Obsidian Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora is proud to announce the re-release of Obsidian Speculating Futures: Black Imagination & the Arts now available at Small Press Distribution. The 2018 winner of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ) Parnassus Award, Speculating Futures features works of fiction, poetry, literary nonfiction, drama, criticism, and visual art through the lens of Afrofuturism.
Cover of an issue of Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora
Curated by guest editor Sheree Renée Thomas, editor of the 2001 and 2004 World Fantasy Award winning Dark Matter anthologies, and associate guest editors Nisi Shawl, Isiah Lavender III, and Krista Franklin, Speculating Futures includes works from contributors Sofia Samatar, Tochi Onyebuchi, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Walidah Imarisha, among other African diaspora writers and artists around the world.
“Afrofuturists create and examine work that explores a people whose Black bodies were seen as new world robots, whose production and labor was to be controlled, exploited, and repackaged for others’ consumption,” Sheree Renée Thomas explained in her introduction. “Under the powerful lens of Afrofuturism, the impossible is possible. It is creative alchemy. The spirit and rhythm of a culture is preserved and transformed; the past is not only contested but sacred space.”
Praise for Speculating Futures:
“The judges were impressed by the quality of poetry, short fiction, criticism, and the visual arts in Obsidian. They particularly commended the vitality and vision of the issue Speculating Futures: Black Imagination & the Arts. The perspectives offered here consistently disrupt the expected, question the accepted, and disturb the complacent.” — CELJ Vice President John Duvall, Modern Language Association Convention in Chicago
Obsidian Speculating Futures: Black Imagination & the Arts (series editor Duriel E. Harris; guest editor Sheree Renée Thomas) is available now for purchase online at Small Press Distribution.
