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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
2 Mar 2026

Strange Horizons
Strange Horizons invites non-fiction submissions for our March 30 special issue on “Fungi in SFF.”
Once I’ve finished writing, I will fold this letter up and tuck it into the Tristram you kindly loaned me (may it be our Galeotto … ). I’ll knock on your door, at which point I will most likely encounter a puzzled maidservant, who will ask who in the world I am, and I will explain that I am returning a book you were kind enough to bestow on me (generous creature that you are and clearly down-on-their-luck weatherworn would-be poet that I am).
the trees were softening, their bark for the hungry to scrape and scrape and spread it on whatever bread they could beg or bake
i must warn you before all else / before you poke and prod
Paul Kincaid and Dawn Macdonald join Dan Hartland to discuss style.
Strange Horizons
2 Mar 2026
Strange Horizons invites non-fiction submissions for our March 30 special issue on “Fungi in SFF.”
Issue 23 Feb 2026
Spec Fic and the Politics of Identity 
Issue 16 Feb 2026
Issue 9 Feb 2026
Issue 2 Feb 2026
By: Natasha King
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
Issue 26 Jan 2026
Issue 19 Jan 2026
Issue 12 Jan 2026
Issue 5 Jan 2026
Strange Horizons
Issue 22 Dec 2025
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