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By day, Lori Selke is an ESL instructor (and stealth adjunct composition instructor) who lives in Oakland, California. But beneath that wholesome and mild-mannered facade lurks a zine veteran, an education and social justice academic, a queer writer and activist, and a general thorn in the side of normativity. Their fiction has been previously published inNightmare Magazine, Strange Horizons, and Asimov's; their nonfiction has appeared at NPR.org, Offbeat Home, The Billfold, and the SF Weekly, as well as the open-access academic journals Refuge and the International Journal of Human Rights Education.  This story originally appeared in Outlaw Bodies (2012). Narration by: Will Stagl Will Stagl lives in Tucson, Arizona and is a proud member of the StarShipSofa team. He’s like to kick off the new year by inviting any listeners interested in narration to contact him at [email protected] to join our stellar team of volunteer voice actors. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/starshipsofa. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Caren Gussoff Sumption lives in a nest of books, knitting, and rescue cats, south of Seattle, WA. The author of six books (most recently, her postcolonial, deep space, far-future comedy of manners, So Quick Bright Things Come to Confusion) and more than 100 short stories, Caren received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and in 2008, was the Carl Brandon Society’s Octavia E. Butler Scholar at Clarion West.  Caren is autistic, Romany, Jewish, and can't carry a tune (she tries anyway, gods help us all). Find her online at www.spitkitten.com This story originally appeared in Interzone #253. Narration by: Will Stagl Will Stagl lives in Tucson Arizona and is a proud member of the StarShipSofa team. This month you’ll likely find him tearing through some fantasy epic at a local café or waiting for the next sci-fi TV show to air. Fact: Looking Back At Genre History by Amy H Sturgis Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/starshipsofa. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

K. Ceres Wright received her master’s degree in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University and her published cyberpunk novel, Cog, was her thesis for the program. Her short stories, poems, and articles have appeared on the Strange Horizons and Amazing Stories websites; in the FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction; Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia Butler (Locus Award winner; Hugo Award nominee); and Sycorax’s Daughters (Bram Stoker Award nominee); among others. Her most recent publication is Too Old to Dance but Young Enough to Rock ’n’ Roll, a post apocalyptic military sci-fi novella she cowrote with L. Gene Brown, a Vietnam War veteran. Ms. Wright is the founder and president of Diverse Writers and Artists of Speculative Fiction, an educational group for creatives.  This story first appeared in Sycorax's Daughters (2017). Narration by: Donna Schmidt Donna Schmidt lives in Seattle, recently retired from a career in tech, now spending her days playing violin, singing, finding gigs for her band, drawing, sewing and gardening. Oh, and talking. Because she really likes to talk and hear the sound of her own voice. Pretty embarrassing, right? But hey, it sure comes in handy when you get the chance to do voice narration! Plus, you get to play with fun toys like microphones and audio equipment.   Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/starshipsofa. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Main fiction: "Stars in a Grave, Stars in a Skull" Jeremy Szal was born in 1995 and was raised by wild dingoes, which should explain a lot. He writes epic fantasy and dark space opera of a character-driven, morally grey nature. His main series is the Common trilogy from Gollancz/Hachette, which includes Stormblood, Blindspace, and Woflskin, about a drug harvested from alien DNA that makes users permanently addicted to adrenaline and aggression. He’s the author of over fifty short stories, translated into fifteen languages, many of which appear in his short fiction collection Broken Stars. He was the editor for the Hugo-winning StarShipSofa until 2020 and has a BA in Film Studies and Creative Writing from UNSW. He carves out a living in Sydney, Australia with his family, where he loves watching weird movies, eating Japanese food, exploring cities, learning languages, cold weather and dark humour. Find him at https://jeremyszal.substack.com/  or @JeremySzal This story first appeared in Broken Stars (2024). Narration by: Will Stagl Will Stagl lives in Tucson Arizona and is a proud member of the StarShipSofa team. This month you’ll likely find him tearing through some fantasy epic at a local café or waiting for the next sci-fi TV show to air. Fact: Looking Back At Genre History by Amy H Sturgis Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/starshipsofa. