Contributor notes

Chinelo Onwualu is a Nigerian writer, editor and recovering journalist. She is co-founder of Omenana, a magazine of African Speculative Fiction, and former chief spokesperson for the African Speculative Fiction Society. She’s a 2026 Miles Morland Scholar and a graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop, which she attended as the recipient of the Octavia E. Butler Scholarship. Her short stories have been featured in several magazines and anthologies, including the award-winning Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction, The Saga Anthology of Science Fiction 2020, and 2021’s Best of World SF Vol.1. She’s been nominated for the Locus Awards, the British Science Fiction Awards, and the Nommo Awards for African Speculative Fiction. Ex Marginalia, her debut anthology of essays by speculative fiction writers of colour, is available now through Hydra House Books.

Jennifer Gougé is an Anishinaabe and Taíno transmedia artist who builds worlds through photography, illustration, installation, beads, and short fiction. Enrolled in the Lac Courte Oreilles band of Lake Superior Chippewa and the Higuayagua Taíno of the Caribbean, she draws deeply from personal and relational experience, regarding art as a toolkit for hope, resistance, and medicine. Her current work includes an evolving multifaceted series—spanning across written, visual, and sound art—rooted in Indigenous futurism and tackling the interface between tribal and national/international structures. Jennifer builds Indigenous futurist camps as mycelial wells of resource, resistance, and replenishment, landing on settler-maps in “Eau Claire, WI” and “Nashville, TN,” and on real maps in Pakwewaang. Running throughout her work blooms a centering of resurgence and a crumbling of colonialism.

Heather Clitheroe is a speculative fiction author and educator from Calgary, Alberta. She teaches community-based creative writing courses with a focus on genre fiction, and her science fiction and fantasy stories can be found in magazines and anthologies. Heather is a PhD student at the University of Calgary. 

Melanie Barnett (cover image) is a ceramicist whose work draws upon themes of mycology, agronomy, and climate science to create sci-fi worldbuilding experiences that speculate upon the future. She holds an MFA from NSCAD University and a BFA Honours in Ceramics from IshKaabatens Waasa Gaa Inaabateg Department of Visual Art, Brandon University. Melanie’s work has been included in national and international publications, and has been exhibited across Canada. Her work has been generously supported by The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation (2025, 2022), the Canada Council for the Arts (2024), the Nova Scotia Graduate Scholarship (2023), and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Canada Graduate Scholarship-Masters (2023). 

Monique Cuillerier (she/they) is a queer science fiction and horror writer living in Ottawa (Canada) with her cat Janeway and a few too many houseplants. The parent of two grown children, she spends her non-writing time running, reading, and finding new things she can take classes about. In between, she works as a consultant in the non-profit sector. Links to her writing and social media accounts can be found at notwhereilive.ca.

Premee Mohamed is a Nebula, World Fantasy, Ignyte, Locus, and Aurora award-winning Indo-Caribbean scientist and speculative fiction author based in Edmonton, Alberta. She has also been a finalist for the Hugo, British Fantasy, British Science Fiction, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Crawford awards. In 2024, she was the Edmonton Public Library writer-in-residence, and she has taught at establishments including the Banff Institute for the Arts, Clarion, and the Carl Brandon Society. She has judged short fiction contests for CBC and Alberta Views Magazine and can be found on her website at www.premeemohamed.com.

Rosemary Mosco is an author, illustrator, and speaker whose work connects people with the natural world. She’s written and drawn for The New York Times, Audubon, Rewiring America, the PBS Kids show Elinor Wonders Why, and more, and makes a regular comic strip in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Living Bird magazine. She creates award-winning science books for kids, including the national bestseller A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching, which was featured on Real Housewives of NYC. Her nature comic Bird and Moon won the National Cartoonists Society’s award for Best Online Short Form Comic and was the subject of an award-winning museum exhibit. Her climate change comics were exhibited at AAAS headquarters and the Peabody Essex Museum. She gives engaging talks and workshops to groups of all ages. Rosemary is a graduate of the Field Naturalist Program. She judged a bird tattoo contest (twice!) and co-founded an event celebrating invertebrate butts.

Sagan Yee (he/they) is a queer Canadian writer, media artist, and organizer. Their multidisciplinary practice includes animation, video games, interactive installations, and speculative fiction. His writing has appeared in places like Best Microfiction, Tales & Feathers, Apex Magazine, and Lightspeed. Sagan’s latest project is a video game about spawning mermaids, speculative sexualities, and anadromous modes of being.

Sneha Subramanian Kanta is an award-winning writer and academician with over a decade of international experience. She is the author of five collections, including Every Elegy Is A Love Poem (Broken Sleep, 2026), Ancestral–Wing (Porkbelly Press, 2024), and Ghost Tracks (Louisiana Literature Press, 2020). She is the 2025 Woodhaven Artist in Residence at The University of British Columbia Okanagan. Her work has been awarded a 2025 Civic Award of Recognition by the mayor of Mississauga and a 2025 Cultural Award from Heritage Mississauga. Her work has been recognized and supported by several institutions including Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Writers’ Trust of Canada, The Charles Wallace Trust, The Vijay Nambisan Foundation, and Rutgers-Camden. An awardee of the distinguished GREAT scholarship, she has earned a second Master’s degree in English literature from The University of Plymouth, UK in 2016-17. Her dissertation concentrated on a comparative literature study through the theoretical framework of postcolonial ecocriticism. This study included the fiction and nonfiction of Arundhati Roy and Amitav Ghosh. She is one of the founding editors at Parentheses Journal.