Trans Voices

In Future Myths: Blood and Chosen Kin three poets explore the shifting terrain of kinship: the families we inherit, the ones we lose, and the ones we build along the way. If blood once defined belonging, these writers ask what else might hold us together as we imagine the futures still forming.

Pretti Vanghni writes with a mythic sensibility, weaving ancestry, cultural memory, and spiritual imagination into poems that feel both ancient and newly born. Achy Obejas brings her luminous clarity to the intertwined questions of exile, language, and queer belonging, reminding us that chosen kinship has long been a survival practice. Ally Ang’s work moves through intimacy and rupture, tracing how care and solidarity can grow in the spaces where traditional structures fall away.

Together, these poets reimagine kinship as something living and unfinished. Blood may tell one story. Chosen family tells another, one written in acts of care, resistance, and possibility.

The funny and heartfelt stories of this panel honor the chosen family who show up at the most unexpected, but perhaps most necessary, moments in our lives. Woodworking by Emily St. James follows a trans high school teacher from a small town in South Dakota who befriends the only other trans woman she knows: her seventeen-year-old student, the high school’s resident political dissident and Only Trans Girl. As their unlikely friendship evolves, it comes under the scrutiny of their community, and both women are forced to confront what happens if they choose to hide their true selves. Renee Swindle’s Francine’s Spectacular Crash and Burn features another unexpected encounter between a young executive assistant and aspiring photographer, whose life is upended after the sudden death of her agoraphobic mother, and the ten-year-old who keeps showing up at her doorstep after she rescues him from a group of bullies. Meeting the boy’s foster mother, who turns out to be her fiery high school crush, leads Francine to make a consecutive string of bad choices, and she is left wondering how to become the kind of person her young friend can depend on. The tumultuous journeys of self-discovery in this humorous yet moving panel, moderated by award-winning Sri Lankan American writer and educator Nayomi Munaweera, portray the power of chance, intergenerational queer friendships, and found family.

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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From prose to verse to visual art, the powerful narratives of this panel take pride in the intersection of being queer, Latine, and unapologetically proud. Julián Delgado Lopera’s Pretend You’re Dead and I Carry You depicts Bogotá’s underground queer scene, where a luminous travesti steps in as a mother figure to a listless widower’s teenage daughter, fearing that his grief and guilt-driven self-destruction may unleash a river of curses on them all. Roque Raquel Salas Rivera turns to epic poetry in Algarabía to describe the journey of Cenex, a trans being who retrospectively narrates his life while navigating the stories told on his behalf, inscribing an origin narrative for trans people in the face of their erasure from both colonial and anti-colonial literary cannons. When Language Broke Open features Afro-Indigenous poet and artist Alan Pelaez Lopez’s collection of poetry, prose, and visual art from forty-five queer and trans Black writers of Latin American descent, centering the multifaceted realities of the LGBTQ community by illustrating Blackness as a geopolitical experience that is always changing. Join us to celebrate our talented queer Latine writers in this transformative panel, moderated by Uruguayan writer, professor, and first openly nonbinary person to receive the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature Caro De Robertis.

Short stories are the swift vehicles of the written word that leave lasting impressions on both passengers and bystanders alike. This panel features writers who have experimented with the form in various ways to create unique short story collections that highlight broader issues. With genre-bending fiction, Jude Berman blends social impact fiction and activist fiction in Shot: A Dictionary of the Lost, a collection of short stories about gun violence, organized as a dictionary, with a story for each letter of the alphabet. Lisa Alvarez’s Some Final Beauty and Other Stories showcases women and Chicanx characters from the vibrant streets of Southern California to the arid Nevada Nuclear Sites in thematically linked stories exploring self-discovery, rebellion, and solidarity. Set in the dive bars, bathhouses, parks, workplaces, music venues, beaches, and college campuses of 2010s Seattle, Crawl: Stories by Max Delsohn portrays the pleasures and pains of sex, romance, and gender expression in a city and a time that has branded itself a radical queer utopia but proves much more complicated in reality. In Daddy Issues: Stories, a collection of moving and complex stories of queer Asian American experiences in Los Angeles, Eric Wat offersdifferent contemplations on solitude and the vulnerability required for connection. Shifting from the present day to the near future, from China to America and beyond, the stories in M Lin’s The Memory Museum offer profound insight into the ambivalence of migration, the perverse ways race and class can operate, and what it means to be Chinese today. Join the talented authors of this panel, moderated by Latine poet, performer, and producer Marcos “Coco” James, to explore the limitless possibilities of the brief yet impactful short story.

