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The following is an edited transcript, abridged from the original conversation that closed the BSFA/SFF AGM on 14 June 2026. The event was held online on Zoom. 

Lisa Tuttle, My Death (Vintage Classics, 2026)

Paul March-Russell: I’m honoured to have Lisa Tuttle here to discuss her novella My Death, which was originally published by P.S. Publishing in 2004, reprinted by NYRB Classics, and is now available in a beautiful edition from Vintage. A number of Lisa’s other works are also being reprinted by Valancourt – A Nest of Nightmares and later this year Lost Futures, which was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1993. Lisa, it’s a delight to have you here. My Death is a wonderfully intricate work, so I’m going to be very careful to not give anything away. But what was it that first inspired you to write the novella? 

Lisa Tuttle: It was a few things that came together. One is that I’ve always been interested in women writers, women artists, particularly women who’ve been sort of forgotten. I can’t think who it was, someone like Gail Godwin, who was recently talking about when she was at college, she always felt slightly embarrassed being particularly interested in women writers. It didn’t seem right. You were supposed to look at the great writers, and they were all men. Well, I’m from a slightly younger generation, and I think that by the time I got to college, there were women – women’s writing, women’s work, women’s history. The courses were just starting. This was back in 1970. So, I didn’t feel this wasn’t proper. It was like, no, now is the time to find out about all these forgotten women or the women who haven’t been celebrated.

I also read a lot of biographies and autobiographies by women and about women. And at one point, years ago, I thought I might write a biography, but it all seemed a bit too daunting. What suited me better was to write an imaginary biography of an imaginary writer or artist or muse. That was another subject that interested me: women playing the role of muse to a male artist or writer. I’d recently read a memoir of Robert Graves, can’t remember by whom (we’ve just moved house so my books are everywhere!). But one of the things was that the author and his wife went to live in Mallorca, and he had a letter of introduction to Graves, who was at that time living with the American poet and critic, Laura Riding, and the stories that he told about her just fascinated me. I was interested in writing about someone who’d been connected to a more famous male, but had her own talents, more than just being a muse. So, I took elements of Laura Riding’s life for my imaginary writer, and I began in a kind of semi-autobiographical fashion to write about a woman writer, who would have been around my age at the time.

The writer was widowed which I was not, and am still not, I’m very happy to say. But she had some of my own characteristics. That was a kind of a tease, in a way, because some of the things were true. I made her be from Texas, going to college in New York, and then coming over to Britain, winding up in Scotland. And the writer that she is interested in is someone she first encountered as a painted female figure, a kind of mythical person. Because that was another element. I’ve recently been going through my old notebooks, and some of the same names were in there from this story I’ve never written. It was called ‘The Fountain’, and there was a Willie Logan and a Hermione, I think, or Hermine. It was a sort of Circe story with a magical fountain and men being turned into animals. But anyway, I never wrote that, but it was something I was thinking about at the same time. And then Pete Crowther invited me to write a novella, and so suddenly I had a reason to write this, because I couldn’t really see it as a novel and it was way too complicated for a short story. And, in fact, I didn’t even know how it was going to end. When I began writing it, it was really just a character a bit like me researching someone who turns out to still be alive, so she can actually go and interview her, and then finding these rather odd connections or echoes of her life.

PMR: That’s fascinating. When I was a recently graduated PhD student in the early Noughties, around about the time that you’d have been writing My Death, Laura Riding had really come back into focus in terms of modernist studies. And there’s lots of other allusions here. You start with an epigram from the poet H.D., and again, we’ve had more recent reclamations of people like Leonora Carrington and Ithell Colquhoun. I was wondering whether you saw the novella as part of a process of reclamation? Is it contributing, not just as a kind of fictional biography, to that process of reclaiming women writers and artists from the past? 

LT: For me, certainly. Leonora Carrington was very much on my radar, because when I was living in Austin, Texas, there was an exhibition of her work at the university. And I thought, whoa, she’s fantastic. And she was a writer as well, and I bought some of her books which were being reprinted by small presses back then in the 70s. So, Carrington was part of that. H.D., very much. I read two biographies of H.D, and I had her collected poems, and I was fascinated by her early life story, being picked up as a modernist writer, and her relationship with Ezra Pound, and her very much not traditional relationships and marriages and semi-marriages with both men and women. So, she was a fascinating character as well. But Ithell Colquhoun, I had not even heard of, but then I got an email from someone a couple of years ago. The strange thing is that there was something in The Guardian about her, I think, and I was reading about her, and thinking she sounds fascinating. Then I got this email from someone saying, was this one of the real women behind your idea? And I had to admit, no, I’d never heard of her until a week ago. It’s also quite exciting, I think, to find these writers and artists who have dropped out of sight, and are being constantly rediscovered. I love it. I love coming across an artist I haven’t heard of before, or a book by a writer, particularly when they’re women. 

PMR: Exactly. It does seem to me that the republication of My Death is feeding into this whole process of reclaiming the work of early 20th century women writers and artists, but also more recent ones. So again, we think about people like Ann Quin and Anna Kavan and Maureen Duffy. Which brings me to my next question, because the other thing I really love are all these period details about Virago Press. So, the narrator has a copy of Helen Ralston’s novel In Troy (more echoes of H.D. I suspect) published by Virago, and there’s even a little account of how they went about reprinting their books, and the damage done to the original text. Was there also a reclaiming of the history of women’s presses and a revisiting of your own early life as a writer?