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This story originally appeared in Wild & Wishful, Dark & Dreaming: The Worlds of Alethea Kontis (2016). Alethea Kontis is an actress, storm chaser, and New York Times best-selling author. She has received the Scribe Award, the Garden State Teen Book Award, and is a two-time winner of the Gelett Burgess Children’s Book Award. She was twice nominated for both the Andre Norton Nebula and Dragon Award. Alethea narrates stories for multiple award-winning online magazines and does freelance work for Writing the Other. Born in Vermont, Alethea currently resides on the Space Coast of Florida where she watches K-dramas with her teddy bear, Charlie. Together they are ARMY, VVS, and Black Roses. Narration by: Will Stagl Will Stagl lives in Tucson Arizona and is a proud member of the StarShipSofa team. This month you’ll likely find him tearing through some fantasy epic at a local café or waiting for the next sci-fi TV show to air. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/starshipsofa. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This story originally appeared in Punktown (2000). Jeffrey Thomas’s books include Punktown, Deadstock, Blue War, The American, and The Unnamed Country. He has been a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award and John W. Campbell Award, and his stories have been reprinted in The Year’s Best Horror Stories 2022, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror #14 (editors, Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling), and Year’s Best Weird Fiction #1 (editors, Laird Barron and Michael Kelly). Thomas lives in Massachusetts. Narration by: Christina Rau Christina M. Rau, The Yoga Poet, leads Meditate, Move, & Create workshops for various organizations in person and online. Her collections include How We Make Amends, What We Do To Make Us Whole, and the Elgin Award-winning Liberating The Astronauts. She moderates the Women’s Poetry Listserv and has served as Poet in Residence for Oceanside Library (NY) since 2020. Her poetry airs on Destinies radio show (WUSB) and appears in various literary journals like FillingStation and The Disappointed Housewife while her prose has appeared in Punk Monk Magazine and Reader’s Digest. During her downtime, she watches the Game Show Network. http://www.christinamrau.com Fact: Looking Back At Genre History by Amy H Sturgis Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/starshipsofa. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Owen Kerr has been a writer, freelance editor, and indie game designer since 1999, but don't tell his mom; she thinks he's selling feet pix on MostlyPans. His most recent projects include lore for an OSR setting, a full-bore post-apocalyptic fantasy game (Splintered Moon - PbtA), and his self-published fantasy novel, Confessions of an Outlaw Locksmith. If you liked "Cycles," check out his LinkTree for more! https://linktr.ee/chantedevening Narration by: Owen Kerr Owen Kerr is also a voice actor and reader. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/starshipsofa. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rudy Vener's stories have appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, StarshipSofa, Sally Port Magazine, and The Beast Hunt Anthology Vol 1. He has won Connecticut's Tassy Walden Award for New Voices in Children's Literature, and been a finalist in the Jim Baem Memorial Short Story Award. Rudy is a retired software engineer, former online pizza marketing entrepreneur, and cheese lover. He lives with his family and two cats in North Haven, Connecticut where he is hard at work on more short stories and novels. Readers can visit him at www.rudyvener.com This story is original to StarShipSofa. Narration by: Anthony Babington Some say Anthony Babington is a myth to frighten small children. Others say he is a government experiment gone horribly right. Both are correct, and both are wrong. From his secret volcano lair in Minnesota, he narrates podcasts, voice-acts, and leases his soul to corporate America. Find him on Bluesky and Mastodon as @AlephBaker. Fact: Looking Back At Genre History by Amy H Sturgis  Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/starshipsofa. