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We’re having a party and you’re invited! If you’re interested in optimistic climate stories that also contend with the past, if you’re curious about eco-tech just over the horizon, or activism for climate justice, this is a great book and promises to be a wonderful conversation between author Sarena Ulibarri and Grist’s Climate Fiction Creative Manager, Tory Stephens.

Tickets are free for this online event, or you can pick up a book at a discount.

Get your ticket at Eventbrite.

In September and October 2023 we have two exciting new titles coming, both horror or horror adjacent. In September we’re publishing Octavia Cade’s short story collection You Are My Sunshine and Other Stories, a brilliant collection that pulls themes of grief and resilience through several different genres, from horror to solarpunk. In October we will release Tiffany Morris’s Green Fuse Burning, a gripping, strange, and beautiful novella about grappling with grief and unexpected recovery. Read more about both books below.

You Are My Sunshine and Other Stories

Sometimes change can hurt. This collection of short stories traces the growing pains of a new world, beginning with the death throes of our current way of life and ending with a world transformed by science and technology, and by grief, hope, love, and humanity’s will to transform. This is a collection that will both tear you apart and tend to your wounds. Cade’s beautifully-wrought stories are informed by science, tracing the biological and emotional threads that bind us, human and non-human alike. You Are My Sunshine and Other Stories is a promise of what worlds are possible if we allow ourselves to change.

Read more about the book and pre-order here.

Green Fuse Burning

After the death of her estranged father, artist Rita struggles with grief and regret. There was so much she wanted to ask him—about his childhood, their family, and the Mi’kmaq language and culture from which Rita feels disconnected. But when Rita’s girlfriend Molly forges an artist’s residency application on her behalf, winning Rita a week to paint at an isolated cabin, Rita is both furious and intrigued. The residency is located where her father grew up.

On the first night at the cabin, Rita wakes to strange sounds. Was that a body being dragged through the woods? When she questions the locals about the cabin’s history, they are suspicious and unhelpful. Ignoring her unease, Rita gives in to dark visions that emanate from the forest’s lake and the surrounding swamp. She feels its pull, channelling that energy into art like she’s never painted before. But the uncanny visions become more insistent, more intrusive, and Rita discovers that in the swamp’s decay the end of one life is sometimes the beginning of another.

Read more about Green Fuse Burning and pre-order here.

We’re giving away four copies of our upcoming science fiction titles. We have two copies of Sarena Ulibarri’s ANOTHER LIFE and two copies of E.G. Condé’s SORDIDEZ to mail to readers worldwide.

How do I enter the giveaway?

Click through to our google form to enter the giveaway contest.

Like most giveaways, you can enter by completing any of the tasks listed below and using this form to provide proof that you have completed them. The form will accept any number of entries, so you are able to share about the books on social media over the week and record your posts. The contest will close Wednesday April 26 and winners will be announced on Friday April 28. This contest runs in EDT (-4 UTC). At the end of the contest we will draw 4 names from the list and contact via the email provided. Please submit an email you check as we will move on to another name on the list if you don’t respond within 2 days.

Which book do I want?

Are you looking for bright, optimistic science fiction? A clear vision of a better world? A hopeful society that doesn’t discount the darkness of the past? Check out Sarena Ulibarri’s Another Life.

Do you fall in love with lush prose and experimentation with language and structure? Do you have a LAND BACK pin on your backpack? Do you envision a future that has paid for the injustices of colonialism? Check out Sordidez by E.G. Condé.

You can choose one book to win, or sign up to win either.

I want to know more about these books!

Currently, review copies of both books are available free for download. Sarena Ulibarri’s Another Life is on Book Sirens and E.G. Condé’s Sordidez is on Netgalley until the end of the month.

You can also read more about the books and what early readers have to say at the links below:

• Another Life
• Sordidez

We’re excited about our upcoming titles and want you to read them and be excited too! Small presses need reader engagement and excitement to build buzz around their titles. Thank you to all who sign up and help us spread the word about our books. ♥

On March 1st, Sim Kern’s Seeds for the Swarm was released and is now available everywhere books are sold. If you loved the 2010s YA dystopias, but are looking for an updated version with radical politics and optimistic, solarpunk roots, this is for you.

What are Readers Saying about Seeds for the Swarm?

Check out some of the amazing reviews coming in about this book.

Kern doesn’t pull any punches on the environmental consequences of consumer capitalism, nor do they avoid the social and emotional impacts of living through an age of mass extinctions. The subject lends itself to nihilism, but Rylla’s commitment to family, friends, and justice provides a glimpse of hope that is badly needed in the coming fights, real and fictional. Perfect for teen readers struggling with their own feelings of despair in our own unstable world, it is also a welcome and provocative read for all fans of YA.

Amy Nagopaleen for Strange Horizons

A coming-of-age story set in the Dust States in the year 2075.

Sassparylla McCracken is just another Dusty, a White girl destined to a life of working for the oil refinery or running with outlaw scrounger gangs, stealing water in drought-stricken Texas. Rylla dreams of escaping her overbearing mother by going to college and learning how to improve things in the Dust. Her opportunity comes when a video of her protesting in the State Senate against environmental destruction piques the interest of elite institution Wingates University in the Lush State of Michigan. She soon finds herself in an alien environment of wealthy, accomplished college students—and seemingly unlimited water. Wingates’ diverse student population also forces Rylla to challenge her homogeneous, socially conservative Texas upbringing: Her new friends include her White, nonbinary roommate, Magenta; Latino bioengineer Theo; chemical engineer Azam, a gay, Iranian hijabi; Nigerian and Jewish American mechanical engineer Dae-Dae; and her Latina research teammate, Ynez. Through Rylla’s Humanity major, Kern explores the ethics and morality of cutting-edge science and technology. However, whispers of a secret department and alleged sightings of military personnel build tension and suggest covert machinations afoot at Wingates. The author emphatically establishes the desperate circumstances climate change has brought to the West while drawing parallels with immigrant experiences by portraying how painful it is for Rylla to leave her home and family behind for a better life. A satisfying ecological take on the dystopian science-fiction novel.

Kirkus Reviews

Learn More or Pick up a Copy

Head over to the Stelliform shop to pick up a copy of the book or read more about it. This book is available wherever books are sold, including:

• Bookshop.org
• Weightless Books (for DRM-free ebooks)
• Barnes and Noble
• Alibris.com
• Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com.au (etc.)

We are thrilled to share with you the cover of E.G. Condé’s forthcoming novella, Sordidez, through a cover reveal on Tor.com. Click through to Tor to read more about the book, or check out the back cover blurb below.

About Sordidez by E.G. Condé

Vero has always felt at odds with his community. As a trans man in near-future Puerto Rico, he struggles to gain acceptance for his identity and his vision of an inclusive society.

After a hurricane decimates the island and Puerto Rico is abandoned by the United States, Vero leaves his home to petition the centralized government for aid and seek the truth about new colonists arriving on the island. But in the Yucatan, Vero finds a landscape ravaged by an ecological disaster of humanity’s own making—the Hydrophage, a climate technology warped into a weapon of war and released onto the land by the dictator Caudillo.

Amidst the destruction, Vero finds both desperation and hope for regrowth as he documents the lives of the survivors. Details about the colonists’ intentions emerge when Vero meets the Loba Roja, an anti-Caudillo revolutionary who imagines the renewed power of the Maya. Intrigued by her vision of the future and her unapologetic violence, Vero is faced with life-changing questions: can an Indigenous resurgence protect his beloved island? And what must he sacrifice to support it?