LT: I didn’t think, I’m going to reclaim women’s publishing history, I was just looking into my own recent past. In the 80s, I lived in Harrow and I joined a group called Women in Publishing, because it was a way of meeting other women since I didn’t go out to work. And I didn’t want to just meet people – I already knew people in the science fiction field – I felt like I needed some new friends of my own. And so I joined Women in Publishing and we would do things like type up things in the Virago offices or have conferences where some of the more established women publishers and editors would be. I was mainly with people working in publishing, but one year Jeanette Winterson and I were on the same committee. I even briefly provided maternity cover for Sarah Lefanu at the Women’s Press. It was just for a few months, but I was working with Tanith Lee and Carol Emshwiller, possibly Josephine Saxton. These were books that Sarah had bought and I’d be on the phone to her every couple of days. I wrote the Encyclopedia of Feminism as well, and when that was about to be published by Longmans, I was actually invited to a sales conference. There were all of these eye-opening facts about the reality of publishing, and I subsequently married someone there who had signed the contract for A Nest of Nightmares. We were both divorced and we’d run into each other at parties and things like that, and I think it was on our first or second date where I referred to A Nest of Nightmares, and I said, oh, I don’t know if you know it. He said, of course I know it, I read it. I said, well, I wouldn’t assume that you would go out and read something by me. And he said, Lisa, I published that book, I’m the one who bought it. And I said, no, no, no, no, no, that was Nann du Sautoy. She’s the one who took me out to lunch and commissioned the book, and he said, look who signed the contract. And he had. I hadn’t even realized he had been there. So, meeting other publishers and writers, who always complain about publishers of course, it’s always been a thing. But yeah, it was fun to have this character just going back to how things had been. Of course, things had changed a lot by the early 2000s, but everything I knew about publishing was from the 80s.

PMR: It’s an absolutely fascinating history. Women in Publishing has also been celebrated by the British Library with a whole bunch of links on their website, including an interview with yourself. And Rosy Mack has got a forthcoming book about the Women’s Press.

LT: Yes, I spoke with her.

PMR: So, it’s not just that this book is chiming with that reclamation of women’s writing from the early part of the 20th century, it’s also feeding into this other reclamation of the post-war enterprises of Women in Publishing, Virago, Women’s Press. It’s full of these lovely period details but a sense also of continuity over the decades that adds to the pleasure and grounding of the whole story. 

You mentioned earlier that there were some biographical similarities between yourself and the narrator, and I wondered if you could say a little bit more about that, but also about the way in which there’s a doubling between the author, the narrator, and Helen Ralston. I don’t want to offer any plot spoilers, but would you say a little bit more about how that doubling emerged in the writing of the text?

LT: It’s very difficult to talk about because a lot of things that I write are sort of semi-conscious, or even unconscious, and quite often I draw on things from my own life without knowing it. I mean, I hadn’t realized that Ralston was a friend’s grandparent’s name. I don’t know if I knew it or if it was just a strange coincidence, but chances are I’d heard it, and it was connected with Scotland because that was where her grandparents were from. I often find that when critics are looking at things and talking about them, I just think, well, the way I work is I put something in because it just occurs to me when I’m writing. Only later do I think, that’s what it was about, there was a reason for that, it wasn’t just random. But at the time, it felt random – you know, where was her first job, who is this person, what name can I give them? And then it comes to seem more important or it has an echo with something. But I have to admit the doubling was not a conscious decision. It wasn’t like, oh, I’m going to do this, so that the reader will notice it or be happy about it or excited or question it. It’s just more happy accidents and coincidences, and I find that very often when I’m writing. Not just fiction writers but people doing research, I think, will probably recognize the way you stumble across so many serendipitous discoveries. You’re not even looking for it, you were looking for something else, and then you find the absolutely perfect detail. It’s just a kind of going with the flow, in a way.

PMR: And I’m assuming that the intricacy of the story must come through the drafting and redrafting as you incorporate those accidents and explore them further?

LT: Yes, I always think my first drafts are horrible. They’re very rough. Of course, the whole idea of a draft is not the same as when it used to be on a typewriter, and then you had to start retyping it. But I still do have a tendency to start over again rather than just trying to make little changes, because I feel it’s not good enough, you know? I will waste a lot of time just trying to rewrite something that I’ve just written. So, I think it’s often better, for me anyway, to just move on, and then when I go back to it, I can fix it. But I’ve just had this thought about something I’ve been working on for probably two years, which I haven’t been able to write because I’ve been busy with other things. The book opens going down a particular road that I’m describing, an imaginary road based on a real one, and I just started thinking, oh, I began in the wrong place, and I’ve just thought of a different opening for it.

PMR: Really?

LT: Yeah, completely different.

PMR: Wow, that also makes me think of something you said earlier, that you didn’t know what the ending was going to be for My Death…

LT: I know it seems unlikely, doesn’t it?

PMR: Again, no plot spoilers, but it’s not just the intricacy, it’s also about choosing whether this is going to be a short story, a novel or novella? Because the novella has a particular kind of form and structure to it, and critics will say, you need an epiphany or turning-point at the end, some kind of revelation, but if you’re working blind, the form becomes kind of interesting, doesn’t it? 

LT: Well, it’s the way I usually work. Actually, though, usually about halfway I will realize what I’m aiming at, you know? But the very final ending is different than I was originally thinking it would be halfway through.

