Reckoning is a communal effort. Our editorial staff, in random order:
Octavia CadeOctavia Cade is a New Zealand speculative fiction writer. She has a PhD in science communication, and a particular interest in climate fiction. She’s the 2023 Ursula Bethell writer in residence at the University of Canterbury, where she’ll be writing a series of creative nonfiction essays about NZ ecology. Her latest book, The Impossible Resurrection of Grief, was published in 2021 by Stelliform Press.
Priya ChandPriya Chand is a California transplant living in the Midwest, where she volunteers as a forest steward. Her work is inspired by a background in biology, and has appeared in magazines including The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Clarkesworld.
Andrew KozmaAndrew Kozma’s fiction has been published in Escape Pod, Mythic, Daily Science Fiction, and Analog. His book of poems, City of Regret (Zone 3 Press, 2007), won the Zone 3 First Book Award.
Portrait by Wolf William Say.
Knar GavinKnar Gavin (they/any) is a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania, where they recently served as the Poetic Practice Fellow. Their research attends to representations of environmental crisis in late-20th- and 21st-century poetry and poetics, and they are drawn toward learning from and sharing the prefigurative political possibilities that emerge in works of documentary and ecopoetry. Knar is also an environmental justice organizer and participates in bottom-up collective struggles, including those against extractive, toxic industries and ecocidal development projects. Recent poetry can be found in AGNI, NiCHE, Perpetual Doom, and West Branch, and their 2019 poetry chapbook Vela. is available through the Operating System. You can find their essay on the idiom of “climate grief” in Annulet: A Journal of Poetics.
Cécile CristofariCécile Cristofari lives in South France, where she teaches English to unruly but endearing teenagers. Her stories have previously appeared in Daily Science Fiction. In a previous life, she authored a PhD dissertation on imaginary cosmogonies in science fiction and fantasy (someone once described it as “more dedicated fan work than academic work,” which she chooses to take as a compliment). She blogs at http://staywherepeoplesing.wordpress.com/.
Aaron KlingAaron Kling is a podcaster, fiction writer, and voice talent working out of the Midwest. He enjoys obsessing over worldbuilding, running tabletop campaigns, and talking to his partner, his friends, and himself.
Joseph HopeJoseph Hope is writing from Nigeria, a student of Usman Danfodio University. His works are either forthcoming or already published in Evening Street, PRAXIS Magazine, Spillwords, SprinNG, Writers Space Africa, Nthanda Magazine, Ariel Chart, Best “New” African Poets 2019 Anthology, and many more. He’s a young man running away from his name. How absurd! He tweets @ItzJoe9.
Ivy RaffIvy Raff’s debut chapbook, Rooted and Reduced to Dust (Finishing Line Press, forthcoming 2024), was hailed by Jimmy Santiago Baca as “sensuous, glowing with an undercarriage of mystique.” Her poetry appears in The American Journal of Poetry, Nimrod International Journal, and West Trade Review, among numerous others, and is anthologized in Spectrum: Poetry Celebrating Identity. Currently nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology, Ivy’s work has garnered scholarship support from the Colgate Writers’ Conference as well as residencies with Atlantic Center for the Arts and Alaska State Parks. She lives and bakes artisan challah in Northern New Jersey.
Giselle LeebGiselle Leeb grew up in South Africa and lives in Nottingham. Her short stories have appeared in over forty publications including Best British Short Stories 2017 (Salt), Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Black Static, Mslexia, Litro, and other places. She is a Word Factory Apprentice Award winner and an assistant editor at Reckoning Journal. Her story, Scaffolding, is forthcoming in Mainstream, an anthology of stories from the edges, by Inkandescent Press.
http://giselleleeb.com
Twitter: @gisellekleeb
C.G. AubreyC. G. Aubrey (she/her) is an autistic writer and outdoor enthusiast obsessed with yellow leaves, pluff mud, and em-dashes. Born and raised in South Carolina, she now lives in eastern North Carolina with the love of her life and too many houseplants. She holds dual-masters degrees in US History and Religious Studies and is currently working on The Danziger Forgeries, a queer-norm fantasy/eco-horror with vengeful trees and sharp-toothed marsh ponies. When she’s not writing or lost in research, she is probably kayaking or taking too many selfies with local trees. Find her on Instagram @c.g.aubrey and www.cgaubrey.com.
