News
The Space Crone Prize
We are excited to announce The Space Crone Prize for speculative and science short fiction.
The special one-off prize, established by Silver Press in collaboration with The Ursula K. Le Guin Literary Trust, celebrates the publication of Space Crone by Ursula K. Le Guin, a selection of essays edited by So Mayer and Sarah Shin.
Space Crone includes the essay ‘Is Gender Necessary? (Redux)’ in which Le Guin reflects on The Left Hand of Darkness (1969). In being ‘about’ gender, Left Hand is in fact about something more revolutionary: like the Foretelling practice of...
'Harlem on My Mind' by Edna Bonhomme
Edna Bonhomme traces the rich history of Black radical organising in Harlem and reflects on her time there and the political education the neighbourhood and its residents offered.
When I moved to New York City in 2008, I lived in Harlem on St. Nicholas Avenue, down the street from Billie Holiday's residence. When I walked past her old building, I would think of her rendition of Abel Meeropol’s poem ‘Strange Fruit’, which encapsulates the overt violence of lynching in the American South. I thought of Lorraine Hansberry’s
'DREAM LESSONS: DELVING WITHIN, ENVISIONING FUTURES' by Charmaine Li
Charmaine Li reflects on what it means to dream by looking at the complex relationship between nocturnal images and waking life. Through exploring how dreamers bridge the personal and the public – inner and outer worlds – she asks what might be shared collectively across dreams.
Reading Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower for the first time, tremors of a distant fear pierced through my consciousness and caught me by surprise. “I had my recurring dream last night,” remarks...
'THE FEMINIST REVOLUTION IS FEARLESS' – Marral Shamshiri on the Iranian uprising
In this call for transformative, systemic change in Iran, Marral Shamshiri follows the lead of revolutionary feminists and makes powerful connections to the Iranian feminist movement in 1979. She advocates for opposing state brutality and foreign imperialism, for international feminist solidarity and for connecting the current uprising to the long lineage of fearless feminist organising in post-revolutionary Iran.
Images of an Iranian woman – standing on top of a car holding her burning headscarf on a stick, standing in the street with her fist clenching her headscarf high, standing fiercely on...
To Live Freely in this Body – An Excerpt from 'Earnestly' by Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju
We're excited to share 'To Live Freely in this Body', an excerpt from Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju's recently published book Earnestly (Archive Books, 2022). Earnestly is an invitation to observe the self-transformative power of embodied writing, moving towards joy, presence and connection. In this excerpt Ilupeju explores her experience of Body dysmorphia through writing and conversations with a group of women.
In the winter of 2017, I cried, begged, and then forced my mother to take me to a plastic surgeon in Bethesda, Maryland. My preoccupation with...