun intended), you’ve found your literary champion. Malinda Lo, a Chinese-American author with several speculative fiction books under her belt, has also written for LGBT culture site AfterEllen and helped co-found Diversity in YA. (Talk about a woman of many talents!) After the success of her first novel, a queer retelling of Cinderella, Lo went on to write the sci-fi/thriller series Adaptation, which centers on a young woman named Reese as she attempts to make sense of the world in the wake of an unprecedented natural disaster “” discovering herself in the process.

3. Alex London (author of Proxy)

Though Alex London has been around for a while, he’s often published under the slightly altered pseudonym of C. Alexander London, so you may not be sure exactly who he is. Rest assured, however, that his brilliance remains intact no matter what name he’s using. London’s first series, Proxy, boasts one of the most intriguing speculative premises we’ve heard in recent years: in a post-apocalyptic society, the 1% are punished for their misdeeds by being forced to watch a proportionate sentence carried out on a proxy, or a poor person who subs in for them. But when rich boy Knox and his lower-class proxy Syd (who happens to be gay) disrupt the system, the results are both revolutionary and shockingly unpredictable “” a truly impressive feat in the oversaturated dystopian YA market.

4. J.Y. Yang (author of The Black Tides of Heaven)

Yang, a queer and non-binary author, specializes in “silkpunk,“ which draws inspiration from real-life East Asian culture and history. Their first book, The Black Tides of Heaven, kicks off with a pair of twins “” Akeha and Mokoya “” coming into their supernatural abilities. Mokoya is gifted with prophetic vision, but Akeha’s talents are a bit more slippery: he sees not just what will happen, but what could happen. This leads him to align himself with the rebellion against his government”¦ and against Mokoya, who serves it. Throughout the story, Yang demonstrates an incredible knack for characterization even in the midst of complex worldbuilding, and their full Tensorate series (which starts with Black Tides) only affirms their perfectly balanced technique.

5. Claudie Arseneault (author of City of Strife)

Arseneault’s niche is aromantic and asexual characters, reflective of her own underrepresented experience as an aro/ace woman. In City of Strife, many of the characters are explicitly asexual and aromantic, with the narrative emphasizing and celebrating their close platonic friendships. However, this is by no means the focal point of the story, which is an elaborate political fantasy about a city crumbling under the weight of various power struggles. In terms of social issues, City of Strife and its sequels deftly address everything from labor practices to racial profiling. However, Arseneault’s inclusion of ace/aro characters (and her provision of resources for readers and authors hoping to learn more) make her a sublime role model for the “A” segment of the LGBTQIA community.

6. Akwaeke Emezi (author of Freshwater)

Emezi, whose widely acclaimed debut Freshwater came out last year, says that they wrote it “specifically for people who are inhabiting marginalized realities” “” in terms of more than just gender/sexuality, but on a mental, spiritual, and overall experiential level. After reading a few pages of Freshwater, one cannot deny that this has been impeccably accomplished, as the story about a young woman battling dysphoria, trauma, and her (literal) inner demons is like nothing you’ve ever read before.

A particularly interesting aspect of Emezi’s work is their use of POV: Freshwater is narrated by the ogbanje, or malevolent spirits, that haunt the consciousness of the main character Ada. The ogbanje refer to themselves as “we” and Ada as “she,” a nod to how marginalized/isolated people often feel that their lives are out of their control “” which Emezi drew from their own experience, and which many others will surely relate to as well.

7. Carmen Maria Machado (author of Her Body and Other Parties)

Already a well-known name in literary circles, Machado published Her Body and Other Parties in 2017: a masterful fusion of science fiction, psychological thriller, horror, and weird fantasy that elevated her to speculative fiction royalty. This anthology will target all of your most primal and abstract fears, including a blood-curdling retelling of the infamous “green ribbon” ghost story, the tale of a woman whose obsession with her weight that has very unintended consequences, and a surreal series of Law and Order episodes with phantasmagorical horror elements inserted. The common thread here is the objectification and subjugation of women, which Machado presents as both universal and particular, especially through the unique lens of queerness.

