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Set in Toronto after the turn of the millennium, Brown Girl in the Ring focuses on "The Burn," the inner city left when Toronto's economic base collapsed. Young Ti-Jeanne lives with her grandmother, who runs a trade in herbal medicine that is vital to the disenfranchised of The Burn. A fascinating cast of characters combined with the dark world of Afro-Caribbean magic create an altogether original and compelling story by an intriguing new voice.

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 13, November-December 2016.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny Magazine.

Nalo Hopkinson (Brown Girl in the Ring, Skin Folk) has been widely hailed as a highly significant voice in Caribbean and American fiction. She has been dubbed "one of our most important writers," (Junot Diaz), with "an imagination that most of us would kill for" (Los Angeles Times), and her work has been called "stunning," (New York Times) "rich in voice, humor, and dazzling imagery" (Kirkus), and "simply triumphant" (Dorothy Allison).

Falling in Love with Hominids presents more than a dozen years of Hopkinson's new, uncollected fiction, much of which has been unavailable in print, including one original story. Her singular, vivid tales, which mix the modern with Afro-Carribean folklore, are occupied by creatures unpredictable and strange: chickens that breathe fire, adults who eat children, and spirits that haunt shopping malls.

Table of Contents:

• The Smile on the Face
• The Easthound
• Message in a Bottle
• Left Foot, Right
• Old Habits
• Emily Breakfast
• Men Sell Not Such In Any Town
• Herbal
• A Young Candy Daughter
• A Raggy Dog, A Shaggy Dog
• Shift
• Delicious Monster
• Soul Case
• Snow Day
• Flying Lessons (original to this collection)
• Blushing
• Ours is the Prettiest

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.

Prisoner of New Half-Way Tree

It's Carnival time and the Caribbean-colonized planet of Toussaint is celebrating with music, dance, and pageantry. Masked "Midnight Robbers" waylay revelers with brandished weapons and spellbinding words. But to young Tan-Tan, the Robber Queen is simply a favorite costume to wear at the festival -- until her power-corrupted father commits an unforgivable crime.

Suddenly, both father and daughter are thrust into the brutal world of New Half-Way Tree. Here monstrous creatures from folklore are real, and the humans are violent outcasts in the wilds. Here Tan-Tan must reach into the heart of myth -- and become the Robber Queen herself. For only the Robber Queen's legendary powers can save her life... and set her free.

Mojo -- a powerful, disturbing anthology edited by Nalo Hopkinson that explores the world of voodoo -- contains short stories by some of the biggest names in modern fantasy, including Neil Gaiman, Barbara Hambly, Steven Barnes, Andy Duncan, and Tananarive Due. Although the stories explore the myths and legends of personal magic, the subject matter ranges widely from African warriors in the holds of slave ships to abused children plotting revenge to drag queens to the undead living in affluent closed communities.

Table of Contents:

• Editor's Note - essay by Nalo Hopkinson
• Introduction - essay by Luisah Teish
• Daddy Mention and the Monday Skull - novelette by Andy Duncan
• Rosamojo - shortstory by Kiini Ibura Salaam
• Lark till Dawn, Princess - shortstory by Barth Anderson
• Heartspace - novelette by Steven Barnes
• The Prowl - shortstory by Gregory Frost
• Fate - shortstory by Jenise Aminoff
• Trial Day - novelette by Tananarive Due
• The Skinned - shortstory by Jarla Tangh
• Death's Dreadlocks - shortstory by Tobias S. Buckell
• Asuquo, or The Winds of Harmattan - shortstory by Nnedi Okorafor
• The Horsemen and the Morning Star - (1994) - shortstory by Barbara Hambly
• She'd Make a Dead Man Crawl - shortstory by Gerard Houarner
• Cooking Creole - shortstory by A. M. Dellamonica
• White Man's Trick - novelette by Eliot Fintushel
• The Tawny Bitch - novelette by Nisi Shawl
• Bitter Grounds - novelette by Neil Gaiman
• Shining Through 24/7 - shortstory by Devorah Major
• Notes from a Writer's Book of Curses and Spells - shortstory by Marcia Douglas
• How Sukie Cross de Big Wata - shortstory by Sheree R. Thomas
• About the Contributors - essay by uncredited

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Eclipse Four: New Science Fiction and Fantasy (2011), edited by Jonathan Strahan, and was reprinted in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 21, March-April 2018. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Six (2012), edited by Jonathan Strahan. The story is included in the collection Falling in Love with Hominids (2015).

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.

Now adults, Makeda and Abby still share their childhood home. The surgery to separate the two girls gave Abby a permanent limp, but left Makeda with what feels like an even worse deformity: no mojo. The daughters of a celestial demigod and a human woman, Makeda and Abby were raised by their magical father, the god of growing things--an unusual childhood that made them extremely close. Ever since Abby's magical talent began to develop, though, in the form of an unearthly singing voice, the sisters have become increasingly distant.