Waverly SMWaverly SM is a 2019 Lambda Literary Fellow whose work has appeared in We’re Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction 2020 (Neon Hemlock, 2021), Stim: An Autistic Anthology (Unbound, 2020), Lucent Dreaming, SAND, and Catapult. They can currently be found trying to approximate the anchorite lifestyle on the unceded territory of the Ramaytush Ohlone People.
Seth MoongaSeth is a distinctly Zambian storyteller. Infused with the vibrant spirit of his Lusaka upbringing, his fiction brings Zambian mythology alive, weaving fantastical threads with the pulse of everyday life. His passion lies not just in crafting worlds, but in connecting with fellow writers across the continent. He believes there is nothing as beautiful as the African pen held by the African heart.
Amanda Ilozumba OtitochukwuIlozumba Otitochukwu Amanda is a messenger for fictional characters and often refers to herself as three owls disguised as a human.
She is obsessed with African mythology and wants to write a speculative fiction novelette inspired by African gods, that is, if she can manage to put down her phone for more than a minute.
Ilozumba writes to tell the African story through the African lens.
E.C. BarrettE. C. Barrett (she/they) writes folk horror, fabulism and dark speculative fiction. She is or has been an academic, journalist, bookseller, editor, and obituary writer. A Clarion West graduate, E. C. has stories in Bourbon Penn, Baffling Magazine and elsewhere. E. C. is queer, neurodivergent, and enjoys more maker hobbies than is entirely practical. ecbarrett.com
Guillermo G. MendozaGuillermo G. Mendoza is a Mexican writer from Orizaba, México. He’s also both a teacher and a literary researcher. When not involved with literature, he can be found hiking and cycling. His story “The Heart of the Land” got published in Android Press’ Bioluminescent: A Lunarpunk Anthology in 2023. You can find him on Twitter at @Momentanium.
Johannes PunktJohannes Punkt is a writer, translator and alarmist from Sweden whose texts occasionally surface. He's been part of the Reckoning Editorial Staff since the second issue. Email: johannes@reckoning.press. (Photograph courtesy of Josefin Tollgren.)
Julie C. DayJulie C. Day's dark fantasy novella, The Rampant, is a 2019 Lambda Literary Award finalist. Her debut collection Uncommon Miracles came out the prior year. Julie has published numerous stories in magazines & journals such as The Dark, Black Static, Podcastle, Split Lip Magazine, Interzone, and the Cincinnati Review. She lives in a small town in New England with her family and a menagerie of variously sized animals. Café writing and long walks with ebooks are also a non-quarantine thing. You can find Julie online at @thisjulieday or on her blog stillwingingit.com.
Michael J. DeLucaMichael J. DeLuca is the publisher of Reckoning and runs the indie ebookstore Weightless Books. His short fiction has been appearing since 2005 in markets such as Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Mythic Delirium and Apex. His novella Night Roll was a finalist for the Crawford Award in 2020, and his novel THE JAGUAR MASK is forthcoming from Stelliform Press in August, 2024. He lives in the rapidly suburbifying post-industrial woodlands north of Detroit with wife, kid, cats, plants and microbes. For more, try his website: The Mossy Skull.
Tim Fab-EmeTim Fab-Eme is an engineer and poet who experiments with poetic forms on environmental and social justice themes. He’s the Issue 7 poetry editor of Reckoning: Creative Writing on Environmental Justice, and Cove Park’s 2022 funded writer-in-residence on climate action. Tim loves exploring nature, gardening, and fishing in the mangrove swamps of his island home, Egun-Okom (Ogonokom). His work has appeared in The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, Magma, New Welsh Reader, About Place Journal, Reckoning: Creative Writing on Environmental Justice, Channel: Ireland’s Environmental Literary Journal; apt, Planet in Crisis Anthology, Deep Wild Journal: Writing from the Backcountry, Land and Territory Anthology, Delmarva Review, FIYAH, The Future of Black: An Afrofuturism & Black Comics Poetry Anthology, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, FU Review, The Maine Review, etc. His other projects center on the lore, myth, and experiences of marginalized folks and communities.