8. Kameron Hurley (author of The Mirror Empire)

Even darker than Machado’s work is Hurley’s Mirror Empire, a bloody, carnal, grimdark (no hopepunk here) work of fantasy that’s not exactly palatable, but still incredibly engrossing. Why? Because Hurley turns established tropes on their heads to create a groundbreaking new world. In this book, not only are women leaders and warriors, they far outnumber their male counterparts. You could call it a matriarchy, but even that’s not a strong enough word. The women utterly dominate the males, using them as slaves and sexual objects”¦ which can be disturbing at times, but given the profusion of the reverse dynamic in fantasy, is also quite bracing. Of course, Mirror Empire cannot and should not be read uncritically (that’s the point of having morally gray characters), but Hurley’s done a stand-up job of creating a totally radical world that will especially appeal to GoT-weary female fantasy readers.

9. C.M. Spivey (author of From Under the Mountain)

Continuing in a similar vein, C.M. Spivey’s From Under the Mountain is another excellent recent addition to the high fantasy canon. It revolves around nineteen-year-old Guerline, who is thrust into the role of empress before she’s even got to grips with her non-royal identity”¦ and how she feels about her lower-class companion, Eva. But personal matters are soon eclipsed when an ancient mystical evil rears its ugly head, and Guerline alone must decide how to proceed.

Spivey himself is a longtime writer of speculative fiction, and as a panromantic asexual trans man, he is “committed to queering his favorite genres” (according to his bio) “” which clearly comes across in the unconventional fantasy novel that is From Under the Mountain.

10. Noelle Stevenson (author of Nimona)

You might know Stevenson from her work on Lumberjanes and the super-cool She-Ra reboot, but did you know she also wrote and illustrated the fantasy webcomic-turned-graphic-novel Nimona? For those who didn’t, a quick synopsis: Nimona is a spirited young shapeshifter who serves as a supervillain’s sidekick. But as the story unfolds, we see that Nimona and her boss, the knight/mad scientist Lord Ballister Blackheart, are not all they seem “” and that their purportedly “good” nemeses are hiding something. Indeed, much of Stevenson’s work involves deconstructing shallow first impressions and creating fully three-dimensional characters in their wake, breathing life into them with her artwork.

11. Larissa Lai (author of The Tiger Flu)

Rounding off our list at #11 is Larissa Lai, whose 2018 sci-fi novel The Tiger Flu was her first in 16 years! The women of this story are parthenogenic, meaning they can reproduce asexually, without men; however, they do suffer from chronic organ failure, which means they depend on a “starfish” among them to donate and then regenerate her various body parts. And when this starfish woman dies of the titular flu, her lover Kirilow has no time to grieve “” she must venture into a fully infected city to find another starfish, so she and her sisters will not die. A thoroughly original, unadulteratedly feminist work of speculative fiction, The Tiger Flu has been described by Lai as a definite challenge to her writing, but praised by critics as her best work yet.

This guest post is from Savannah Cordova,Â a writer with Reedsy, a marketplace that connects authors and publishers with the world’s best editors, designers, and marketers. She’s very interested in content marketing trends and hacks for creators. In her spare time, Savannah enjoys reading contemporary fiction and writing short stories.”

#SFWAAUTHORS

This was a guest blog post.
Interested in blogging here?

Assembling an itinerary for a blog tour? Promoting a book, game, or other creative effort that’s related to fantasy, horror, or science fiction and want to write a guest post for me?

Alas, I cannot pay, but if that does not dissuade you, here’s the guidelines.

Guest posts are publicized on Twitter, several Facebook pages and groups, my newsletter, and in my weekly link round-ups; you are welcome to link to your site, social media, and other related material.

Send a 2-3 sentence description of the proposed piece along with relevant dates (if, for example, you want to time things with a book release) to cat AT kittywumpus.net. If it sounds good, I’ll let you know.

I prefer essays fall into one of the following areas but I’m open to interesting pitches:

Interesting and not much explored areas of writing
Writers or other individuals you have been inspired by
Your favorite kitchen and a recipe to cook in it
A recipe or description of a meal from your upcoming book
Women, PoC, LGBT, or otherwise disadvantaged creators in the history of speculative fiction, ranging from very early figures such as Margaret Cavendish and Mary Wollstonecraft up to the present day.
Women, PoC, LGBT, or other wise disadvantaged creators in the history of gaming, ranging from very early times up to the present day.
F&SF volunteer efforts you work with

Length is 500 words on up, but if you’ve got something stretching beyond 1500 words, you might consider splitting it up into a series.

