Stelliform Summer: June Newsletter

Stelliform Press logo

Hello Friends,

I hope this newsletter finds you as well as can be. When the world is this difficult, I often find myself working even harder both to feel helpful and to use my focus to prevent me from seeing the full extent of the horror. Reading submissions and editing new books has been a great escape over the last six years, but this year I’ve needed more time away from screens. I’m really valuing time spent with family, friends, and dogs, volunteering at local organizations, guerilla gardening trees onto pipeline land, and doing a bit of my own writing.

I hope you have something that is helping you to feel like a whole human. If books and book events are a part of that, please read on!

This Weekend in Toronto: Pride Bookfair at Left Field Brewery

Poster for the Left Field Brewery Pride Market

We’re returning to one of our favourite breweries with our favourite people this weekend for a special rainbow edition of our Books & Brews bookfair for Adults. We’re stocking our table with all our LGBTQ+ reads (and we have a lot!). Come by, grab a drink, and stock up on the best stories to energize you for a weekend of Pride festivities.

When: June 27, 12-5pm Where: Left Field Brewery, 36 Wagstaff Dr. Toronto, Ontario

I hope to see you there!

The Wildcraft Drones by T. K. Rex: An Interconnected Short Story Collection for Our Times

One of the books featured at our Pride bookfair will be a fabulously queer short story collection that envisions a beautiful future for us all. Last month we released this debut collection, The Wildcraft Drones by T. K. Rex. It’s getting some great buzz. Readers are embracing this book for its positive outlook that doesn’t ignore the very real systemic problems we are facing. They also love how the overarching narrative of this collection reads more like a novel.

What Authors and Reviewers are Saying about The Wildcraft Drones

“Full of hard-won hope and bittersweet joy, this is climate fiction with heart.” — Publishers Weekly

“Gorgeous, hopeful, and strange, The Wildcraft Drones is a history of the next four millennia that will make you cry — in mourning, and for joy. This is the future that cyborg oak trees and pirate drones want. I do too.” — Annalee Newitz, bestselling author of Automatic Noodle and The Terraformers

“A much-needed vision of how things could turn out well, despite the many dangers we are facing.” — Kim Stanley Robinson, bestselling author of The Ministry for the Future

Out now poster for The Wildcraft Drones by T. K. Rex

The Wildcraft Drones weaves the many realities of a world where the soil, technology, wild creatures, and wild people collaborate on communicating through and past the bounds of language. When evolution is the only constant, these stories insist on centering the protection of those on the margins of power concentration. A reminder that if we do not see ourselves as part of the collective, we lose the tools to save ourselves.” — Shingai Njeri Kagunda, Ignyte award-winning author of & This Is How To Stay Alive

“These tales take us from the first successful inter-species communication forward into a future where life and machine have become so entwined it is no longer possible to know when one ends and the other begins. The world of Rex’s stories is intricate, complex, deeply imagined and utterly transporting. Impressive work.” — Karen Joy Fowler, multiple award-winning author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

More Forthcoming Stelliform Press Titles Currently on Netgalley

Stelliform is publishing three titles in 2026 and two of these upcoming titles are available for download on Netgalley. Click the links below to be taken to the Netgalley download pages for each book.

Cover of The Wetworks Miracle by Caleb Sierra

The Wetworks Miracle by Caleb Sierra (July 30 2026) is a dark fantasy biopunk headtrip by a brand new Latino author from the Seattle area. After a catastrophic accident that births a new being, one question remains: What if the only thing keeping humanity alive is also changing what it means to be human?

Download The Wetworks Miracle on Netgalley
Cover of The Hunger of Those Who Built It by Wendy Waring

The Hunger of Those Who Built It by Wendy Waring (Sept 17 2026) is a literary solarpunk novel that asks who gets to inherit the future — and who pays the price of building it. When the search for her missing activist sister collides with an ambitious urban renewal project, Diane Griffith is forced to confront the human costs of the sustainable future she is creating.

Download The Hunger of Those Who Built It on Netgalley

Upcoming Fall Events

Word on the Street announcement for Stelliform Press

We’re thrilled to be back at Word on the Street in 2026. We’ll have eight new books on the table as well as other bookish merch like T-shirts, totes, and stickers. Be sure to put the fair on your calendar:

When: Saturday, September 26 – 11:00 AM – 6:00 PM & Sunday, September 27 – 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM

Where: David Pecaut Square, 215 King Street West, Toronto, Ontario

Thank you for your time and for your love of the written word. Take care of yourself and others!

Selena Middleton Publisher & Editor Stelliform Press

Visit us on the Web, Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and Mastodon.

