By Karen A. Parker

“There’s nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.”

These words from the late, great Octavia E. Butler open the New Suns anthology series, edited by the legendary Nisi Shawl. As a founder of the Carl Brandon Society, a Clarion West board member, and an award-winning speculative fiction author, they have fought for increased diversity, equity, and inclusion inside the speculative fiction genre and outside of it. In 2005 with Cynthia Ward, they co-wrote Writing the Other: A Practical Approach, which remains a seminal text on how writers can craft inclusive stories and characters without falling prey to stereotypes or unconscious biases.

Featuring household names such as Alex Jennings, Minsoo Kang, and Karin Lowachee, the New Suns anthology series—and Shawl’s arrangement of it—invites readers to reconsider what is possible for our pasts, presents, and futures while challenging assumptions about speculative literature’s status quo. TCR sat down with them to talk about the series’ latest installment, New Suns 2, as well as their work as an editor and writer, especially regarding what BIPOC writers can do to succeed in the predominantly white, male, cisgender field of book publishing.

THE COACHELLA REVIEW: In the dedication for New Suns 2, you mention that Bill Campbell taught you something about how to edit anthologies. What did he teach you?

NISI SHAWL: He showed me how to spot the difference between “This story is riddled with coolness and just needs the dross carved away,” and “This story is a glossy, well-polished hunk of nothing particularly noteworthy.” In other words, how to differentiate between salvage yards and blasted, radioactive ruins. That’s a very useful skill for an editor to possess. It helps me keep my eyes and ears open to rough-but-original material, while preventing the fruitless pursuit of what can often sadly prove to be all too forgettable.

TCR: Can you tell us about how the New Suns anthology series came together? What did you envision for the anthology? How did the stories you received for New Suns and New Suns 2 compare to that vision?

NS: An editor at Solaris approached me with the invitation to put together the first New Suns anthology. I got them to up their pay to [Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association] standard rates. Then I went after BIPOC authors whose work I knew and admired, figuring that later I’d open up submissions to strangers. I sought wonder, and I found it—so much wonder, in fact, and of such high quality that for the original volume, I never got around to “later.” For the second volume, New Suns 2, I didn’t even expect to try to go there.

If we’re going to compare what I envisioned to what I was able to create, let’s say that the reality far surpasses the dream. What the process of editing these books has gotten me to grasp is that there are so many gorgeous surprises lurking in the literary landscape, so many amazing untold stories written by BIPOC just waiting to burst onto the reading world, that Solaris could publish two or three volumes of New Suns every year and we’d never run out of them.

TCR: Most of your other publications have been your own short stories, but you’ve also written novels. What draws you to the short story format as an editor and a writer?

NS: I used to mainly write poetry. Then I started writing short stories. Then series of short stories, and then novels. Now I’m writing a sequel to [the novel] Everfair called Kinning. So I’ve progressed to lengthier and lengthier forms throughout my life. My career is still catching up with that, though.

I once told Margaret Atwood that I’d begun by writing short stuff because I didn’t stay the same person long enough to write anything as extensive as a novel. But as we age, the rate at which time passes changes; I feel confident now that my identity is well-established enough that I can take on projects that will last years and years.

Also, I owe quite a lot of my training as a writer to the Clarion West Writers Workshop, and the emphasis there is decidedly on short stories. I suppose my ease and familiarity with writing short stories is the reason why I frequently edit them. I’ve done some consultation on book-length manuscripts, but that work hasn’t gotten any public notice.

TCR: Many writers are taught to “write what they know” in order to create compelling fiction, but as Walter Mosley says in the foreword, New Suns 2 is filled with stories about worlds and people we don’t know. He says, it’s “a book that will challenge and elate you, talk to you in words and voices that you almost know, that you want to know, that want to know you.” What is it about the unknown that you believe draws BIPOC writers, and yourself, to the genre?

NS: When the “known” is tightly tied to the status quo, and when the rules governing that status quo are stacked against you, you’re going to look elsewhere for the field in which you’ll spend your days working. And that’s part of the allure of science fiction, fantasy, and horror—for me and for other BIPOC creators. We’re not all that invested in the “known”; in many cases we’ve been barred from participating in it. With our art, we investigate other possibilities. And create them. And share them.

TCR: Daniel H. Wilson’s “Ocasta” opens the anthology with a quote from Maya Angelou: “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you.” When I read that, I immediately thought of all the BIPOC speculative fiction writers with untold stories inside of them, waiting to be heard. What made you decide to open the anthology with Wilson’s story and with that quote in particular?

NS: I definitely wanted to invoke the presence of the many, many BIPOC authors whose stories remain untold even with publishing’s current ubiquity. Also, “Ocasta” ends with an invitation to readers to tell their own stories, which seems to me to be the purpose of an anthology: to stir up creativity and get people’s imaginations moving in fresh directions, to revive their hopes, their lives. But I knew placing the story first in the book was risky because it’s kind of experimental in form. Some may find it hard to read. It’s not a straight-ahead narrative; it’s composed of all these different found texts, like patent applications and video transcripts. In the end, the meta-ness of the story’s message won me over and I decided it had to open the book. I do hope readers accept its invitation.

TCR: Without getting into spoiler territory, what intrigued me the most about “Neti-Neti” by Geetanjali Vandemark was at the very end, where there is a single period preceded by empty space that evokes a realm where other souls go through the cycle of reincarnation in Buddhism. There’s something beyond language and emotion in that moment. What was it like for you to render that ending on the page with Vandemark?

NS: Honestly, that was just one of those times when, as an editor, you have to make sure you honor the author’s vision. I noted the typographical choice she’d made on the manuscript I rendered unto the publisher, then paid close attention to galleys, ARCs, and every other chance they had to blow it. I wasn’t really thinking about what it signified. I was focused on what Vandemark wanted it to look like.