PMR: Yeah, I won’t say anything more about the ending, but it literally goes, whoa! And it throws you out, and then you go, oh, hold on a minute, I’ve got to re-read this, so it’s that classic short story or novella form, the twice-told tale. You’ve got to go back and read it all again which is so, so pleasurable. The other thing I wanted to pick up on, apart from that dramatic twist, is the way the novella seems to resolve itself – because, you know, this is a slippery tale we’re talking about – but it seems to suggest the presence of parallel universes, alternate timelines, which we see also in Lost Futures and some of your earlier short stories like ‘No Regrets’, the opening story in A Spaceship Built of Stone. What significance do you see that notion playing in your work more broadly? What is it about that theme that draws you in over and over again?

LT: It does… it does interest me. It has for a long time, I guess. Reading other people’s takes on these things like R.A. Lafferty. Not just alternate histories, but the whole idea of time travel, the idea that you could actually change the past and then what does that mean? One of the things that has had an impact on my writing of time travel stories is the very notion of alternate time streams and the actual theory behind that, not some kind of fantasy, of going back and changing the past. Although if it was real, you’d never know it, for the rest of the world would just be carrying on in its usual path. There’s some people in Hollywood who have written a script of My Death which they’re hoping to sell. And I got a phone call from them once, asking me, when does this happen and how does that happen? And I said, well, there is no explanation. Because it isn’t something that happens every day. So yeah, there probably are echoes of ideas like alternate realities, but there’s no explanation.

PMR: Exactly. Instead, that’s the mysterious effect the novella has because as an author you pause the reader and say, no, I can’t explain it. But in that moment, the story pulls me back in again, because now I’ve now got to re-read it from the start, and that reiteration is like a time-travelling effect. I’ve been here before but it’s not the same place.  

LT: Yeah, it wasn’t like a conscious decision, like I’m going to play with time travel like that. It was because the story just evolved that way. And I didn’t worry too much about not explaining what happened. I didn’t have a clever magic trick or whatever, but that’s the thing about fantasy, right? It doesn’t always come with an explanation, unlike a magic trick, which can be unwound and explained.

PMR: And in that way, it’s such a wonderfully slippery tale. But that alternate timeline also seems to feed back into the reclaiming of women’s histories, an alternate way of looking at, in this case, the 20th century. So, it seems structurally connected to the whole point of the story. It’s not just a rabbit out of the hat, as it were.

LT: Oh yeah, definitely, it’s not meant to be. But you know, sometimes you read a book, and you really feel like this is my story, or it may not be your actual story, but there’s something in it that you then want to know about the writer. Like, how did you get to this, and where did this come from? And I suppose it’s why people then want to read biographies of writers or artists, because if their work speaks to you, then you sort of think the secret must be in them, and you may be horribly disappointed when they can’t explain the magic. Partly, then, My Death is a response to my feeling about certain books and certain authors, that you just feel this connection, even though the writers may have died before you were born. And you just wish you could have known them. 

PMR: Which is very much what the narrator feels towards Helen when she encounters the Circe painting. And which also seems to evoke the mesmeric power that Circe has in The Odyssey or Helen of Troy in The Iliad. The painting also reminded me of the ‘fatal book’ in The Picture of Dorian Gray that possesses Dorian’s mind. Maybe that weird fiction, Gothic-y trope of the artwork that takes over its audience, alongside the time-travelling trope, is another way of thinking about the relationship between the reader and the novel? 

John William Waterhouse, Circe offering the cup to Ulysses (1891)

LT: I don’t know what I can say, really, except whether it’s a story, a visual image or a work of art, or even something that isn’t particularly a work of art, if you encounter it at an early age, it just takes over your mind or your imagination, and you think about it all the time. If you’re a lover of books, and if you’re a writer and a reader, it’s just one of those basic feelings that there’s some kind of deep magic involved.

PMR: It’s a visceral feeling, isn’t it? I think of being a 12-year-old and reading A Wizard of Earthsea for the first time, and literally being completely gripped by that story.

LT: Because you wanted to live in it.

PMR: Yeah, exactly. We’ve talked a lot about reclamation, so how does it feel for you to see your work coming back into print like this beautiful edition here?

LT: Wonderful. Particularly with My Death, because I felt how well it came out. You know, some people read it, and they loved it, and then it just kind of vanished. And of course, it was from a small press, and there were lots of other things for people to read. And then for it to be picked up… I mean, I couldn’t even believe it! But the editor at the NYRB got in touch with me via Facebook and just mentioned, well, I have a very small press but I’d be interested. And I’m thinking, well, it was published by a small press. Then I’m going, what? The New York Review of Books? NYRB? And not only that, NYRB Classics! I’m a classic! How amazing! It’s just great. I love it. And I’ve just sold the Catalan rights. It’s already out in Spanish and Italian. So, yeah, it’s wonderful, actually.

PMR: It’s definitely wonderful, and all these works need to be back in print, and we need new works as well once you’ve settled into your new home. I think that’s definitely the case. Lisa, thank you so much, it’s been a huge pleasure talking to you.

LT: Thank you.

Lisa Tuttle has written over a dozen fantasy, science-fiction and horror adult and YA novels, and hundreds of award-winning short stories collected in several volumes, including A Nest of Nightmares and The Dead Hours of the Night. She is the author of The Encyclopaedia of Feminism and currently writes a monthly science-fiction review column for The Guardian. 

Paul March-Russell is the outgoing editor of Foundation and the co-commissioning editor for Gold SF (Goldsmiths Press). His Strange Horizons review of E.J. Swift’s When There are Wolves Again was shortlisted for the 2026 BSFA Awards. 

Montréal 2027, the 85th World Science Fiction Convention, has added Linda D. Addison and Cory Doctorow as guests of honor. Doctorow will be toastmaster for Montréal 2027.