Stelliform Press acknowledges that we live and work on the traditional territories of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Anishinaabe, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. This land is governed by the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement to share and care for the resources of the Great Lakes region in peace. We are grateful to live, work, and tell stories on this land, and we recognize and value the ongoing stewardship of this land and the enduring relationships Indigenous peoples maintain with it.

This email was written by a real live human. If you want to receive our newsletter to your inbox, sign up here.

Forthcoming 2026 Titles are on Netgalley

We’re publishing three books in 2026 and two of them are currently available to download on Netgalley.

Cover for The Wildcraft Drones by T. K. Rex. A nautilus shaped drone picks a futuristic plant in the forest as light slants to the forest floor. Art by Julia Louise Pereira.

T. K. Rex’s The Wildcraft Drones is an interconnected short story collection that explores the co-evolution of drones and a rewilded world.

In The Wildcraft Drones, machines, ecosystems, and human lives collide across a climate-altered future. From AI-animal communication to rogue drones and fragile communities, these stories trace shifting boundaries between nature and technology, asking whether intelligence—artificial or organic—can help humanity adapt, reconnect, or survive.

Download The Wildcraft Drones here.

Find more information about the book and preorder on our website.

Cover of The Wetworks Miracle by Caleb Sierra, with art by Lisbeth Poirier.

Caleb Sierra’s The Wetworks Miracle is a weird horror/dark fantasy biopunk novella with elements of portal fantasy and religious esoterica.

In The Wetworks Miracle, humanity survives in a new world by harvesting an alien plant they call the Root. When a brutal accident creates a being who can hear its voice, dependence becomes transformation as the plant’s will reshapes bodies, beliefs, and the miracles survival demands.

Download The Wetworks Miracle here.

Find out more about the book and preorder on our website.

To Netgalley users, we appreciate all reviews. Thank you for taking a chance on our books. If you would like to become a regular reviewer of Stelliform titles, please find our reviewer form on our contact page. You will receive an email any time a Stelliform book becomes available to reviewers.

Upcoming events in Southern Ontario

We’re having a party and you’re invited! We’ve got some upcoming events in Southern Ontario coming up this weekend. See below for the when and where, plus our 2026 titles announcement.

Books & Brews at Collective Arts in Hamilton: Saturday May 24

Books & Brews is back in the Hammer! This coming Saturday, we’ll be at Collective Arts in Hamilton with a table full of our complete catalogue and bookish merch, along with our pals Little Ghosts books, Aaron Millard Illustration, Dundurn Press, Bookhug Press, Wolsak and Wynn, and Invisible Books.

We’ll also have a new ride-along, Urru the silken windhound, who is making her bookfair debut. She may be a bit nervous, but she loves treats. Come say hi!

Stelliform Party at Little Ghosts Bookstore in Toronto: Sunday May 25

We’re hosting a Stelliform Party to celebrate the launch of Lynn Hutchinson Lee’s Romany dark fantasy/folk horror novella, along with fellow Stelliform authors Mahaila Smith and Rebecca Campbell. Each of these award-winning authors will read from their new and upcoming work, we’ll have a Q&A, book signings, refreshments, and a giveaway of Rebecca’s forthcoming short story collection The Other Shore, which doesn’t come out until October. We’ll have a table full of Stelliform titles amidst the amazing indie-focused section at Little Ghosts. This event will be a treat!


What’s New and Upcoming in 2025?

2025 has been packed with new releases (by very small press standards) and we still have more to come that we’re very excited about. Here’s the full 2025 list:

  1. Origins of Desire in Orchid Fens by Lynn Hutchinson Lee (April 2025). This novella is part literary fiction, part folk horror revenge plot, and all lush description and feeling. A young Romany woman, having fled racist violence to arrive in northern Ontario, finds herself embroiled in the plot of the mysterious “panni raklies” (or water girls in English) as they seek retribution against the towns mining oligarchs to protect their fen.
  2. Seed Beetle by Mahaila Smith (May 2025). A narrative science fiction poetry collection that chronicles the experiences of the women and femmes of small town Ontario as they struggle against the impacts of Utopic Robotics on their community. The story, told in dozens of short emotional vignettes is embellished by interior illustrations and a flip book animation by Julia Louise Pereira.
  3. What a Fish Looks Like by Syr Hayati Beker (September 2025). Told in margin notes, posters, letters scrawled on napkins, and six retellings of classic fairy tales, this novella gathers the stories of a queer community co-creating one another through the strange landscapes of climate change.
  4. The Other Shore by Rebecca Campbell (October 2025). In ten short stories, Rebecca Campbell’s exquisite prose channels ancient forest spirits, the lost ghosts of unknown fates, biological and technological transformations, and challenges the ways that colonization and extraction have shaped not only landscapes but how we imagine the future.