Fly off into epic futures where empires tremble, loyalties fracture, and the fate of entire worlds hangs in the balance. In this sweeping space opera panel, Elaine U. Cho, Millie Abecassis, and Tim Melody Pratt explore interstellar adventure not just as spectacle, but as a lens for identity, love, memory, and resistance. In Elaine Cho’s Teo’s Durumi, the cinematic conclusion to a dazzling duology, fugitives and found family collide in a Moon city haunted by history and betrayal. As conspiracies tighten and a solar system teeters on the brink, questions of loyalty, grief, capitalism, and chosen kinship drive this high-octane tale of redemption and sacrifice. Millie Abecassis‘ The Color of Time reimagines myth across planets in a story of escape, transformation, and rebellion. When a princess flees tyranny in a suit fashioned from a legendary serpent’s skin, she finds refuge and revolution in a distant world. Blending political intrigue, queer romance, and cosmic reinvention, the novel asks what it takes to break cycles of power and claim one’s own destiny. In Tim Pratt‘s Starfinder: Era of the Eclipse, galactic mystery unfolds across centuries after a catastrophic event known as the Gap wipes memories from countless minds. As scattered heroes uncover fragments of lost knowledge, rival factions vie to control the truth itself. Adventure, divine secrets, and cosmic conspiracy intertwine in a story that probes memory, history, and who gets to shape the future. Moderated by Julia Vee, whose debut book was a 2023 Golden Poppy Finalist for the Octavia E. Butler award, this conversation journeys beyond starships and interplanetary shootouts to examine the emotional gravity at the heart of the space opera genre. From lunar cities to distant galaxies, these authors remind us that even in the vastness of space, the most powerful forces remain love, loss, and the longing to belong.

Given California’s reputation as a haven of liberal thinking and the pinnacle of tolerance, many people would be surprised to hear about the stories of educators, librarians, and storytime performers who have been harassed and threatened for teaching honestly about race, gender, immigration, religion, and sexuality. District Teacher Librarian for the Oakland Unified School District Debbie Gibbons will moderate this timely conversation featuring the people at the frontlines of today’s escalating culture wars. Veteran California public school teacher Sue Granzella’s Pushed to the Edge: Teachers’ Stories From the Culture Wars is a collection of first-person accounts of resilience in the face of growing bigotry stoked by the far right. She was inspired to write her book when she heard about the Proud Boys storming a local library to disrupt a Drag Story Hour, which was hosted by Kyle Casey Chu, drag queen and author of The Queen Bees of Tybee County Queen. They will be joined by high school librarian and media specialist Betsy Sergeant as well as former English teacher and program director for the Davis Phoenix Coalition Anoosh Jorjorian to offer a sobering view of what’s at stake in our schools, libraries, and for young people today. Their firsthand experiences offer unique perspectives about the impact of California’s culture wars on its youth and provide a hopeful testament to those who refuse to back down.

Drawing from real-life situations that kids may face, the graphic novels of this panel combine art and words to tell meaningful stories. In Marshmallow & Jordan,Alina Chau depicts a young basketball player’s experience after an accident leaves her paralyzed from the waist down, whose encounter with a mysterious elephant helps her discover a brand new sport. It can be hard to feel different from our friends, but Maia Kobabe and Swati “Lucky” Srikumar’s Opting Out, a middle grade graphic novel about a kid who just isn’t interested in any of that boy/girl stuff or the way their body is changing, shows us how we can find our own options and create our own stories. For teenagers Franny and Sam in As I Dream of You,illustrated by LeUyen Pham, the reality of love feels completely different from the tales of heartbreak and loss they have come to understand, but their quest to stay together soon takes a supernatural twist after they see their relationship as something that could possibly conquer death. In the autobiographical Armaveni: A Graphic Novel of the Armenian Genocide, Nadine Takvorian chronicles her quest to uncover her family’s history during the Armenian genocide through interwoven historical, contemporary, and fantastical sequences. Perfect for middle and high schoolers, educators, and parents, this panel moderated by librarian Elaine Tai will showcase the rich diversity of the graphic novel genre.

Get ready for the performance of a lifetime with these dynamic stories about bands and music! Join teen spy Amani Kendall’s first solo mission in Undisclosed, the third book in Aya de Leon’s award-winning Factory series, as she steps into the spotlight to win a place in the “Next Teen Sensation” competition and protect the identity of the Factory, an international organization of spies safeguarding people of color. No stranger to reinventing herself, Cuban-American musician Lou has shaved her head and deferred her first semester at Texas State to work for a celebrity musician on a sensational world tour in Lou with the Band by Alexandra Leigh Young. To make things even more musically exciting, Tongan musician Bean Tupou will bring their experience as a local punk and Indie singer, community organizer, and Operations Manager at Chapter 510 promoting youth literacy to the panel discussion, and treat the audience to a musical performance! Moderated by writer and founding queen of Drag Story Hour Kyle Casey Chu, aka Panda Dulce, this lively session will celebrate the power of music for both cacophony and connection.