Three Latin@ writers, three reasons to support the Latino/a Rising kickstarter

Three Latin@ writers, three reasons to support the Latino/a Rising kickstarter!

You've got three more days to help make SFF better ... and keep Crossed Genres going

Actually, writing isn't hard. It is mostly a goofily joyful experience.

Getting published, on the other hand, can be all kinds of miserable. Especially, if you happen to write speculative fiction that doesn't adhere to beloved (and worn threadbare) tropes, or if your writing style and protagonists are far from the default that the dominant culture assumes. Latino writer Daniel José Older has written eloquently about this and related topics on Salon and Buzzfeed.

As it happens, fairly early in his career, Older was published in the first iteration of Crossed Genres magazine, and subsequently the book side of CG published his acclaimed collection of short stories, Salsa Nocturna.

That first iteration of Crossed Genres magazine also published early work by Chinese-American SFF writer Ken Liu, whose work has gone on to be recognized with Nebula, Hugo and World Fantasy awards.

While Older and Liu may be some of the best-known of the magazine's alums, CG has a rare eye for talent, and many emerging writers have been published in the pages of its anthologies, its first magazine, and the newer version of Crossed Genres magazine (which is a Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America professional qualifying market), including Teresa Jusino, Priya Chand, Anthony Cardno, Shay Darrach, Athena Andreadis, A.J. Fitzwater, Kelly Jennings, Ibi Zoboi and many others.

All distinct and distinctive writers with one thing in common: they knock the default right out of speculative

by challenging expectations.

The thing is, it's not by chance that Older, Liu and the rest of the CG cohort have been published by the small, Boston-based press. Publishers Kay Holt and Bart Leib are committed to running a magazine and press that reflects the true breadth and range of today's speculative fiction. Because of Holt's and Leib's outreach to QUILTBAG, trans*, writers of color, international and non-Anglophone writers, CG has been labelled by some genre purists as "destroying SFF."

That alone is enough to endear them to me for the next several hundred years. But, the truth is, I'm already forever indebted to them. The first speculative fiction story I sold, Flying with the Dead, was to CG (version 1). Other stories appeared in their anthologies Fat Girl in a Strange Land, Menial: Skilled Labor in Science Fiction, and the upcoming Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History, which will launch in May. They also published my novel, INK — half magical realism, half immigration-based political dystopia — written by an older Latina writer whose publication credits at the time were solely in journalism.... ¡Híjole! It still boggles the mind that they took the chance.

So, anyway...

Crossed Genres has three days to go on a Kickstarter campaign that will enable them to continue publishing the pro-rate magazine for another year and become self-sufficient. I don't tend to enjoin my friends and readers to support kickstarters, but I believe speculative fiction needs magazines and presses exactly like CG — you know, the ones that see the past, present and future with you and me in it.

I plan to support Crossed Genres and I really hope you will too. (Need that kickstarter link again? Here you go.)

Nuestras Voces, Our Voices: Long Hidden

Editor’s note: Elianne Ramos is the scheduled “Nuestras Voces, Our Voices” writer spotlight for March, but as she has been swamped and hasn’t been able to send her guest blog post yet, I wanted to introduce you, in the interim, to an anthology very much in the spirit of “Nuestras Voces, Our Voices.”

"¡Alumbra, lumbre de alumbre, Luzbel de piedralumbre! Como zumbido de oídos persistía el rumor de las campanas ...."

I read this in Guatemala more than three decades ago.

And while some of my memories of the country I called home during my earliest years have faded (or healed or diminished or become distant and pale as old photographs) the opening of Miguel Ángel Asturias’ seminal magical realist novel, El Señor Presidente, never has.

Because books shape us.

I read it as a form of resistance. It was, after all, about Manuel Estrada Cabrera, an early 20th century Guatemalan dictator heading a regime very much like the ones that would follow his. The ones that would put the country through thirty-plus years of armed internal conflict and genocide. The ones I was living under when I read the book.

I read it as an incantation against forgetting. I was young when I read it, but even my juvenile, half-formed conscience knew what this book did: it called out the present by looking at the past. It saw the dispossessed, the marginalized, the invisible. And if it could do that, couldn’t we all?

I read it as magic. Because words are the beginning of magic, and with them, we learn to make and unmake. To spell. To create speculation about what could be, or might be — if only we conjure it true.

Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History is an anthology that sets out to conjure  history true. Writer Daniel José Older, editor Rose Fox and publisher Crossed Genres describe the book (slated for release in early 2014) this way:

“Most written chronicles of history, and most speculative stories, put rulers, conquerors, and invaders front and center. People with less power, money, or status—enslaved people, indigenous people, people of color, queer people, laborers, women, people with disabilities, the very young and very old, and religious minorities, among others—are relegated to the margins. Today, mainstream history continues to perpetuate one-sided versions of the past while mistelling or erasing the stories of the rest of the world.

There is a long and honorable legacy of literary resistance to erasure. This anthology partakes of that legacy. It will feature stories from the margins of speculative history, each taking place between 1400 and the early 1900s and putting a speculative twist—an element of science fiction, fantasy, horror, or the unclassifiably strange—on real past events.”

They have enough funds to include approximately 20 stories in the anthology, and have asked a number of very accomplished speculative fiction writers to submit work to be considered for it. But they are also planning to have an open submission period, and would like to be able to gather enough supplemental funding to include 10 additional stories.

If you are a reader of this “Nuestras Voces, Our Voices” series, you already know that there are many fine, undiscovered writers that deserve to be heard. In fact, some of you are those writers. If fully funded, Long Hidden will be a book of stories of resistance, of incantation, of magic. Please help make it a reality by clicking here and pledging your support.