Don’t Miss our Fall 2024 Titles

  1. Zebra Meridian and Other Stories by Geoffrey W. Cole (September), a dark and absurd short story collection that brings science fiction, fantasy, and horror into conversation with environmental issues and a unique examination of the human condition; and
  2. You Will Speak For The Dead by R.A. Busby (October), a surprisingly tender body horror novella about a troubled hoarder house cleaner

Still to Come in 2026

We’re busy getting our 2026 releases ready. Here’s what we can tell you so far:

  1. The Wildcraft Drones by T.K. Rex (short story collection; interconnected short stories, solarpunk)
  2. The Wetworks Miracle by Caleb Sierra (novella; weird horror/dark fantasy)
  3. Caciques by E.G. Condé (Indigenous futurist/science fiction novella; follow up to the award-winning Sordidez)
  4. The Hunger of Those Who Built It by Wendy Waring (novel, literary solarpunk, Canadian)

We are always interested in chatting with Canadian and/or BIPOC authors about their environmental storytelling projects, so if this sounds like you and your current WIP, please get in touch via our contact page.

The Jaguar Mask is Here! (and more Summer Updates)

The Jaguar Mask cover by Julia Louise Pereira


The first book of our 2024 season is out now: the beautiful, surreal, and tender magical realist novel The Jaguar Mask by Michael J. DeLuca.

Check out some of the high praise this book is getting:

“This fascinating political fantasy … [is] poignant and lyrical … [and] will entice those seeking fantasy dealing with serious topics like resource draining and climate justice.” – Publishers Weekly

“An explosive work of magical realism … The Jaguar Mask is an arresting novel about constant upheavals and fights against oppression in which a few people make a difference.” – Foreword Reviews

“The Jaguar Mask is a gorgeously capacious novel. It is sophisticated, playful, frightening, leaping from hardboiled murder mystery to family biography, telling tales of revolution and magic along the way.” – Rebecca Campbell, 2023 Ursula K Le Guin Prize Winning author of Arboreality

Read more about the book here and grab your copy of this uniquely compassionate and fierce fantasy today.

What’s Next in 2024?

Now available: The Jaguar Mask; and coming up next: Zebra Meridian and You Will Speak For The Dead

After The Jaguar Mask, we have two more books coming out in late 2024:

Forthcoming Books Acquired During Our Open Call

At the end of 2023 we were open to general submissions. During that open call we acquired the following books:

  • Origin of Desire in Orchid Fens by Lynn Hutchinson Lee (novella; dark fantasy; Canadian)
  • Seed Beetle by Mahaila Smith (poetry collection; science fiction; Canadian)
  • What a Fish Looks Like by Syr Hayati Beker (novella in short stories; science fiction fairy tales)
  • The Other Shore by Rebecca Campbell (short story collection; speculative fiction; Canadian)
  • The Wildcraft Drones by T.K. Rex (short story collection; interconnected short stories, speculative fiction)
  • The Wetworks Miracle by Caleb Sierra (novella; weird horror/dark fantasy)

We’re still working out agreements and reading manuscripts from the call, so will have more acquisition announcements soon! We are always interested in chatting with Canadian and/or BIPOC authors about their environmental storytelling projects, so if this sounds like you and your current WIP, please get in touch via our contact page.

Rebecca Campbell’s Arboreality Wins the 2023 Le Guin Prize for Fiction

We are so excited to share the news that Rebecca Campbell’s Arboreality has won the 2023 Ursula K. Le Guin $25,000 Prize for Fiction. We were astounded to have another title land on the shortlist, after Cynthia Zhang’s After the Dragons made the UKLGPF shortlist last year. To have a Stelliform Press book win the big prize this year is such a thrill and an honour.

Thank you to the judges William Alexander, Alexander Chee, Karen Joy Fowler, Tochi Onyebuchi, and Shruti Swamy, and to the shortlisted authors for their incredible work. Please check out their shortlisted books, especially if they’re published by a small press.

Check out the virtual awards ceremony recording, where you can hear author readings from all the shortlisted books and a touching acceptance speech from Rebecca Campbell. We are currently in the process of printing a special edition of the Arboreality paperback that will include a refreshed cover with gold foil title and and interior cover featuring botanical drawings of the science fictional tree arbutus aurum.

/ / All, Awards, Events, Novella, Press News