TCR: Did you run into any moments where you and any of the writers disagreed on revisions to their work? Did any stories in particular present challenges different from those you encountered in New Suns?

NS: It’s the writer’s story. I make editorial suggestions based on what I believe they’re trying to do with it, and on what I judge will likely be the impact of some particular passage or phrase on their readers. But I can be wrong, and 999 times out of 1000 I find myself bowing to the author’s wishes and wisdom. Ursula Le Guin once told me I’m not just a good editor, I’m a nice one, too; I’m pretty sure that’s what she meant. As for the challenges I was presented with, every story has its own. I can’t compare one anthology to the other because I don’t group the work I’ve done that way in my mind. I will say that by far the most involving effort I put out as an editor in the last year was on [Tlotlo Tsamaase’s] “Haunted Bodies of WombMen.” I tried to strike a balance between ensuring the text’s accessibility to a white, Western-educated audience and preserving the glories of Tsamaase’s word choices, the idiomatic speech patterns and resonant images xe invokes so powerfully through xer Motswana-influenced phrasing. I hope the result is just strange enough to make readers wish for its strangeness to become more familiar.

TCR: The narrator of Minsoo Kang’s “Before the Glory of their Majesties” reminds me of how more writers and authors are employing sensitivity readers to check for unconscious biases in their work and ensure accurate, positive representation of their stories’ characters. Were sensitivity readers involved for any of the stories in New Suns 2, and how do you feel about the trend of such readers being employed?

NS: I didn’t employ a sensitivity reader for anything in this anthology. I don’t believe the publisher did, either. Perhaps individual authors did for their individual pieces. Or perhaps they didn’t—sensitivity readers are most often employed when the subject matter and/or characters a story features deal with a demographic markedly differing from the author’s. These stories could primarily be classified as “#ownvoices,” meaning they come from authors who customarily self-identify as members of their subjects’ demographic.

I do applaud the trend in general. It’s another way for writers to improve their technique. It’s a harm-reduction tactic that can yield rich rewards, educating everyone taking part in it: authors, editors, and even those who provide this very necessary service. Do you check with a biologist about the proposed lifecycle of your imaginary vampiric parasite? Do you ask a linguist how long it takes for languages from common roots to diverge in isolation? Then you should also ask an expert how the culture you’re [writing about] relates to what they know of the one you’re extrapolating from. And so forth, and so on.

TCR: In the afterword, Dillon claims that our stories mirror our “bodymindspirit selves in an ecology of intimacy.” In the anthology, I felt a “mind-body-spirit” thematic sequence as well, especially with Karin Lowachee’s story and Tsamaase’s story. What influenced your arrangement of the stories the most?

NS: Many of us authors think of themes as elements the reader provides, not as things we include in what we’re writing. Of course, as I read through these stories, I did detect certain themes. But I’ve been around long enough to realize that not everyone is going to see the same themes I do. Aside from looking at the anthology’s first and last slots as the best spots for stories about stories—which is a description both “Ocasta” and “Fever Dreams” fit, however else you may classify them—I paid closer attention to other, more objective factors.

I’ll tell you my process, all right? First, I made a bunch of notecards. On each card, I put a story’s title and bits of information about the story itself and its author: Was it humorous? Was it fantasy? Horror? What was the word count? Had it been written by a US resident? By a man? Had the author’s work appeared in the original New Suns also? Then, as I shuffled my notecards around, I tried to maximize the ebb and flow of all these various factors. To compose a pleasing rhythm, a dancing progress from one story to the next. I hope when you read them in order, you get that effect.

TCR: What is your advice to writers and editors of color who want to break into a publishing industry that is still predominantly white, male, and cisgender?

NS: In my life, I have seen great changes in the publishing industry, many of them positive. The growing presence of BIPOC authors is one of the best of these changes. But as you say, there’s still a predominance of POP (People of Pallor). It can get better. It will.

My advice is three-fold. First, educate yourself in the use of the tools you’ll be wielding. Learn “proper” grammar, spelling, and punctuation—the preferred practices of those in charge of the field of literature. Though you may not want to follow all of those practices—I don’t—you need that knowledge. You need to know when you’re deviating from received wisdom, how you’re deviating from it, and why. Second, find your cohort. The imaginative genres in particular are decidedly about community building. Those who support your forays into writing and publishing, those who you support in their endeavors, and their friends, and their friends’ friends—together, you are mighty! Together, you conquer!

Third, connect to successes of the past. I’m thinking specifically of the Carl Brandon Society, which has been instrumental in the expansion of the BIPOC presence in the imaginative genres. Founded in 1999, the mission is supporting exactly that presence. Full disclosure: I’m one of the founders. I absolutely believe that via our literary awards, our classes, our scholarships, and more, the CBS has played a very important role in our field’s improved inclusiveness. So I encourage emerging BIPOC writers, editors, publishers, and agents to participate. Allies, too. Make good things keep happening. Make them happen more than ever. Make the successes of the past and present give birth to the successes of the future.

---

Karen A. Parker (they/them) is a Black, bi, nonbinary Secular Buddhist from Los Angeles, California and the author of their remastered short story collection,The Art of Capturing Phantoms: Definitive Edition. Now attending UC Riverside-Palm Desert’s MFA program, they hope to research Esoteric Buddhism, oral storytelling tradition, and Black liberation for their debut second-world fantasy novel, which will serve as their literary and academic thesis. They’re also the current editor of the Voice to Books column in The Coachella Review. When they’re not writing, they enjoy cooking, cartomancy, composing music, critting in Dungeons & Dragons, and completing their video game collection.