L.D. Lewis is an award-winning SF/F writer and editor, and publisher at Fireside Magazine. She serves as a founding creator and Project Manager for the World Fantasy and Hugo Award-winning FIYAH Literary Magazine. She also serves as the founding Director of FIYAHCON, Researcher for the (also award-winning) LeVar Burton Reads podcast, and pays the bills as the Awards Manager for the Lambda Literary Foundation. 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 Neon Hemlock, among others. She lives in Georgia, on perpetual deadline, with her coffee habit, two very photogenic kittens, and an impressive LEGO build collection. Tweet her @ellethevillain.

Charles Payseur is an avid reader, writer, and reviewer of speculative fiction. His works have appeared in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, Lightspeed Magazine, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, among others, and he's a six-time Hugo Award finalist and two-time Ignyte Award finalist. His debut short fiction collection, The Burning Day and Other Strange Stories, was published by Lethe Press (2021). He currently resides in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, with his herd of disobedient pets and husband, Matt. He can be found gushing about short fiction on Twitter as @ClowderofTwo.

We're Here - The Best Queer Speculative Fiction 2021 edited by L.D. Lewis and series editor Charles Payseur

This second volume in Neon Hemlock's yearly series celebrating the wonder and breadth of queer speculative fiction contains stories of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and many spaces in between.

 

REVIEWS

  • "With this lovely anthology, Lewis and Payseur collect 15 speculative shorts that range widely in tone and genre, but all circle themes of love and identity...There's something here for any reader of speculative fiction to admire."

    – Publishers Weekly

  • "This promising start to a new anthology series will appeal to any reader of contemporary short SFF, queer or otherwise, and reinforces Neon Hemlock's spot at the apex of queer speculative fiction publishing."

    – Publishers Weekly on We're Here 2020
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

Contributors for We're Here 2021

We're Here 2021 includes the following stories:

"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)

Our incredible cover is by Paul Kellam.