Infinite Constellations: An Anthology of Identity, Culture, and Speculative Conjunctions (Paperback)

Description

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A gathering of innovative, speculative fictions by writers of color, both established and emerging
 
The innovative fictions in Infinite Constellations showcase the voices and visions of 30 remarkable writers, both new and established, from the global majority: Native American/First Nation writers, South Asian writers, East Asian writers, Black American writers, Latinx writers, and Caribbean and Middle Eastern writers. These are visions both familiar and strange, but always rooted in the mystery of human relationships, the deep honoring of memory, and the rootedness to place and the centering of culture.

The writers in this anthology mirror, instruct, bind and unbind, myth-make and myth-invert, transform and transmute, make us belly-laugh or hum our understanding, gasp or whisper gently, and remember that sometimes we need to holler and fight as we grieve. Any dangers herein, imagined or observed in poem and story, transport us: moving from latent to extant, then unleashed.

This work does not presume; it presents and blossoms, creating a constellation of appearances, a symphony of belonging.

“In collecting this work,” note editors Khadijah Queen and K. Ibura, “we felt humbled by the love threaded throughout the voices speaking to us in stories and poems that vault beyond expectation and settle in our consciousness as an expansion of what’s possible when we tend to one another with intention. We felt lifted, held aloft in these arrangements of language. We hope that as you read each story and poem, you will find the same sense of empowerment and celebration that we know has sustained us over countless generations, and in their beauty and humor and intelligence and complexity, continue to enrich us still.”

CONTRIBUTORS
George Abraham / Kenzie Allen / Shreya lla Anasuya / Thea Anderson / Wendy Chin-Tanner / Alton Melvar M. Depanas / Yohanca Delgado / Jennifer Elise Foerster / Aerik Francis / André O. Hoilette / Brian K. Hudson / K. Ibura / Pedro Iniguez / Ruth Ellen Kocher / Ra’Niqua Lee / Tonya Liburd / Kenji C. Liu / Shalewa Mackall / Lucien Darjeun Meadows / Melanie Merle / Juan J. Morales / Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint / Cindy Juyound Ok / Daniel José Older / Soham Patel / Lynn C. Pitts/ Khadijah Queen / Sheree Renée Thomas /  Sarah Sophia Yanni / dg nanouk okpik / shakirah peterson
 

About the Author

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Khadijah Queen is author of six books, including I’m So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On, praised in O Magazine, The New Yorker, Rain Taxi, and elsewhere as “quietly devastating,” and “a portrait of defiance that turns the male gaze inside out.” An essay about the pandemic, “False Dawn,” appears in Harper’s magazine. Her latest book, Anodyne, won the William Carlos Williams Award for poetry. She holds a PhD in English from the University of Denver.
 
K. Ibura is a writer, editor, and artist from New Orleans—the original home of the Chitimacha Tribe. She writes essays about identity and gender, and fantastical fiction about ancient histories and future imaginings. She is author of two speculative fiction collections—Ancient, Ancient, winner of the James Tiptree Award, and When the World Wounds—and a novel for children When the World Turns Upside Down. Her ebooks examine the emotional underpinnings of the writing life. Learn more about her at kiburabooks.com and kibura.com.
 

Praise For…

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"This anthology, doesn’t just offer one or two surprises, it is full of surprises. It made me want to find the editors at a convention somewhere, or any other similar gathering, pull up, and spend a long evening discussing books and authors and incredible works. I still have a lot to learn."
—Arley Sorg, Lightspeed Magazine

"Imagine my excitement when I saw Queen and Ibura’s introduction. Instead of an essay-like structure or a letter to the reader, their discussion of how the stories expound on the premise is interjected with quotes from many of the pieces in said collection. Their introduction is a fascinating piece of creative nonfiction in and of itself."
—Alex Brown, Book Jockey Alex

"Infinite Constellations: An Anthology of Identity, Culture, and Speculative Conjunctions is a solemn beauty, a bold and experimental cultural degustation."
—Eugene Bacon, Locus Magazine

"Selves are cultivated and crafted by the norms, institutions, and ideologies of their era, a process that can be constrictive and traumatic, particularly for minority communities. The page, however, offers an opportunity to imagine new worlds for the self to inhabit—and new selves to inhabit the world. This is precisely what editors K. Ibura and Khadijah Queen offer readers in Infinite Constellations: An Anthology of Identity, Culture, and Speculative Conjunctions."
—PoetsWriters