When submitting the approved piece, please paste the text of the piece into the email. Please include 1-3 images, including a headshot or other representation of you, that can be used with the piece and a 100-150 word bio that includes a pointer to your website and social media presences. (You’re welcome to include other related links.)

Or, if video is more your thing, let me know if you’d like to do a 10-15 minute videochat for my YouTube channel. I’m happy to handle filming and adding subtitles, so if you want a video without that hassle, this is a reasonable way to get one created. ???? Send 2-3 possible topics along with information about what you’re promoting and its timeline.

You may also like...

Guest Post from Mercedes M. Yardley: Find Your Literary Voice

March 12, 2015

I grew up in a time where we were taught to conform. If you want to write like the Greats, then study the Greats. Creative Writing professors often told us to choose a writer we admired and then write a poem or short story copying their style.

It accomplished what it set out to do, I suppose. We became more familiar with the writers we studied. We could pick out nuance and detail that were unfamiliar before. At the end of class, we emerged with a greater understanding of Faulkner, Frost, and Dostoevsky.

The only problem is that the woman sitting to the left of me wasn’t Faulkner. I wasn’t Frost. And the man in the front row never wanted to be Dostoevsky.

Authors have their own unique voices, and it’s a shame not to use them. Writers write because they care. They have something to say. They want to spread a message or they want to chat with their readers. They want to tell you things. Describe things. How is an author supposed to accurately express themselves when they have, in essence, learned to speak using somebody else’s voice?

Enough of that. You are YOU. The greatest thing you can bring to the literary table is yourself. Faulkner has already taken his seat. Do you know who should be sitting in the chair next to him? You. You have wonderful things to discuss.

Here are a few exercises and ideas that can help you find your own unique writing voice.

1. Write yourself a letter.

It doesn’t matter what kind of letter. What are you saying? What words do you use? Are you formal or folksy? Do you speak to yourself like a friend or is there a respectful distance there?

This exercise helps in a couple of ways. First off, it forces you to sit down and write, which is the first step. It’s also not meant to be daunting. Who cares about your literary success more than you? Nobody, that’s who. So write yourself a letter. Don’t judge yourself. This is a time to see what flows from your pen (or computer) when nobody is looking.

2. Record yourself talking about your upcoming project.

You can do it via audio or video, but the idea is similar to letter writing. What types of phrases do you use? Are you excited about the project? Now record yourself discussing a different project, preferably one that is in a dissimilar vein than your first project. Project #2 has a different ambiance, yes? Different subject matter? How do you sound while discussing it? Are your words the same?

3. Write a list of your favorite words.

Why are these your favorite? What makes them part of your vocabulary?

I had a member of my writer’s group say that he could always detect my work because I would use the words “broken” and “exquisite” quite often. And while this made me laugh, I realized that I do have choice words, and they convey exactly what I want to say. I’m not saying to use repetitive words in order to form voice, but to keep a lookout on your unique word set. These choices make you the writer you are. They’ll give you a hint on what your voice sounds like.

4.Realize that you might have more than one voice.

We discussed that one author doesn’t necessarily sound like another. And you might not necessarily sound like yourself all of the time. Perhaps that doesn’t make sense, but let’s go back to step 2, where you recorded yourself discussing two different projects. Two diverse projects might have two separate voices.

I realized that I have two distinct voices. One is a smart aleck type of voice with sarcasm and swagger, and it usually comes out while writing first person. I also have an elegant, much more ephemeral voice that uses higher and more lyrical language. This tends to come out when I’m writing in third person, and this voice is what I’m more noted for. But until I figured this out, I found it confusing. I wasn’t sure exactly why I sounded one way for one project and so different for another. I just wrote what I felt like writing, but other writers discussed the concept of “voice” so much that I became insecure and made the effort to figure mine out.

5. Write. Write a lot.

You won’t discover your literary voice in any other way. These suggestions can help, but we all know the only way to become a better, more informed writer is to read and write. But by being able to identify your literary voice, you’ll be able to more easily convey the sense of your work to others. This will help immensely when pitching your work, and will hopefully lead to even more opportunities for you.

Write on, my friends.

Bio: Mercedes M. Yardley is a dark fantastic who wears red lipstick and poisonous flowers in her hair. She is the author of Beautiful Sorrows, Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A Tale of Atomic Love, Nameless, and her latest release, Pretty Little Dead Girls: A Novel of Murder and Whimsy, from Ragnarok Publications. Mercedes lives and works in Sin City, and you can reach her at www.mercedesyardley.com.