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kelsey Hutton is a Métis author from Treaty 1 territory and the homeland of the Métis Nation, also known as Winnipeg, Canada. Kelsey was born in an even snowier city than she lives in now (“up north,” as they say in Winnipeg). She also used to live in Brazil as a kid. Her work has appeared in Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Augur Magazine and others. When she’s not beading or cooking, you can find her at KelseyHutton.com, on Instagram at @KelseyHuttonAuthor, or on Twitter/X at @KelHuttonAuthor. This story originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Jan/Feb 2024. Narration by: Christina M. Rau Christina M. Rau, The Yoga Poet, leads Meditate, Move, & Create workshops for various organizations in person and online. Her collections include How We Make Amends, What We Do To Make Us Whole, and the Elgin Award-winning Liberating The Astronauts. She moderates the Women’s Poetry Listserv and has served as Poet in Residence for Oceanside Library (NY) since 2020. Her poetry airs on Destinies radio show (WUSB) and appears in various literary journals like fillingStation and The Disappointed Housewife while her prose has appeared in Punk Monk Magazine and Reader’s Digest. During her downtime, she watches the Game Show Network. http://www.christinamrau.com Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/starshipsofa. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jay Caselberg is an Australian author and poet whose work has appeared around the world and been translated into several languages. He currently resides in Germany and can be found at Caselberg.net. This story originally appeared in Borderlands (Australia), January 2006. Narrated by Randal L. Schwartz Randal L. Schwartz is best well known for his seminal books on the Perl programming language that helped make the world wide web possible and popular. He produced a weekly audio and video podcast on open source software, but has given that up after 13 years to get those five hours per week back again. Between the podcast, and bouncing all over the world teaching programming and speaking at conferences, he’s no stranger to the limelight. He enjoys pulling out his gear to record yet another narration, and likens it to “getting to read bedtime stories to the kids I never had”, and looks forward to future assignments Fact: Looking Back At Genre History by Amy H Sturgis Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/starshipsofa. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

K. A. Teryna is an award-winning author and illustrator. She was born in two places at once, one of which is beyond the Arctic Circle. Her fiction has been translated from Russian into six languages. English translations of her stories have appeared in Asimov’s, Reactor, Apex, F&SF, Podcastle, and elsewhere. Her English-language short story collection Black Hole Heart and Other Stories has been published by Fairwood Press. As of late, Chekhov the Cat has become K.A. Teryna's co-author. He's in charge of keeping her warm and firmly in her seat. K.A. Teryna's website is www.k-a-teryna.blogspot.com. The English language translation of "The Errata" by Alex Shvartsman originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, March/April 2023. Narration by: Tahereh Safavi Tahereh Safavi is an improv kid and your biggest fan. She runs the Ubergroup, a 501(c)3 nonprofit providing low-cost fine arts education for adults. The Ubergroup offers university-level coursework, support, and networking for all writing-related art formats (including but not limited to: commercial and literary novels, stage and screen plays, short fiction, comics, nonfiction and academic, podcasts and webseries, picture books, poetry, IP writing, and some writing-adjacent arts such as acting and illustration) at a pace suitable for adults with full-time jobs and families. Alumni of the Ubergroup enjoy access to table reads for spec scripts, peer development of unsold work, and help editing projects under contract to meet agent/editor/producer requirements. The Ubergroup accepts writers in the English language from around the globe. Check out theubergroup.org for more. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/starshipsofa. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

M The author of eight novels and two short story collections, Richard Dansky is widely regarded as a leading expert on video game narrative and writing. He has written for franchises including The Division, Assassins Creed, Far Cry, Splinter Cell, and many others, and was also a key contributor to White Wolf’s classic World of Darkness horror RPG setting. His upcoming projects include the novel Nightmare Logic from Falstaff Dread, the graphic novel Bridgewater from Delcourt, and the nonfiction book The Video Game Writer’s Guide To Surviving an Industry That Hates You. This story is original to StarShipSofa Narration by: Kevin Craybould Kevin Craybould is a newly emerging writer and actor with a background in tech. His upcoming techno thriller Who is Sarah Smith is due out from Ever After Books in 2027. Find him at Metaphors are Lies (kcraybould.substack.com). He also reviews for Bookstack (newbooks.substack.co ). He is a proud alumni of the Ubergroup, an educational non-profit that provides college-level writing courses for working adults, and recommends anyone who wants to learn to write check them out: theubergroup.org Fact: Looking Back At Genre History by Amy H Sturgis Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/starshipsofa. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Robert Guffey is a lecturer in the Department of English at California State University – Long Beach. His books include The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook (Madness Heart Press, 2024), Cryptopolis & Other Stories (Lethe Press, 2024), Dead Monkey Rum (Planet Bizarro Press, 2023), Operation Mindfuck (OR Books, 2022), Widow of the Amputation & Other Weird Crimes (Eraserhead Press, 2021), Bela Lugosi’s Dead (Crossroad Press, 2021), Until the Last Dog Dies (Night Shade/Skyhorse, 2017), Chameleo (OR Books, 2015), and Spies & Saucers (PS Publishing, 2014). A graduate of the famed Clarion Writers Workshop in Seattle, he's written for numerous publications, among them The Believer, The Evergreen Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Mailer Review, Rosebud, Salon.com, and TOR.com. In 2024 he was nominated for the prestigious Andrew Carnegie Award for his nonfiction work investigating extremist rightwing movements such as QAnon and Christian Nationalism. Forthcoming from Headpress is his nonfiction cinema book, Hollywood Haunts the World: An Investigation into the Cinema of Occulted Taboos, which covers one hundred years of film history. His website is Cryptoscatology.com. This story originally appeared in Flurb #7, 2009. Narrated by: Doni Nicoll-Duir Doni Nicoll-Duir (nickel-dar) is originally from the Western Slope of Colorado. He has lived in and out of Arizona his whole life and now finds himself settling down in Tucson, AZ. Doni works in the renewable energy sector as a design engineer and permitting specialist. When Doni isn’t working on saving the planet, one rooftop at a time, or trying to keep up with his teenage daughter, he can be found cooking, hiking or playing board games with his friends at one of the local breweries. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/starshipsofa. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gustavo Bondoni is a novelist and short story writer with over five hundred stories published in fifteen countries, in seven languages. He has published several science fiction novels including two trilogies, six monster books, a dark military fantasy and a thriller. His short fiction is collected in Thin Air (2023), Pale Reflection (2020), Off the Beaten Path (2019), Tenth Orbit and Other Faraway Places (2010) and Virtuoso and Other Stories (2011). In 2019, Gustavo was awarded second place in the Jim Baen Memorial Contest and in 2018 he received a Judges Commendation (and second place) in The James White Award. He was also a 2019 finalist in the Writers of the Future Contest. His website is at www.gustavobondoni.com This story is original to StarShipSofa. Narrated by: Alethea Kontis Alethea Kontis is an actress, storm chaser, and New York Times bestselling author. She has received the Scribe Award, the Garden State Teen Book Award, and is a two-time winner of the Gelett Burgess Children’s Book Award. She was twice nominated for both the Andre Norton Nebula and Dragon Award. Alethea narrates stories for multiple award-winning online magazines and does freelance work for Writing the Other. Born in Vermont, Alethea currently resides on the Space Coast of Florida where she watches K-dramas with her teddy bear, Charlie. Together they are ARMY, VVS, and Black Roses.  Fact: Looking Back At Genre History by Amy H Sturgis Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/starshipsofa. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hugo- and Nebula nominated author Marie Vibbert’s short fiction has appeared over 90 times in top magazines like Nature, Analog, and Clarkesworld, and been translated into Czech, Chinese and Vietnamese. Her debut novel, Galactic Hellcats, was long listed by the British Science Fiction Award and her work has been called “everything science fiction should be” by the Oxford Culture Review. She also writes poetry, comics, and computer games. By day she is a computer programmer in Cleveland, Ohio. This story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January/February 2019. Narrated by: Christina Rau Christina M. Rau, The Yoga Poet, leads Meditate, Move, & Create workshops for various organizations in person and online. Her collections include How We Make Amends, What We Do To Make Us Whole, and the Elgin Award-winning Liberating The Astronauts. She moderates the Women’s Poetry Listserv and has served as Poet in Residence for Oceanside Library (NY) since 2020. Her poetry airs on Destinies radio show (WUSB) and appears in various literary journals like fillingStation and The Disappointed Housewife while her prose has appeared in Punk Monk Magazine and Reader’s Digest. During her downtime, she watches the Game Show Network. http://www.christinamrau.com Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/starshipsofa. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.