Bernie Jean SchiebelingBernie Jean Schiebeling (she/they) is calling on you to join the struggle for liberation by Palestinian, Indigenous, and oppressed peoples everywhere. Set aside the individual catharsis of short-term activism: embrace community, embrace longevity, embrace the possibility and inevitability of change. Stand together to fight the demands of empire. Rest together, and help the garden grow more than salt.
Catherine RockwoodCatherine Rockwood (she/they) lives in Massachusetts with her family. Their poetry appears in or is forthcoming from Moist Poetry Journal, Strange Horizons, Scoundrel Time, Contrary Magazine, Rogue Agent Journal, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Endeavors To Obtain Perpetual Motion, is available from The Ethel Zine press. Another mini-chapbook, And We Are Far From Shore, is forthcoming from Ethel in 2023.
Emeritus
Aozora BrockmanAozora Brockman was raised on an organic vegetable farm in Central Illinois by a Japanese mother and an American father. She is the recipient of the 2015 Jean Meyer Aloe Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and is the author of two chapbooks, The Happiness of Dirt and Memory of a Girl. Aozora’s poems have also appeared in Hermeneutic Chaos, the Cortland Review, Fifth Wednesday, and other journals. Read more of her writing at: aozorabrockman.wordpress.com.
Hal Y. ZhangHal Y. Zhang is a word arranger and lapsed physicist who splits her time between the east coast of the United States and the Internet. She writes at halyzhang.com, and her science fiction chapbook Hard Mother, Spider Mother, Soft Mother was published by Radix Media.
Danika DinsmoreDanika Dinsmore is a writer, world builder, spokenword artist, finder of lost things, tree whisperer, pronoiac pantheist, intersectional/eco feminist, Hufflepuff. A well-seasoned genetic mutt who has turned to activism as a means of creative expression and creative expression as a means of activism.
Marie VibbertBesides selling thirty-odd short stories (six to Analog!), twenty-some poems and a few comics, Marie Vibbert has been a medieval (SCA) squire, ridden 17% of the roller coasters in the United States and has played O-line and D-line for the Cleveland Fusion women’s tackle football team. Her college coursework was in Environmental Geology but by day she is a computer programmer.
Julia DaSilvaJulia DaSilva’s poetry has appeared in Eclectica, Rat’s Ass Review, Lychee Rind zine, Cathexis, Sapphic Writers Collective, Half A Grapefruit, and the University of Toronto journals The Spectatorial, The Strand, and Hardwire. She is a guest in Tkaronto/Toronto on Dish With One Spoon territory, and writes fantasy as well as poetry, with a particular interest in the politics of magic systems. Her writing is informed by her work in climate justice organizing, and explores questions of political responsibility and queerness, embodiment, love and hope in worlds coming apart and being rebuilt.
Noa CovoNoa Covo is an aspiring teenage writer and Fridays For Future activist. Her work has been published in Museum Anthology, a Didcot Writers anthology, and will be published in Forgotten Ones, an Eerie River Anthology. She can be found on Twitter @covo_noa.
Gabriela SantiagoGabriela Santiago is a writer and performer based in St. Paul, Minnesota. A graduate of the Clarion writing workshop and a proud member of Team Tiny Bonesaw, she has been published in Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, The Dark, Lightspeed, Nightmare, and Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, among others. She is the founder and curator of Revolutionary Jetpacks, a science fiction cabaret centering visions of the future by BIPOC, queer and trans, and disabled artists. You can follow her @LifeOnEarth89 or writing-relatedactivities.tumblr.com.