Today, Makeda has decided it's high time to move out and make her own life among the other nonmagical, claypicken humans--after all, she's one of them. In Cheerful Rest, a run-down warehouse, Makeda finds exactly what she's been looking for: a place to get some space from Abby and begin building her own independent life. There's even a resident band, led by the charismatic (and attractive) building superintendent.

But when her father goes missing, Makeda will have to find her own talent--and reconcile with Abby--if she's to have a hope of saving him . . .

A new collection of short stories from Hopkinson, including "Greedy Choke Puppy," which Africana.com called "a cleverly crafted West Indian story featuring the appearance of both the soucouyant (vampire) & lagahoo (werewolf)," "Ganger (Ball Lightning)," praised by the Washington Post Book World as written in "prose [that] is vivid & immediate," this collection reveals Hopkinson's breadth & accomplishments as a storyteller.

So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy is an anthology of original new stories by leading African, Asian, South Asian and Aboriginal authors, as well as North American and British writers of color.

Stories of imagined futures abound in Western writing. Writer and editor Nalo Hopkinson notes that the science fiction/fantasy genre "speaks so much about the experience of being alienated but contains so little writing by alienated people themselves." It's an oversight that Hopkinson and Mehan aim to correct with this anthology.

The book depicts imagined futures from the perspectives of writers associated with what might loosely be termed the "third world." It includes stories that are bold, imaginative, edgy; stories that are centered in the worlds of the "developing" nations; stories that dare to dream what we might develop into.

The wealth of postcolonial literature has included many who have written insightfully about their pasts and presents. With So Long Been Dreaming they creatively address their futures.

Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Nalo Hopkinson
• Deep End - short story by Nisi Shawl
• Griots of the Galaxy - novelette by Andrea Hairston
• Toot Sweet Matricia - short story by Suzette Mayr
• Rachel - short story by Larissa Lai
• Terminal Avenue - short story by Eden Robinson
• When Scarabs Multiply - short story by Nnedi Okorafor
• Delhi - short story by Vandana Singh
• Panopte's Eye - short story by Tamai Kobayashi
• The Grassdreaming Tree - short story by Sheree R. Thomas
• The Blue Road: A Fairy Tale - short story by Wayde Compton
• The Forgotten Ones - short story by Karin Lowachee
• Native Aliens - short story by Greg van Eekhout
• Refugees - novelette by Celu Amberstone
• Trade Winds - short story by Devorah Major
• Lingua Franca - short story by Carole McDonnell
• Out of Sync - (1992) - short story by Ven Begamudré
• The Living Roots - short story by Opal Palmer Adisa
• Journey Into the Vortex - (1997) - short story by Maya Khankhoje
• Necahual - short story by Tobias S. Buckell
• Final Thoughts - essay by Uppinder Mehan

WFA nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the collection Skin Folk (2001).

This short story originally appeared in Foundation, #100 Summer 2007, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, December 2014. It can also be found in the anthologies Year's Best Fantasy 8 (2008), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, and Warrior Women (2015), edited by Paula Guran. The story is included in the collection Falling in Love with Hominids (2015).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

An acclaimed fantasy author navigates the world between myth and chaos in this compelling exploration of identity, told with a Caribbean lilt.

Sixteen-year-old Scotch struggles to fit in: at home she's the perfect daughter, at school she's provocatively sassy, and thanks to her mixed heritage, she doesn't feel she belongs with the Caribbeans, whites, or blacks. And even more troubling, lately her skin is becoming covered in a sticky black substance that can't be removed. While trying to cope with this creepiness, she goes out with her brother— and he disappears. A mysterious bubble of light just swallows him up, and Scotch has no idea how to find him. Soon, the Chaos that has claimed her brother affects the city at large, until it seems like everyone is turning into crazy creatures. Scotch needs to get to the bottom of this supernatural situation ASAP before the Chaos consumes everything she's ever known, and she knows that the black shadowy entity that's begun trailing her every move is probably not going to help.

A blend of fantasy and Caribbean folklore, at its heart this tale is about identity and self acceptance—because only by acknowledging her imperfections can Scotch hope to save her brother.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia (2012), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Seven (2013), edited by Jonathan Strahan, and Imaginarium 3: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing (2015), edited by Helen Marshall and Sandra Kasturi. The story is included in the collection Falling in Love with Hominids (2015).

Read the full story for free at the Baen website.

This story has been collected in Skin Folk (2001) and anthologized in Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root: Caribbean Fabulist Fiction (2000), The James Tiptree Award Anthology 3 (2007), and Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology (2015).

Read this story online for free at Fantasy Magazine.

The New Moon's Arms is a mainstream magical realism novel set in the Caribbean on the fictional island of Dolorosse. Calamity, born Chastity, has renamed herself in a way she feels is most fitting. She's a 50-something grandmother whose mother disappeared when she was a teenager and whose father has just passed away as she begins menopause.