Addison and Doctorow join previously announced guests of honor Chris Barkley, Jeph Jacques, Yves Meynard, and Jo Walton. Montréal 2027 Worldcon will be held September 2-6, 2027 at the Palais des congrès de Montréal in Québec, Canada. For more information, see the …Read More

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The National Book Foundation hasannounced that it will present Salman Rushdie with the 2026 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters (DCAL) at this year's National Book Awards Ceremony on November 18, 2026. Author Kiran Desai will present the award.

The DCAL Medal was created in 1988 to recognize a lifetime of literary achievement. Prior recipients of genre interest include Ursula K. Le Guin, Toni Morrison, and Walter Mosley. The …Read More

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by Will McDermott

Read by Misha Grifka Wander

If you write narrative content for a video, role-playing, or board game—or even write fiction within a game world or for an intellectual property (IP) like Marvel or Star Wars—you will likely be asked to sign a Work for Hire (WFH) contract. These contracts have several major differences from fiction contracts you may have signed when writing your own original fiction. If you’re looking to make the leap from writing original fiction to working within a licensed game or entertainment property, this article will break down some of the differences you can expect to find between writing for yourself versus writing for someone else.

Rights Ownership

Chief among these differences is that you will not own the material you create for that IP. Essentially, you are playing in someone else’s sandbox. WFH contracts almost always stipulate that any materials you deliver under that contract are owned by the license holder upon delivery.

Here is an example taken from such a clause: “Author assigns and transfers all intellectual property rights in the work, and the ownership of and sole rights to the intellectual property rights in the work shall be vested in [COMPANY] from the date of delivery of the work.”

Some WFH contracts will take this a step further by specifying that the WFH contractor freely assigns all rights to the work to the company even when other laws, contracts, or qualifications may say otherwise. Plus, a WFH contract may stipulate you give up your rights to derivative works based on the content delivered. This means later authors working in the IP can freely use any character, locales, plot points, etc. that you created. You no longer own or control their use.

Lastly, some WFH contracts state that revisions are at the sole discretion of the company. Here is an example: The company may “publish, produce, or market work in whatever form or format it deems fit in its entire discretion.”

WFH writers rarely retain any rights to their work, but I have seen one contract that included specific clauses dictating how the author could reprint their story after first use. This involved seeking permission in writing from the company and following their rules about the use of those elements of the story derived from the IP.

Confidentiality Clauses

The other major addition to most WFH contracts is a section on confidentiality. This is especially prevalent in the game industry due to the intense competition between game companies. They must guard their secrets (game titles, release dates, settings, game mechanics, etc.) for many reasons. For example, they don’t want competitors to get wind of an upcoming product and try to beat them to market. They also don’t want to undercut their marketing efforts until the time is right to begin releasing information.

These companies have a vested interest in ensuring that their contractors keep any proprietary information confidential. Here is an example confidentiality clause: “Contractor shall not provide, leak, disclose, or use Confidential Information acquired in connection with this Agreement to any third party without prior written consent.”

The rest of the confidentiality clause details what information is considered confidential (often covering a very broad swathe), when and how much information the contractor can disclose (usually nothing until after the game has been officially announced), and, most importantly, the ramifications and remediation the company may seek if the contractor leaks confidential information. Most often, the immediate result will be termination, but the company could take legal action as well.

Many WFH contracts also demand the contractor return or destroy all confidential information provided to them once the work has been completed. I have rarely seen these clauses enforced, but it is a good idea to remove this material from your physical and digital files at the end of the contract to avoid any unintentional leaks (say if your laptop gets stolen or your files hacked).

Even when you sign a contract with a section on confidentiality, you may also be required to sign a non-disclosure agreement. NDAs are common practice in the game industry and IP tie-in fiction. This topic is discussed in another article in this series, but it’s important to note that NDAs and confidentiality agreements do not prevent you from discussing the contract with your attorney, or any payments or royalties with your accountant.

Other Differences

Rights and confidentiality are the main differences between original fiction and WFH contracts, but here are a few other items to consider: 

• Royalties and scope: Most WFH contracts pay a flat fee for the work, and there will be no provision for royalties. The scope of the work required (500 trivia questions, 100 quest cards, etc.) will be spelled out in the contract or an addendum, along with deadlines. You will often get paid for milestones and/or final delivery, and that will be the end of it. When writing fiction for a game world, you may or may not get royalties depending on the publisher and your status—some tie-in publishers do pay an advance and/or royalties, but not all. 
• Author credit: Whether your name will appear on the game is heavily dependent on the company. Some game companies do not include any credits in their games and attribute the creation of the game to the entire design studio. Other game companies celebrate all contributors on a credits page in the rulebook. Either way, there may be no clause in the contract that ensures your name will be attached to the product.
• Author copies: Many WFH contracts don’t stipulate that you be provided a copy of the game or published product. Many companies do provide these anyway, but you may need to request that copy once it has been published. The common fiction contract practice of providing author copies (especially when the pay is low) is notably absent from WFH contracts. 

Why Sign a WFH Contract

The reality is that if you want to write for the game industry, you will often have to sign a WFH contract. It’s the way that business is done in this industry. The good news is that many game companies seek external writers because they don’t employ staff writers, so there is a decent amount of work out there for contract writers. Plus, the video, board, and role-playing game industries all run on reputation. You will hear about companies that don’t treat their contract writers well. Ask me. I have tales.