Mohammad Shafiqul IslamMohammad Shafiqul Islam is the author of two poetry collections, most recently Inner State (Daily Star Books, 2020), and translator of Humayun Ahmed: Selected Short Stories and Aphorisms of Humayun Azad. In February 2017, he was a poet-in-residence at the Anuvad Arts Festival, India, and his poetry and translation have appeared in Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Poem: International English Language Quarterly, Critical Survey, Stag Hill Literary Journal, SNReview, Reckoning, Dibur Literary Journal, Lunch Ticket, Bengal Lights, Armarolla, and elsewhere. His work has been anthologized in a number of books, including The Book of Dhaka: A City in Short Fiction (Comma Press, UK). Currently at work on a few translation projects such as The Letters of Kazi Nazrul Islam, Dr Islam is Associate Professor of English at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet, Bangladesh.
Leah BobetNovelist, editor, and critic Leah Bobet’s novels have won the Sunburst, Copper Cylinder, and Aurora Awards, been Ontario Library Association’s Best Bets, and shortlisted for the Andre Norton Award. Her short fiction has appeared in multiple Year’s Best anthologies and is taught in high school and university classrooms in Canada, Australia, and the US, and her poetry appears in both speculative and literary journals. She was a founding editor at Abyss & Apex, editor of Ideomancer Speculative Fiction, and guest poetry editor for Reckoning: creative writing on environmental justice’s 2021 issue. She lives in Toronto, where she makes jam, builds civic engagement spaces, and plants both tomatoes and trees. Visit her at www.leahbobet.com.
Goldie LocksBorn in the USSR, lives in Russia. Always gay, often sad. A human, a mother, a voice.
Arkady MartineArkady Martine is a speculative fiction writer and, as Dr. AnnaLinden Weller, a historian of the Byzantine Empire and a city planner. Under both names she writes about border politics, narrative and rhetoric, risk communication, and the edges of the world. She is currently a policy advisor for the New Mexico Energy, Minerals, and Natural Resources Department, where she works on climate change mitigation, energy grid modernization, and resiliency planning. Her debut novel, A Memory Called Empire, released in March 2019 from Tor Books, has been nominated for the Nebula, Hugo and Locus Awards. Arkady grew up in New York City, and after some time in Turkey, Canada, Sweden, and Baltimore, lives in New Mexico with her wife, the author Vivian Shaw. Find Arkady online at www.arkadymartine.net or on Twitter as @ArkadyMartine.
Sakara RemmuSakara Remmu was first published in 2001 after witnessing a violent crime and police shooting in Seattle. In 2007 she started writing The Sable Verity Social Commentary, and became a regular contributor to local and national online, print and radio outlets. In 2016 Sakara founded Black Owned Media Broadcasting Company (BOMBCo) to create a multimedia journalism and storytelling platform to reclaim the media narratives around the social issues directly impacting the lives of Black and other people of color in Seattle and beyond. Sakara is the Host and Executive Producer of Under the Redline, a miniseries podcast exploring experiences, stories, opinions, and issues historically and actively misrepresented or ignored by local and national mainstream media, and which impact the lives of those in marginalized communities in and around Seattle.
African Heritage/First Nation
She/her
Aïcha Martine ThiamAïcha Martine is a trilingual /multicultural writer, musician and artist, and might have been a kraken in a past life. She's an editor at Reckoning, co-EIC/Producer/Creative Director of The Nasiona, and has been nominated for Best of the Net, The Best Small Fictions and The Pushcart Prize. She is the author of At Sea (CLASH BOOKS), which was shortlisted for the 2019 Kingdoms in the Wild Poetry Prize, and her second collection, BURN THE WITCH, is forthcoming with Finishing Line Press. Some words found in: Déraciné, The Rumpus, Moonchild Magazine, Marías at Sampaguitas, Luna Luna, Bright Wall/Dark Room, Pussy Magic, South Broadway Ghost Society, Gone Lawn, Boston Accent Lit, Anti-Heroin Chic, Cosmonauts Avenue, Tenderness Lit. @Maelllstrom/www.amartine.com.