V. Medina | LGBTQ Reads

It’s always a good day when it’s a Neon Hemlock cover reveal day! Today’s is for Glitter + Ashes: Queer Tales of a World That Wouldn’t Die, an anthology of post-apocalyptic fiction featuring some major faves from the world of SFF and releasing in September! Here are the details:

Glitter + Ashes: Queer Tales of a World That Wouldn’t Die is an anthology of post-apocalyptic fiction centering queer joy and community in the face of disaster. What does hope look like when everything is lost? Now, more than ever, we need to revel in the bright spots amidst the darkness.

The twenty-three stories (and two poems) contained here, as well as the roleplaying game Dream Askew by Avery Alder, imagine queer community in myriad futures interrupted by collapse. Post-apocalyptic futures glittering and bleak, challenging and eerie.

Glitter + Ashes is here to hold up a torch. Come gather round the fire.

Contributors include: Saida Agostini, Elly Bangs, Phoebe Barton, Christopher Caldwell, C.L. Clark, Josie Columbus, Trip Galey, Blake Jessop, Marianne Kirby, Jordan Kurella, L.D. Lewis, Otter Lieffe, Darcie Little Badger, A.Z. Louise, V. Medina, Michael Andrew Milne, Anthony Moll, Mari Ness, Aun-Juli Riddle, Lauren Ring, Adam Shannon, A.P. Thayer, R.J. Theodore, Izzy Wasserstein, and Brendan Williams-Childs.

And here’s the lovely cover, illustrated by Hugo-nominated illustrator Grace P. Fong!

Preorder Glitter + Ashes here!

(Psst, wanna see the full flap? We’ve got that too!)

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dave ring is a writer, counselor and dilettante living in Washington, DC. He is the chair of the OutWrite LGBTQ Book Festival and an active member of the Speculative Wordsmiths. He is also the publisher and managing editor of Neon Hemlock Press. He has two speculative anthologies under his belt: Broken Metropolis: Queer Tales of a City That Never Was (Mason Jar Press) and Glitter + Ashes: Queer Tales of a World That Wouldn’t Die (forthcoming from Neon Hemlock Press). He has also edited the zines V O I D J U N K and A Formal Invitation.

dave was a 2013 Lambda Literary Fellow, a 2018 resident of Futurescapes and Disquiet, and a 2019 resident of Sundress Academy for the Arts. He has stories featured or forthcoming in more than two dozen publications, including Fireside Fiction, GlitterShip, and A Punk Rock Future.

More info at www.dave-ring.com. Follow him on Twitter at @slickhop.

Let’s just establish straight-up that anthologies are amazing. You get a variety of voices, you get to discover so many new authors at once, and in cases like this one, you can get so many cool takes on a genre we don’t see nearly enough these days. Here are the details on Broken Metropolis, which releases in July 2018 from Mason Jar Press:

Broken Metropolis explores the edges of urban fantasy through queer narratives, following in the traditions of Swords of the Rainbow (Alyson Publications, 1996) and Bending the Landscape (Overlook Books, 1997). This collection contains ten of those edges, each one bright and gleaming, from Claire Rudy Foster’s story of a scientist learning to accept not only herself but the very real impact of astrology on her love life, to Caspian Gray’s tale of a young man looking for an urban legend in the halls of a hospital ward so that he can save the matriarch of his found family. Queer communities hold multitudes, and fantasy writing is a place to explore the magic of possibility. Come explore some of those multitudes in a city that never was.

Contains stories by:

Jacob Budenz
kx carys
Meghan Cunningham
Claire Rudy Foster
Caspian Gray
V. Medina
H. Pueyo
M. Raoulee
D.M. Rice
Victoria Zelvin

Buy it

And here’s the cover, designed by Akshay Varaham*!

dave ring is the chair of the OutWrite LGBTQ Literary Festival in Washington, DC. His most recent publication credits include Mythic Magazine and Tabletop Tales. He’s the editor of Broken Metropolis: Queer Tales of a City That Never Was and a writer for the Lonesome Pine Podcast. He was a 2013 Lambda Literary Fellow and a 2018 Futurescapes resident. Follow him on Twitter at @slickhop. More info at www.dave-ring.com.

*Akshay Varaham is an animation student in Laguna Beach, CA, who enjoys creating illustrative content about South Asian culture and identities, with namely queer, mythological, and folklorical subjects. When he’s not drawing, he likes to walk down by the beach or write up a few short stories. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @ab_varaham.