Explore more articles from Writing for Hire

Will McDermott turned a love of science fiction and games into a writing career. He has published nine novels, 30 short stories, and helped create numerous worlds, characters, and stories for card, board, and video games. His fiction is often set in gaming universes, including Magic: The Gathering, Warhammer 40K, Renegade Legion Universe, and Mage Wars. Will is known for bringing larger-than-life characters alive, including Warhammer’s Kal Jerico and Mad D’onne, Magic’s Balthor the Stout, and Night Stalker’s Carl Kolchak. Check out willmcdermott.com for more.

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MILESTONES

WENDY N. WAGNER is stepping down as editor-in-chief of Nightmare Magazine and senior editor of Lightspeed to focus on her own writing. Founding editor John Joseph Adams will resume the role at Nightmare starting with the January 2027 issue; in her place, associate publisher Christie Yant will assume the role of senior editor.

 

BOOKS SOLD

C. RHOAD ELLIS sold The Poison Vein, first in the Saga of …Read More

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The Sunburst Award Society hasannounced Helen Marshall, author of The Lady, The Tiger and the Girl Who Loved Death (Titan) [amazon / bookshop], as the winner of this year's Sunburst Awardfor Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic.

Other shortlisted works include:

• The Works of Vermin, Hiron Ennes (Tor) amazon / bookshop
• Horsefly, Mireille Gagné, tr. Pablo Strauss (Coach House) amazon / bookshop
• Wild Life, Amanda Leduc (Random …Read More

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The Indiana Authors Awards have announced the 2026 winners. The awards celebrate the best books by Indiana authors written in eight different categories and published during the previous two years. Works from the Genre category follow.

Genre

• WINNER: Departure 37, Scott Carson (Artia/Emily Bestler)

• Breath of Oblivion, Maurice Broaddus (Tor)
• Sisters of Fortune, Anna Lee Huber (Kensington)
• Veil, Jonathan Janz (Blackstone)
• The Lost Heiress, Elizabeth Klehfoth (Lake Union)

Winners …Read More

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The HWA (Horror Writers Association) has undergone several changes throughout August and early September. Many of these changes were announced via video message by the organization's president, Lisa Wood, as well as a September 6 text update on their Facebook page.

• Due to timing conflicts with World Fantasy convention, the HWA general meeting has been moved to 3:30pm, October 3.
• Wood stated, We have dissolved the Executive Director position …Read More

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The August 30 LAcon V WSFS business meeting voted to censure and place bans of varying lengths on four officials for their actions related to the 2023 Worldcon : Dave McCarty, the 2023 Hugo administrator, Yao Chi, a 2023 Hugo co-administrator, Shi Chen, a 2023 Worldcon co-chair, and Ben Yalow, also a 2023 Worldcon co-chair.

According to a recap of the session posted by Business Meeting Chair Jesi Lipp, future …Read More

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Dream Foundry, a non-profit dedicated to bolstering the careers of nascent professionals working with the speculative arts, hasannounced the winners for its 2026 contests.

Writing Contest

• N.A. Blair (First Place)
• Natalie Anai Nowo Lydick (Second Place)
• Tomás Xavier Díaz (Third Place)

Art Contest

• Emelia Feldman (First Place)
• Niko Kristic (Second Place)
• Marcus Leon Solomon (Third Place)

First place winners receive $1,500, second place receives $750, and …Read More

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Baen Books, an independent publisher of military science fiction and fantasy, has announced the creation of a new short story award, named in honor of the author David A. Drake. The reward is in addition to their currently sponsored awards, the Baen Fantasy Adventure Award and Jim Baen Memorial Award.

Baen hopes to find new writing talent and will reward winners with professional publication contracts for their stories as well …Read More

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The shortlist for the2026 Prix Utopiales(honoring the best SF published in France) has been announced.

• Heureux comme jamais,Guillaume Chamanadjian (Aux forges de Vulcain)
• Spectres, Thomas Gunzig (Au diable Vauvert)
• Bordure, Lucie Mosca (L'Atalante)
• Gogmagog, Jeff Noon and Steve Beard (La Volte)
• Les Dieux lents,Claire North (Le Bélial')

Youth short story competition winners were also announced.

• Godet Rochette , Clément - …Read More

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Wolf Moon, Antler Moon by A. C. Wise (Reactor 1/13/25) is the winner of the 2026 Eugie Foster Memorial Award for Short Fictionfor stories that are irreplaceable, that inspire, enlighten, and entertain.

Other finalists were:

• Concerning the Multiplicity of Children in Central Florida's Suburbanized Wet Lands , Ichabod Cassius Kilroy (Analog Science Fiction & Fact 4/25)
• Four People I Need You to Kill Before the …Read More

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The winners of the 2026 Dragon Awards were presented at Dragon Con, held September 3 – September 7, 2026 in Atlanta GA.

Best Science Fiction Novel

• WINNER: Operation Bounce House, Matt Dinniman (Ace)

• God's Junk Drawer, Peter Clines (Blackstone)
• The Faith of Beasts, James S.A. Corey (Orbit)
• Radiant Star, Ann Leckie (Orbit US)
• Slow Gods, Claire North (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
• The Shattering Peace, John Scalzi …Read More

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Rachel S. Cordasco, Out of This World: Speculative Fiction in Translation from the Cold War to the New Millennium (University of Illinois Press, 2021)

Jean-Paul L. Garnier: What was your initial attraction to works of science fiction in translation, and what made you decide to start reviewing them?