With this physical change of life comes a return of a special power for finding lost things, something she hasn't been able to do since childhood. A little tingling in the hands then a massive hot flash, and suddenly objects, even whole buildings, lost to her since childhood begin showing up around Calamity.

One of the lost things Calamity recovers is a small boy who washes up on the shore outside her house after a rainstorm. She takes this bruised but cheerful 4-year-old under her wing and grows attached to him, a process that awakens all the old memories, frustrations and mysteries around her own mother and father. She'll learn that this young boy's family is the most unusual group she's ever encountered-and they want their son back.

In beautiful prose, Nalo Hopkinson's The Salt Roads tells how Ezili, the African goddess of love, becomes entangled in the lives of three women. Grief-powered prayers draw Ezili into the physical world, where she finds herself trapped by her lost memories and by the spiritual effects of the widespread evil of slavery. Her consciousness alternates among the bodies/minds of several women throughout time, but she resides mostly in three women: Mer, an Afro-Caribbean slave woman/midwife; Jeanne Duval, Afro-French lover of decadent Paris poet Charles Baudelaire; and Meritet, the Greek-Nubian slave/prostitute known to history as St. Mary of Egypt. Ezili becomes entangled with Mer because the midwife's prayers helped draw her into the mortal world.

The lushness of language and the landscape, wild contrasts, and pure storytelling magic abound in this anthology of Caribbean writing. Steeped in the tradition of fabulism, where the irrational and inexplicable coexist with the realities of daily life, the stories in this collection are infused with a vitality and freshness that most writing traditions have long ago lost. From spectral slaving ships to women who shed their skin at night to become owls, stories from writers such as Jamaica Kincaid, Marcia Douglas, Ian MacDonald, and Kamau Brathwaite pulse with rhythms, visions, and the tortured history of this spiritually rich region of the world.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Nalo Hopkinson
• What the Periwinkle Remember (excerpt from Madam Fate) - (1999) - shortfiction by Marcia Douglas
• Yurokon - (1970) - shortstory by Wilson Harris
• Spurn Babylon - shortstory by Tobias S. Buckell
• Just a Lark (or the Crypt of Matthew Ashdown) - novelette by Roger McTair
• Tears for Érsulie Frèda: Men without Shadow - shortstory by Claude-Michel Prévost
• The Village Cock - (1996) - shortstory by H. Nigel Thomas
• Shadows Move in the Britannia Bar - (1999) - shortstory by Ismith Khan
• My Mother - (1983) - shortstory by Jamaica Kincaid
• Mad Fish - (1999) - shortstory by Olive Senior
• Widows' Walk - (1986) - novelette by Opal Palmer Adisa
• Once on the Shores of the Stream Senegambia - novelette by Pamela Mordecai
• In the Beginning - shortstory by Lillian Allen
• Uncle Obadiah and the Alien - (1996) - shortstory by Geoffrey Philp
• My Grandmother's Tale of the Buried Treasure and How She Defeated the King of Chacachacari and the Entire American Army with Her Venus-Flytraps - (2000) - novelette by Robert Antoni
• Pot O' Rice Horowitz's House of Solace - (1991) - shortstory by Ian McDonald (b. 1933)
• The Glass Bottle Trick - shortstory by Nalo Hopkinson
• Buried Statues - (1967) - shortstory by Antonio Benítez-Rojo
• Soma - (2000) - shortstory by Camille Hernandez-Ramdwar
• My Funny Valentine - shortstory by Kamau Brathwaite
• Devil Beads - shortstory by Marina Ama Omowale Maxwell
• Contributors' Notes - essay by uncredited

Burri is a fashion designer and icon with a biochemistry background. Her latest pieces are African inspired and crafted to touch the heart. They enable wearers to absorb nanorobotic memories and recount the stories of Black lives and forgiveness. Wenda doesn't buy it. A protest performance artist, Wenda knows exploitation when she sees it. What she's going to do with Burri's breakthrough technology could, in the right hands, change race relations forever.

Infused with feminist, Afro-Caribbean views of the science fiction and fantasy genres, this collection of offbeat and highly original works takes aim at race and racism in literature. In "Report from Planet Midnight," at the International Association of the Fantastic in the Arts, an alien addresses the crowd, evaluating Earth's "strange" customs, including the marginalization of works by nonwhite and female writers. "Message in a Bottle" shows Greg, an American Indian artist, befriending a strange four-year-old who seems wise beyond her years. While preparing an exhibition, he discovers that the young girl is a traveler from the future sent to recover art from the distant past--which apparently includes his own work. Concluding the book with series editor Terry Bisson's Outspoken Interview, Nalo Hopkinson shares laughs, loves, and top-secret Caribbean spells.

Table of Contents:

• Message in a Bottle - (2004)
• Report from Planet Midnight - essay by Nalo Hopkinson
• Shift - (2002)
• Correcting the Balance - interview of Nalo Hopkinson by Terry Bisson
• Bibliography