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This short story originally appeared in the anthology So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy (2004), edited by Uppinder Mehan and Nalo Hopkinson, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, May 2014. It is included in the collection Filter House (2008).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Filter House is a collection of short fiction by Nisi Shawl, with an introduction by Eileen Gunn (author of Stable Strategies). The collection's fourteen tales offer a haunting montage that works its magic subtly on the reader's subconscious. As Karen Joy Fowler says, "This lovely collection will take you, like a magic carpet, to some strange and wonderful places."

Contents

• At the Huts of Ajala
• Wallamelon
• The Pragmatical Princess
• The Raineses'
• Bird Day
• Maggies
• Momi Watu
• Deep End
• Good Boy
• Little Horses
• Shiomah's Land
• The Water Museum
• But She's Only a Dream
• The Beads of Ku

WFA nominated novelette. The story originally appeared in the collection Filter House (2008). The story can also be found in the anthologies Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond (2013), edited by Edward Austin Hall and Bill Campbell, and The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women (2014), edited by Alex Dally MacFarlane.

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany (2015), edited by Nisi Shawl and Bill Campbell, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, February 2018. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Ten (2018), edited by Jonathan Strahan.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Something More and More is published in conjunction with the appearance of Nisi Shawl as the Guest of Honor at WisCon 3r, May 26-30, 2011 Madison, WI

He manifested relatively whole, unrotted. Post one of his many surgeries, with makeup evening out the white patches on his poor skin. But beautiful. His song shimmered in the blackness, sweet and silver, ice and snow. About mirrors. Rianne reached out with insubstantial arms and held the mojo toward his chopped up face...
--from "Pataki"

Something More and More collects stories about hoodoo women and musicians, and essays about reading, crowns, and the work of Octavia E. Butler. It also includes a new interview of Nisi by Eileen Gunn, in which she talks about editing, being edited, and the competing charms of writing and making music.

...Music is essential and powerful in my life, and, I believe, in the world as well. At one point I had to choose which to concentrate on: music or writing. This was in my mid-thirties. I thought I was a bit long in the tooth for a music career, plus bands are so bumpy and full of egos. Writing you can do more or less on your own--you don't have to, but you can. Music is so seductive, though--the payoff is more immediate, feeling the resonance of a guitar next to your heart, being inside the sound at the same time the sound is inside you...
--from Eileen Gunn's "Interview with Nisi Shawl"

Table of Contents:

• 3 - Pataki - (2011) - novelette
• 31 - Something More - novelette
• 77 - Written on the Water - essay
• 87 - Because We Are All So Royal - essay
• 93 - How to Save the World, One Story at a Time - essay
• 99 - Interview with Nisi Shawl - (2011) - interview of Nisi Shawl - interview by Eileen Gunn

Stories for Chip brings together outstanding authors inspired by a brilliant writer and critic, Science Fiction Writers of America Grandmaster Samuel R. "Chip" Delany. Award-winning SF luminaries such as Michael Swanwick, Nalo Hopkinson, and Eileen Gunn contribute original fiction and creative nonfiction. From surrealistic visions of bucolic road trips to erotic transgressions to mind-expanding analyses of Delany's influence on the genre--as an out gay man, an African American, and possessor of a startlingly acute intellect--this book conveys the scope of the subject's sometimes troubling, always rewarding genius. Editors Nisi Shawl and Bill Campbell have given Delany and the world at large, a gorgeous, haunting, illuminating, and deeply satisfying gift of a book.

Strange Matings: Science Fiction, Feminism, African American Voices, and Octavia E. Butler celebrates the work and explores the influence and legacy of the brilliant Octavia E. Butler. Author Nisi Shawl and scholar Rebecca J. Holden have joined forces to bring together a mix of scholars and writers, each of whom values Butler's work in their own particular ways. As the editors write in their introduction:

"Strange Matings seeks to continue Butler's uncomfortable insights about humanity, and also to instigate new conversations about Butler and her work conversations that encourage academic voices to 'talk' to the private voices, the poetic voices to answer the analytic... How did her work affect conceptions of what science fiction is and could be? How did her portrayals of African Americans challenge accepted assumptions and affect others writing in the field? In what ways did her commitment to issues of race and gender express itself? How did this dual commitment affect the emerging field of overtly feminist science fiction? How did it affect the perception of her work? In what ways did Butler inspire other writers and change the 'face' of science fiction? How did she 'queer' science fiction? In what ways did she inspire us and motivate us take up difficult subjects and tasks? In other words, what is her legacy?"