Rachel Cordasco: I started reviewing Anglophone science fiction for John DeNardo’s SF Signal in the mid-2010s. One day, he asked if I’d like to review a work of Chinese science fiction in translation—The Three-Body Problem. I jumped at the chance and absolutely loved that book. But it was only when he then sent me Jacek Dukaj’s The Old Axolotl and Marek Huberath’s Nest of Worlds that I actually started thinking about what it meant that these texts were all translated. I had never thought about where science fiction was written, and I realized that, of course, it was written around the world. This led me to think about what other works of science fiction there were in English translation. I started a list on a personal blog, and before I knew it, I had found dozens of titles. Ten years later, I’ve catalogued thousands of short-form and long-form works of SF in translation. I’ve always loved learning other languages and I read a lot of classics in English translation when I was a teenager, so bringing together two of my favorite things—speculative fiction and translation—made so much sense. I started asking John to send me as much SFT (science fiction in translation) as he could, and then, when SF Signal shut down, I started my own site dedicated to SFT.

JPG: In the ten years since founding https://www.sfintranslation.com/ what are some of the most interesting things that you’ve learned, and some of the biggest gaps in the field that you’ve identified?

RC: One of the most surprising things I learned is that there is so much SFT out there. Early science fiction texts, especially from Western Europe in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, were being translated into English very quickly (though apparently not very accurately, in some cases, ahem ahem Jules Verne’s stories). When you start looking into the speculative novels, anthologies, and collections that were published in translation throughout the 20th century, you find that so many of these books just flew under the radar or went out of print quickly. This process of finding and cataloging as much SFT as I can is basically my way of excavating items that aren’t buried but just hidden in plain sight.

I’ve learned that Japanese science fiction developed at warp speed following the American occupation of the island following World War Two; I’ve learned that giants of American golden age science fiction like Isaac Asimov and Theodore Sturgeon wrote introductions to anthologies of Russian science fiction at the height of the Cold War; and I’ve learned that, despite the fact that so much speculative fiction has been translated into English, the Anglophone genre world has mostly (except for the 70s and 80s) ignored SFT…until recently. Hopefully, the tide is shifting once again toward SFT and more speculative fiction readers will learn about what people are writing and thinking about around the world.

JPG: You wrote the book on SF in Translation, Out of this World. What did this process look like for you, and why did you decide to go with University of Illinois Press as your publisher rather than an SF publisher? 

RC: I realized, after working on the site for several years, that it was time to write an annotated bibliography of SFT, à la Neil Barron’s Anatomy of Wonder books. I had just finished reading Dale Knickerbocker’s excellent edited anthology about global science fiction, Lingua Cosmica, and asked for his advice regarding my own book idea. He suggested the University of Illinois Press, which had published Lingua Cosmica, so I sent them a proposal, which they accepted. Instead of an annotated bibliography, though, Illinois wanted me to develop each source language chapter into a full-blown essay. Ultimately, this worked out well, because it gave me the opportunity to offer readers analysis and context for each chapter that might otherwise have been left out. Illinois was great to work with, and, as I mentioned in my previous answer, the speculative fiction world mostly ignores SFT, so I don’t really know if, back in 2019, any SF publisher would have even looked twice at my proposal.

JPG: What are your motivations behind starting Small Planet magazine, and what are your plans for its future?

RC: The idea for a magazine had been kicking around in my brain for a year, and one day earlier this year, while working on a review, I just couldn’t wait anymore. The magazine had to happen! I want to read and learn about so many aspects of SFT, but as one person, I simply don’t have the time or energy to take on more than one or two projects at a time. A magazine, I figured, would be my selfish way of enlisting all of the brilliant people out there, who I knew were already writing about SFT, to write about it…for me! I had all of these ideas about interviewing translators and finding people who would write essays on Polish fantasy or French horror or Japanese surrealism and enlisting people to review underappreciated SFT. All I had to do was put the word out that I wanted to start an SFT magazine and so many wonderful people jumped on board right away, offering to design, write, edit, interview, and help in any other way they could. I want this magazine to be the Locus of the SFT world, providing readers with a steady stream of interesting essays, interviews, reviews, stats, and more.

Rachel Cordasco, ed., Small Planet Issue 1 (May 2026)

JPG: What do you think are some of the most effective ways that readers and the public can motivate publishers to publish more works of SF in translation? 

RC: One major way to encourage publishers to bring us more SFT is for readers to buy more of it. And yet, an interesting thing I learned recently is that a lot of SFT doesn’t even come from speculative fiction publishers. In fact, New Directions, which focuses on international literature, published more SFT in the last few years than any genre publisher. To make matters even more interesting, the 90 works of long-form SFT last year came out from 60 different publishers/imprints. Ultimately, I’m waiting for SF publishers to start dedicating more of their resources to SFT and acknowledge that these stories, told all over the world and in many different languages, are all part of the same effort: humanity trying to understand itself and its place in the cosmos.

JPG: For you, what are some of the most important aspects of cross-cultural exchange through literature?

RC: One of the most exciting things I’ve discovered while reading SFT is that writers from all over the world will take up the same theme or event or technology and explore them in fascinatingly similar and different ways. I started tracking this on my site (under the tab “Subject Index”) and I’m going to delve deeper into this in the magazine with a special column in each issue called “Crossing Borders.” Cloning in Greek and Spanish SFT, vampires in Hungarian and Swahili SFT, monstrous mothers in Hebrew and Japanese SFT—I find this stuff thrilling! You’ll hear this discussed whenever two or more literary translators are together in one space—reading what others around the world have written is how we deepen and enrich human civilization. Anglophone culture and language is rejuvenated when it comes into contact with other cultures and languages. We learn from one another, celebrate our differences, and learn about our surprising similarities. After all, one would hope that, if aliens do swing by Earth for a tour one day, they’ll see that, on this one small planet, we actually have a working knowledge of one another. It would be pretty embarrassing otherwise, right?