#sfwapro

Want to write your own guest post? Here’s the guidelines.

Enjoy this writing advice and want more content like it? Check out the classes Cat gives via the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers both on-demand and live online writing classes for fantasy and science fiction writers from Cat and other authors, including Ann Leckie, Seanan McGuire, Fran Wilde and other talents! All classes include three free slots.

...

Guest Post: Dawn Vogel on Fairy Tales and Fiction

September 26, 2019

Fairy tales have been around in one form or another for centuries, even if they weren’t written down and compiled into collections like Grimm’s Fairy Tales. They’ve changed over the centuries as well, shifting from folk stories to morality tales to more sanitized or “Disney-fied” versions of what they once were. In the process of this sanitization, oftentimes the messages the fairy tales purported to dictate have changed. Gone is the Little Mermaid who watched her beloved marry someone else, at which point she cast herself back into the ocean and drowned, showing us that you shouldn’t change for someone you love. Instead, we get the version where the mermaid and prince live happily ever after, flipping the moral to be that you can (and should?) change in order to make someone love you.

“Original” versions of fairy tales can be a loaded term, in that most of the fairy tales we know today existed in an oral format prior to being written down. When the stories were written down, they were not always faithful to the original tellings. Charles Perrault’s versions of fairy tales were reworked so they would be popular amongst the seventeenth-century French aristocracy. In the nineteenth century, the Grimm brothers, in the first versions of their compilations of fairy tales, acted primarily as transcriptionists, interested in recording the stories as they were commonly told among the German populace. In later versions of the Grimm brothers’ collections, however, they began the sanitization process, making the tales more family friendly.

There is no denying that many of the “original” fairy tales were violent, sexist, and gruesome. They’re filled with death, abuse, self-mutilation, and more. Some of these tales were likely used by the tellers to imbue the listeners (or readers) with specific moral values or lessons or warn them against things like going into the woods alone at night or engaging in other dangerous activities. Perrault and the Grimm brothers also added to these moral lessons but shaped them to their own times and audiences. For example, stories that originally included birth mothers often were changed to instead include stepmothers, who were invariably vain, evil, and not interested in the welfare of their young charges. That the “original” stories ascribed these same motives to birth mothers is a fascinating bit of historical curiosity, but that stepmothers were so much more readily demonized might be even more intriguing as an avenue of study.

Beyond even the changes that Perrault and the Grimm brothers made to the “original” fairy tales, modern sensibilities have again shifted the telling of these stories, cleaned them up further, and completely rewritten them into things that barely resembles the “originals”. Like the Little Mermaid example above, the retelling of fairy tales as children’s movies, often animated and turned into musicals, can obliterate the original meaning, though not always for the worse. The “original” Beauty and the Beast story from seventeenth-century France was written to prepare young girls for arranged marriages, and had an emphasis on learning to love someone you didn’t know, whereas the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast involves character growth for both Belle and the Beast, who learn to love each other, rather than simply expecting the woman to do all the work. This example, in particular, also reflects the time in which it was turned into a movie, considerably different from earlier Disney films in which the female protagonists sometimes were denied the agency that Belle is permitted. Other retellings of fairy tales have stripped away the morality entirely, or occasionally taken a story that was more about avoiding dangerous activities, in a way that did not really require a moral, and added a moral in for good measure (like various versions of Little Red Riding Hood).
Though the origins of many fairy tales are lost to history, the ability to compare various versions of tales as they have been told over the centuries is a fascinating endeavor, both for what they tell us about broadly defined history and what they tell us about storytelling and writing in various times.

About the author: Dawn Vogel’s academic background is in history, so it’s not surprising that much of her fiction is set in earlier times. By day, she edits reports for historians and archaeologists. In her alleged spare time, she runs a craft business, co-edits Mad Scientist Journal, and tries to find time for writing. She is a member of Broad Universe, SFWA, and Codex Writers. She lives in Seattle with her husband, author Jeremy Zimmerman, and their herd of cats. Visit her at http://historythatneverwas.com or follow her on Twitter @historyneverwas. Dawn’s latest book is The Cask of Cranglimmering, Book One of Brass and Glass.

...

The World of

books, community, classes, & resources

Share this:

The Future is Queer: 11 LGBT+ Contemporary Authors Writing Speculative Fiction That You Should Know