Short story published in the anthology Cyber World (2016), edited by Jason Heller and Joshua Viola.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 24, September-Octorber 2018.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.

This short story originally appeared in Nightmare Magazine, January 2016. It can also be found in the anthology The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017, edited by John Joseph Adams and Charles Yu.

Read the full story for free at Nightmare Magazine.

During the 1992 Clarion West Writers Workshop attended by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward, one of the students expressed the opinion that it is a mistake to write about people of ethnic backgrounds different from your own because you might get it wrong--horribly, offensively wrong--and so it is better not even to try. This opinion, commonplace among published as well as aspiring writers, struck Nisi as taking the easy way out and spurred her to write an essay addressing the problem of how to write about characters marked by racial and ethnic differences. In the course of writing the essay, however, she realized that similar problems arise when writers try to create characters whose gender, sexual preference, and age differ significantly from their own.

Nisi and Cynthia collaborated to develop a workshop that addresses these problems with the aim of both increasing writers' skill and sensitivity in portraying difference in their fiction as well as allaying their anxieties about "getting it wrong." Writing the Other: A Practical Approach is the manual that grew out of their workshop. It discusses basic aspects of characterization and offers elementary techniques, practical exercises, and examples for helping writers create richer and more accurate characters with "differences."

Table of Contents:

• Writing the Other: Bridging Cultural Differences for Successful Fiction - essay by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward
• Beautiful Strangers: Transracial Writing for the Sincere - (1999) - essay by Nisi Shawl
• Appropriate Cultural Appropriation - (2004) - essay by Nisi Shawl
• Excerpt from Nisi Shawl's forthcoming novel The Blazing World - short fiction by Nisi Shawl

Five miles off the South Carolina coast, Darden and Catherina are getting their promised forty acres, all of it undersea. Like every Black "mer," they've been experimentally modified to adapt to their new subaquatic home - and have met with extreme resistance from white supremacists. Darden has an inspired plan for resolution. For both those on land and the webbed bottom-dwellers below, Darden is hoping to change the wave of the future.

Princess Mwadi of Everfair teams up with American actress Rima Bailey on a reconnaissance mission in Egypt in an attempt to thwart the European spies intent on destabilizing Everfair and its business interests...

Originally published on 6 December 2023, read it for free at Tor.com

Everfair is a wonderful Neo-Victorian alternate history novel that explores the question of what might have come of Belgium's disastrous colonization of the Congo if the native populations had learned about steam technology a bit earlier. Fabian Socialists from Great Britian join forces with African-American missionaries to purchase land from the Belgian Congo's "owner," King Leopold II. This land, named Everfair, is set aside as a safe haven, an imaginary Utopia for native populations of the Congo as well as escaped slaves returning from America and other places where African natives were being mistreated.

Nisi Shawl's speculative masterpiece manages to turn one of the worst human rights disasters on record into a marvelous and exciting exploration of the possibilities inherent in a turn of history. Everfair is told from a multiplicity of voices: Africans, Europeans, East Asians, and African Americans in complex relationships with one another, in a compelling range of voices that have historically been silenced. Everfair is not only a beautiful book but an educational and inspiring one that will give the reader new insight into an often ignored period of history.

The Great War is over. Everfair has found peace within its borders. But our heroes' stories are far from done.

Tink and his sister Bee-Lung are traveling the world via aircanoe, spreading the spores of a mysterious empathy-generating fungus. Through these spores, they seek to build bonds between people and help spread revolutionary sentiments of socialism and equality -- the very ideals that led to Everfair's founding.

