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Sumiko Saulson (they/them or ze/hir) is an award-winning author of Afro-surrealist and multicultural sci-fi and horror whose latest novel Happiness and Other Diseases is available on Mocha Memoirs Press.
Sumiko has an AA in English from Berkeley City College, writes a column called “Writing While Black” for a national Black Newspaper, the San Francisco Bay View, is the host of the SOMA Leather and LGBT Cultural District’s “Erotic Storytelling Hour,”  and teaches courses at the Speculative Fiction Academy.
Sumiko is a cartoonist, science-fiction, fantasy and horror writer; editor of Black Magic Women, Scry of Lust, and 100 Black Women in Horror Fiction; author of Solitude, Warmth, The Moon Cried Blood, Happiness and Other Diseases, Somnalia, Insatiable, Ashes and Coffee, and Things That Go Bump In My Head. They wrote and illustrated comics Mauskaveli, Dooky, and graphic novels Dreamworlds and Agrippa. They writes for SEARCH Magazine and the San Francisco Bay View column “Writing While Black.” The child of African American and Russian-Jewish parents, a native Californian and an Oakland resident who’s spent most of their adult life in the San Francisco Bay Area.

https://sumikosaulson.com/


Current Issue
20 Jan 2025

Strange Horizons
Surveillance technology looms large in our lives, sold to us as tools for safety, justice, and convenience. Yet the reality is far more sinister.
Vans and campers, sizeable mobile cabins and some that were barely more than tents. Each one a home, a storefront, and a statement of identity, from the colorful translucent windows and domes that harvested sunlight to the stickers and graffiti that attested to places travelled.
“Don’t ask me how, but I found out this big account on queer Threads is some kind of super Watcher.” Charlii spins her laptop around so the others can see. “They call them Keepers, and they watch the people that the state’s apparatus has tagged as terrorists. Not just the ones the FBI created. The big fish. And people like us, I guess.”
It's 9 a.m., she still hasn't eaten her portion of tofu eggs with seaweed, and Amaia wants the day to be over.
Nadjea always knew her last night in the Clave would get wild: they’re the only sector of the city where drink and drug and dance are unrestricted, and since one of the main Clavist tenets is the pursuit of corporeal joy in all its forms, they’ve more or less refined partying to an art.
surviving / while black / is our superpower / we lift broken down / cars / over our heads / and that’s just a tuesday
After a few deft movements, she tossed the cube back to James, perfectly solved. “We’re going to break into the Seattle Police Department’s database. And you’re going to help me do it.”
there are things that are toxic to a bo(d)y
By: Michelle Kulwicki
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
In this episode of the Strange Horizons Fiction podcast, Michael Ireland presents Michelle Kulwicki's 'Bee Season' read by Emmie Christie.
Issue 13 Jan 2025
Issue 6 Jan 2025
By: Samantha Murray
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
Issue 23 Dec 2024
Issue 16 Dec 2024
Issue 9 Dec 2024
Issue 2 Dec 2024
By: E.M. Linden
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
Issue 25 Nov 2024
Issue 18 Nov 2024
By: Susannah Rand
Podcast read by: Claire McNerney
Issue 11 Nov 2024
Issue 4 Nov 2024
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