JPG: What are the top 5 SF books that you’d like to see translated?

RC: As always, I’m keeping a list! In no particular order…

– the rest of Élisabeth Vonarburg’s Tyranaël series (1997) (Mon frère l’ombre, L’Autre Rivage, and La Mer allée avec le soleil)

– Cheon Seon-ran’s A Broken Bridge (2019)

– Harry Mulisch’s The Future of Yesterday (1972)

– Shimon Adaf’s Rose of Judea series (2010-2012)

– Gilda Musa’s Domesticated Jungle (1975)

JPG: What are some of the greatest challenges you face when working as a translator, and are any of these specific to SF?

RC: A professional translator would be better able to speak to this question, but as someone who has translated several short- and long-form works for various Italian authors, especially the brilliant Clelia Farris, I can say that trying to capture the author’s tone and style while trying to make my translation read well is always challenging. It’s the nature of translation—making choices about how a word or phrase gets brought over into English. Working with Clelia on my translations is always fun because we get to discuss, for instance, exactly how certain sayings would best translate across languages. In fact, in this most recent issue of Small Planet, Clelia has an essay in which she describes some of the choices we had to make when I was translating her story “Gabola,” like turning the literal translation “you don’t get out much” into the more emotionally accurate “you’re behind the times.”

In terms of translating SF specifically, working on Clelia’s novella Veg-humans was more difficult than anything else I’d translated before because this is a story that includes a wide variety of plant species and technologies the characters use to try and survive the punishing heat of a near-future world that is being swallowed up by drought. Finding the words in English to reflect Clelia’s terms for these things was challenging, but we worked patiently together to find what sounded best.

JPG: Can you tell us about the push to get works in translation as a category for the Hugo Awards, and your work with https://translatedhugo.org? 

RC: Jake Casella Brookins, the editor of Ancillary Review of Books, kickstarted the latest effort to push the Hugo Awards to include a translation category (Chris Barkley had tried this a few years before). Casella enlisted me and many other SFT critics and enthusiasts in the project, but the process is slow because the rules and requirements for adding a category to the Hugo Awards are apparently very stringent. Hopefully, this effort will, down the road, lead to a category that recognizes the wonderful work that translators do in bringing us SF from around the world.

JPG: What’s coming up next for you, and what are you currently working on?

RC: I’m excited to continue publishing Small Planet and roping in people from all over the world to write for it. I also have ideas for at least three more books, one of which will be about the history of SFT in the Anglophone world. Hopefully I can also translate much more of Clelia’s work because Anglophone readers really do need more of her stories—they are intriguing, unexpected, and beautiful.

Rachel Cordasco

Rachel Cordasco founded the website SFinTranslation.com in 2016 and regularly reviews SFT for Strange Horizons and World Literature Today. She also translates Italian speculative fiction, which has been published in Clarkesworld Magazine and Future Science Fiction Digest. Rachel’s book Out of This World: Speculative Fiction in Translation From the Cold War to the New Millennium is out from the University of Illinois Press. Her second book, Speculative Fiction in Translation From Around the World, is forthcoming from the University of Wales Press.

Jean-Paul L. Garnier is the owner of Space Cowboy Books bookstore and publishing house, producer of Simultaneous Times Podcast (2023/25 Laureate Award Winner, 2024 BSFA, Ignyte, and British Fantasy Award Finalist), and was the editor of the SFPA’s Star*Line magazine from 2021-2025. He is also Editor-in-Chief of Electronic Brain magazine. In 2024 he won the Laureate Award for Best Editor. He has written many books of poetry and science fiction.  https://spacecowboybooks.com/  

by Deanna Richards

Read by the author

Speculative fiction offers YA writers something that realistic fiction cannot: the freedom to craft worlds with fantastic, supernatural, or technologically or scientifically enhanced elements that serve as a protective container for catharsis—allowing young readers to safely explore trauma and experience individual and collective liberation.   

Transmuting Trauma Through Genre 

Before diving in, let’s start with a few definitions. Traumatic events are often described as frightening or dangerous experiences, and can include natural disasters, physical or emotional abuse, neglect, experiencing or witnessing crime, violence, death, or war. An overwhelming emotional and somatic response to a traumatic event, which can oftentimes contribute to long-lasting distress, is defined as trauma. Liberation, in this context, means the act of release—which may result in freedom from physical imprisonment, oppression, or harmful psychological states.

Young readers are bound to encounter challenging topics in books, and while some may be comfortable or even prefer exploring those topics in realistic, contemporary fiction, speculative fiction offers readers the chance to experience difficult content in a way that may feel less directly threatening. It also allows for the inclusion of liberatory outcomes that would not be possible in a non-speculative work.

Tomi Adeyemi is one of many writers who has intentionally used speculative fiction to expose, explore, process, and combat trauma with historical roots, such as colonization, the legacy of slavery, and racism. In the Author’s Note at the close of Children of Blood and Bone (2018), she names her intentional choice to use fantasy as a way of transmuting the sense of helplessness and grief into a liberatory experience:

Although riding giant lionaires and performing sacred rituals might be in the realm of fantasy, all the pain, fear, sorrow and loss in this book is real. Children of Blood and Bone was written during a time where I kept turning on the news and seeing stories of unarmed black men, women, and children being shot by the police. I felt afraid and angry and helpless, but this book was the one thing that made me feel like I could do something about it.   