Meanwhile, Everfair's Princess Mwadi and Prince Ilunga return home from a sojourn in Egypt to vie for their country's rule following the abdication of their father King Mwenda. But their mother, Queen Josina, manipulates them both from behind the scenes, while also pitting Europe's influenza-weakened political powers against one another as these countries fight to regain control of their rebellious colonies.

Will Everfair continue to serve as a symbol of hope, freedom, and equality to anticolonial movements around the world, or will it fall to forces inside and out?

"There's nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns," proclaimed Octavia E. Butler.

New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color showcases emerging and seasoned writers of many races telling stories filled with shocking delights, powerful visions of the familiar made strange. Between this book's covers burn tales of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and their indefinable overlappings. These are authors aware of our many possible pasts and futures, authors freed of stereotypes and clichéd expectations, ready to dazzle you with their daring genius.

Unexploited brilliance shines forth from every page.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword by LeVar Burton
• The Galactic Tourist Industrial Complex by Tobias Buckell - short story
• Deer Dancer by Kathleen Alcalá - short story
• The Virtue of Unfaithful Translations by Minsoo Kang - short story
• Come Home to Atropos by Steven Barnes - short story
• The Fine Print by Chinelo Onwualu - short story
• unkind of mercy by Alex Jennings - short story
• Burn the Ships by Alberto Yáñez - novelette
• The Freedom of the Shifting Sea by Jaymee Goh - short story
• Three Variations on a Theme of Imperial Attire by E. Lily Yu - short story
• Blood and Bells by Karin Lowachee - novelette
• Give Me Your Black Wings Oh Sister by Silvia Moreno-Garcia - short story
• The Shadow We Cast Through Time by Indrapramit Das - short story
• The Robots of Eden by Anil Menon - short story
• Dumb House by Andrea Hairston - novelette
• One Easy Trick by Hiromi Goto - short story
• Harvest by Rebecca Roanhorse - short story
• Kelsey and the Burdened Breath by Darcie Little Badger - short story
• Afterword by Nisi Shawl

Octavia E. Butler said, "There's nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns."

New Suns 2 brings you fresh visions of the strange, the unexpected, the shocking--breakthrough stories, stories shining with emerging truths, stories that pierce stale preconceptions with their beauty and bravery. Like the first New Suns anthology (winner of the World Fantasy, Locus, IGNYTE, and British Fantasy awards), this book liberates writers of many races to tell us tales no one has ever told.

Many things come in twos: dualities, binaries, halves, and alternates. Twos are found throughout New Suns 2, in eighteen science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories revealing daring futures, hidden pasts, and present-day worlds filled with unmapped wonders.

Including stories by Daniel H. Wilson, K. Tempest Bradford, Darcie Little Badger, Geetanjali Vandemark, John Chu, Nghi Vo, Tananarive Due, Alex Jennings, Karin Lowachee, Saad Hossain, Hiromi Goto, Minsoo Kang, Tlotlo Tsamaase, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Malka Older, Kathleen Alcalá, Christopher Caldwell and Jaymee Goh with a foreword by Walter Mosley and an afterword by Dr. Grace Dillon.

In these previously uncollected stories, Shawl explores the unexpected horizons (and corners) opened up by science fiction and fantasy's new diversity. In her worlds, sex can be both business and religion, complete with ancient rites, altars, and ointments ("Women of the Doll"); a virtual reality high school is a proving ground for girlpacks and their unfortunate adversaries ("Walk like a Man"); and a British rock singer finds an image in a mirror that reflects both future hits and ancient horrors ("Something More"). With her trademark wit passing for wisdom, Shawl lights up our Outspoken Interview and then, in a talk given at Duke University, explores the connections between ancient Ifa and modern science fiction.

Table of Contents:

• Walk Like a Man - (2015) - short story
• Women of the Doll - (2007) - novelette
• Something More - (2011) - novelette
• An Awfully Big Adventure - (2016) - short story
• Ifa: Reverence, Science, and Social Technology - essay
• "The Fly in the Sugar Bowl" - interview of Nisi Shawl by Terry Bisson
• Bibliography
• About the Author