Speculative Fiction

In this visionary speculative fiction panel, Charlie Jane Anders, Syr Hayarti Beker, and Annalee Newitz explore the craft and theory of queer worldbuilding imagining futures and fantastical realms where queer characters and communities are not exceptions, but the norm. Across their work, queerness is foundational to how magic systems function, how technology evolves, and how societies are structured. In Lessons in Magic, Charlie Jane Anders continues her tradition of expansive, emotionally rich storytelling, building transformative worlds shaped by fluid identity and chosen connection. In What a Fish Looks Like, Syr Hayarti Beker reimagines fairy tale and climate narrative through mutated, lyrical forms that center queer embodiment and ecological intimacy. In Automatic Noodle, Annalee Newitz envisions near-future solidarity between humans and robots, crafting communities that challenge capitalism while foregrounding queer belonging.

Moderated by Kristina M. Canales, a queer Puerto Rican author and community builder with the LGBTQIA+ Lit Collective, this conversation will dive into craft, theory, and possibility. How do writers construct queer-norm worlds without replicating oppressive structures? What narrative tools allow authors to center fluidity, chosen family, and collective liberation? And how can speculative fiction create blueprints for futures rooted in care, resilience, and radical imagination? Join us for a dynamic discussion about building worlds where queerness shapes the rules of magic, technology, and society itself.

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It can take just one brief touchpoint to forever bend the directions of our diverging paths, as the 2025 NCBA Fiction Finalists reveal. In R.O. Kwan‘s Exhibit, young photographer Jin Han meets an alluring, injured world-class ballerina at a party in San Francisco, which unleashes a complex exploration of ambition, desire, and a familial curse spoken aloud. Sometimes, convergence occurs in the form of multiple lives meeting at a single path, creating reflections, distortions, and unexpected revelations. Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel features the lives of eight teenage girl boxers, each with their own sacrifices and reasons for competing, in their fight for the prize. Nina Schuyler’s short story collection, In This Ravishing World, bridges nine stories of dreamers, escapists, activists, and artists who reckon with the climate crisis, urging all inhabitants of Nature to resist and fight to preserve its exquisite beauty in the face of destruction. The future is uncertain, but so is the past— the speculative stories in How We Know Our Time Travelers by Anita Felicelli reimagine time traveling as an everyday occurrence, given the fragility and unreliability of our memories that warp our understanding of the future. What, then, is the value of preservation? For the two crow sisters in Greg Sarris’ The Forgetters, who recall stories in the classic style of Southern Pomo and Coast Miwok creation stories from dawn to dusk, these shared histories hold the key for voyagers to repair the rifts in their own lives and the world. Moderated by author, editor, and critic Jane Ciabattari, this panel will peer closer into those translucent moments that hold the power to change the course of our past, present, and future.

What makes Californian literature shine? Writer Kathleen Alcott suggests that the diversity of California’s landscape has gifted a unique sense of time and change to its inhabitants, who are “used to the colors out the window turning over entirely, and to stop seeing trees and to start seeing water” within a few hours’ drive. In California Rewritten, editor, author, and host of Alta‘s California Book Club John Freeman captures the evolution of the Golden State’s literary life. He traces our literary history from early myths to the arrivals and migrations chronicled by works including The Distance Between Us, Reyna Grande’s memoir about her experiences as an undocumented child immigrant from Mexico, and America is Not the Heart, Elaine Castillo’s novel about a queer war veteran’s journey from the Philippines to the insular immigrant community in Milpitas. Following building cities, exploding fantasias, and digital dystopias, Freeman then directs readers to the ruptures, the fraying connections to reality that can follow the traumatic loss of a family member, as portrayed in Venita Blackburn’s Dead in Long Beach, California. Moderated by Heyday publisher Steve Wasserman, this panel will explore the featured works individually and as part of the road map to Californian literature that can help us uncover our history, confront pressing issues that face our society, and imagine our shared future.

Where is the boundary between a dream and a lie? The award-winning authors of this panel write about the elusive and deceptive dreams—of assimilation, of youth, of success— that impact their Asian American communities. In Laura Lee’s American Han, the Kim family dutifully embodies the model minority myth in 1980s San Francisco, until their son goes missing, and they are forced to confront the facade of the American Dream as their lives unravel in a country that isn’t all it promised it would be. For Jin Chang from Vanessa Hua’s Coyoteland, moving his family to the privileged community of El Nido after years of scraping by is a great achievement, but he decides to bend the rules for one final deceitful scheme to make it big in real estate. As fire season escalates and coyote attacks plague the town, the characters become embroiled in scandals and secrets that unflinchingly reveal our current moment. Definitions for success vary greatly, and Kelly Yang explores the ways that society shapes women’s ideals in The Take, a fast-paced novel about a young writer and an older producer who undergo an age-reversal treatment. What starts as a professional transaction of exchanging blood quickly becomes a complex psychological dance, leaving both women questioning what they’re willing to sacrifice to rewrite their stories of success. Where Are You Really From also features complex and flawed AAPI characters, from a mail order bride from Taiwan who is packed up in a cardboard box and sent via express shipping to California, to two teenage girls who meticulously plan how to kill and cook their downstairs neighbor. This surreal multi-genre collection of stories by Elaine Hsieh Chou confronts the ways storytelling enables our capacity for self-deception and cruelty. In search of the truth behind the headlines is Emmy-winning journalist and author of Amplify! My Fight for Asian America Dion Lim, who will draw on her experience reporting on AAPI issues to moderate this panel that honors the depth and diversity of Asian American identities.