Welcome L.D. Lewis, Sam J. Miller, Shingai Njeri Kagunda, and Cheri Kamei discussing We're Here

About We're Here:

We’re Here 2021 is edited by L.D. Lewis & series editor Charles Payseur of Quick Sip Reviews.

We’re Here 2021 includes the following stories from 2021:

“The Captain and the Quartermaster” by C.L. Clark (Beyond Ceaseless Skies)

“A Study in Ugliness” by H. Pueyo (The Dark)

“Mulberry and Owl” by Aliette de Bodard (Uncanny)

“The Lake, the Valley, the Border Between Water and Wood, and the End of Things” by Watson Neith (Translunar Traveler’s Lounge)

“Let All the Children Boogie” by Sam J. Miller (Tordotcom)

“The Hidden Language of Flowers” by Laurel Beckley-Jackson (Misspelled: Magic Gone Awry edited by Kelly Lynn Colby)

“The Art and Mystery of Thea Wells” by Alexandra Seidel (Diabolical Plots)

“To Rest and To Create” by LA Knight (FIYAH)

“A Technical Term, Like Privilege” by Bogi Takács (Whether Change: The Revolution Will Be Weird edited by C. Dombrowski and Scott Gable)

“Root Rot” by Fargo Tbakhi (Apex)

“Twenty Thousand Last Meals on an Exploding Station” by Ann LeBlanc (Mermaids Monthly)

“Blood in the Thread” by Cheri Kamei (Tordotcom)

“Sutekh: A Breath of Spring” by Sharang Biswas (Unfettered Hexes: Queer Tales of Insatiable Darkness edited by dave ring)

“To Rise, Blown Open” by Jen Brown (Anathema: Spec from the Margins)

"To Exhale Sky” by Shingai Njeri Kagunda (Baffling)

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L.D. Lewis does… well, a lot. She’s an award-winning SF/F writer and editor, and publisher at Fireside Fiction as of July 2021. She serves as a founding creator, Art Director, and Project Manager for the World Fantasy Award-winning and Hugo Award-nominated FIYAH Literary Magazine. She also serves the founding Director of Hugo-nominated FIYAHCON, chair of the 2021 Nebula Conference, and Awards Manager for the Lambda Literary Foundation. She also acquires novellas for Tor.com and researches for the LeVar Burton Reads podcast. She frequently bothers the publishing industry by authoring studies about the treatment and experiences of racially/ethnically marginalized authors in speculative literature. She is the author of A Ruin of Shadows (Dancing Star Press, 2018) and her published short fiction and poetry includes appearances in FIYAH, PodCastle, Strange Horizons, Anathema: Spec from the Margins, Lightspeed, and Fireside Magazine, among others. She lives in Georgia, on perpetual deadline, with her coffee habit and an impressive Funko Pop! collection. Tweet her @ellethevillain.

Sam J. Miller’s books have been called “must reads” and “bests of the year” by USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, and O: The Oprah Magazine, among others. He is the Nebula-Award-winning author of Blackfish City, which has been translated into six languages and won the hopefully-soon-to-be-renamed John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Sam’s short stories have won a Shirley Jackson Award and been nominated for the World Fantasy, Theodore Sturgeon, and Locus Awards, and have been reprinted in dozens of anthologies. He’s also the last in a long line of butchers. He lives in New York City, and at samjmiller.com

Shingai Njeri Kagunda is an Afrosurreal/futurist storyteller from Nairobi, Kenya with a Literary Arts MFA from Brown. Shingai’s work has been featured in the Best American Sci-fi and Fantasy 2020, Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction 2021, and Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2020. She has work in or upcoming in Omenana, FANTASY magazine, FracturedLit, Khoreo, Africa Risen, and Uncanny Magazine. Her debut novella & This is How to Stay Alive was published by Neon Hemlock Press in October 2021. She is the co-editor of Podcastle Magazine and the co-founder of Voodoonauts. Shingai is a creative writing teacher, an eternal student, and a lover of all things soft and Black.

Cheri Kamei. Writer by trade, choice, and hope. Cis lesbian (she/her), Japanese/Okinawan American, and very tired all the time. Currently a basement goblin, filing papers in in the bowels of a library. Resides in Honolulu, Hawaii with her wife, plants, and a corgi named Charlie. Floral print disaster.

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This event will be live streamed on our YouTube page!