Authors A. S. King, Tracey Deonn, and Justina Ireland also use speculative fiction as a vehicle to explore trauma within interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships, as well as in systemic structures. King’s Dig (2019) addresses family trauma alongside gender-based violence and employs a supernatural element—the spirit of a murdered girl—to exact justice. Deonn’s Legendborn Cycle (2020–2025) tackles traumatic grief alongside racial trauma and allows characters liberation through the reclamation and harnessing of ancestral magical powers. Ireland’s Ophie’s Ghosts (2021), exposes racial injustices in the aftermath of slavery, and justice and freedom are brought about by an unlikely partnership between the living and the dead. These works are a few examples of texts that successfully create a safe space for readers, transform instead of vicariously traumatize, and turn trauma into triumph. 

Empowerment and Liberation

As SF writers, you are uniquely positioned to provide young readers safe passage during the exploration of trauma and to allow them to experience release in new and creative ways. While YA texts may include realistic representations of extreme violence, loss and suffering, life in poverty and war zones, or impacts of generational trauma, the liberation characters can achieve is confined only by the imagination of the writer. Whether by spells, claws, uncanny physical prowess, or with the aid of deceased ancestors, fairies, or divine entities, you possess endless opportunities to empower your characters, devise innovative strategies to break down oppressive structures and disrupt destructive family patterns, and forge paths toward justice, healing, and catharsis. 

If you want to explore trauma and liberation in your work, consider these questions as you craft your story: 

1. In what ways is your hero empowered? What have they learned to do to survive within their deeply flawed and destructive society and/or family? 
2. Ask this of your hero: What parts of themselves can they embrace to turn the traumatic wound into a source of strength? Into a weapon?  
3. How are SFF elements—the fantastic, the supernatural, the technologically advanced, the magical, the alternative histories, or the secondary world—being used to aid your characters in healing themselves, freeing others, achieving justice, or dismantling oppressive structures and disrupting trauma cycles?

Keeping Your Young Reader Safe 

Although speculative fiction inherently offers a layer of protection by being outside of our reality, the genre alone cannot protect a reader; a made-up world containing traumatic events can still become unsafe. However, you can avoid unintentionally harming the young reader by reflecting on the areas below:  

1. Violence: What is the purpose of violence or cruelty in your work? How does what’s happening shape the character’s psyche?  
2. Pacing: When do your characters have space to breathe, even among the traumatic moments? Where are there moments of lightness? Of joy? Of calm? 
3. Empowerment: Are your characters constantly being acted upon? Are they perpetually disempowered?

By wisely using the tools that speculative fiction offers, you can care for your young reader while grappling with difficult subjects.  

Difficult Worlds, Safe Journeys

All fiction, to some degree, can offer the kind of distance that makes reader engagement with trauma feel safe and empowering. Speculative fiction, however, can push the boundaries of resistance and resilience beyond what is possible in real life (or realistic stories). And for younger readers especially, both those reimagined possibilities and the safety of the fantastic world can provide the chance to safely accompany characters on their complex journeys, experience new ways to challenge oppressive structures and patterns in society, and achieve liberation.

Explore more articles from The KidLit Chronicles

Deanna Richards is a queer-identified writer and licensed mental health counselor of Jamaican descent. D has participated in several writing workshops, including the Tin House YA Novel Workshop and the Whole Novel Workshop for SFF genre at Highlights Foundation, and graduated in June 2025 from Lesley University’s MFA in Creative Writing Program, Writing for Young People track.

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Several awards for services to fandom were presented by the First Fandom Foundation during the opening ceremonies of LAcon V, the 84th Worldcon, held August 27, 2026.

First Fandom Hall of Fame Award

• Mike Glyer
• Craig Miller
• Bjo Trimble

First Fandom Posthumous Hall of Fame Award

• Fredric Brown
• Myrtle R. Douglas

Sam Moskowitz Archive Award

• Andrew Porter
• David Ritter

[via File 770] …Read More

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The winners for the 2025 Sidewise Awards for Alternate History were announced August 31, 2026 at LAcon V.

Long Form

• WINNER: Ten Incarnations of Rebellion, Vaishnavi Patel (Ballantine) amazon / bookshop

• Pagans, James Alistair Henry (Moonflower) amazon
• Tobacco Republic: What If The 13 Colonies Never United?, R.A. Moss (Beck & Branch) amazon

Short Form

• WINNER: Caesar at Sea , Alan Smale (Skull X Bones)

…Read More

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Author and editor David Kopaska-Merkel, 69, died August 26, 2026.

David C. Kopaska-Merkel was born January 11, 1957 in Charlottesville VA. He attended William & Mary, earned a doctorate in geology, worked for the Geological Survey of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, and wrote several articles and books on geology and paleontology. He began writing speculative work in short fiction, starting with his first published story Mecroniya (1981), but soon began publishing …Read More

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The African Speculative Fiction Society (ASFS) announced the shortlist for the 2026 Nommo Awards, given to works by African authors as defined by the ASFS and Nommo Awards Guidelines, on August 27, 2026 at LAcon V, the 84th World Science Fiction Convention, in Anaheim CA.

Ilube Award for Best Novel

• The Bone River, Nkereuwem Albert (Phoenix)
• Black Navel, Paul Olisaeloka Anozie (Griots Lounge) amazon / bookshop
• Firstborn of the …Read More

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