Broad Knowledge

35 Women Up To No Good

Broad Knowledge: 35 Women Up To No Good is a feminist anthology of dark fiction and darker knowledge, edited by Joanne Merriam. Containing 35 stories of “bad” women, and “good” women who just haven’t been caught yet, it features 35 fearless writers who identify as female, non-binary, or a marginalized sex or gender identity. It’s the second in the Women Up To No Good series, which can be read in any order.

Our contributors are based in or hailing from Australia, Canada, China, the Czech Republic, India, the Philippines, and all over the United States. Between them, they have won the Aeronautilus, Encouragement, Fresh Voices, Tiptree, and World Fantasy Awards, and been shortlisted for the Aurora, Bram Stoker, and Ignotus, as well as numerous others! We also include two stories in translation, one by Argentine author Teresa P. Mira de Echeverría and the other by Galician writer and poet Estíbaliz Espinosa.

Recommended by the Barnes & Noble Sci-fi & Fantasy Blog: “The lineup of contributing authors include a wide range of new and established horror and speculative fiction writers, including L. Timmel Duchamp, …Nisi Shawl, [and] D.A. Xiaolin Spires”.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

* “She Falls” is by Toronto's Charlotte Ashley, who is a writer, editor, bookseller, and nominee for the Aurora and Sunburst Awards. Her short stories have been in F&SF, Clockwork Canada, Luna Station Quarterly, Kaleidotrope, PodCastle,and elsewhere.

* “Clara Vox” is by R. S. Benedict, whose work has appeared in Unicorn Booty and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

* “First mouse model of Innsmouth Fish-man Syndrome draft 2 USE THIS VERSION – edits by MK.doc” is by Megan Chaudhuri, a toxicologist by training and a writer by inclination, whose fiction has appeared in Analog, Crossed Genres, GigaNotoSaurus, and other venues.

* “Flowers for Dogman” is by Autumn Christian, who lives in the dark woods with poisonous blue flowers in her backyard and a black deer skull on her wall. She wrote Ecstatic Inferno and The Crooked God Machine.

* “Blushing Blue” is by Filipina Vida Cruz. Previously a journalist, she writes children’s storybooks that teach the English language as well as fiction which has appeared in Expanded Horizons, Lontar: The Journal of Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction, Philippine Speculative Fiction, and the anthology Phantazein.

* “The Visitations of Seraphim by Biblical Scholar Father Anthony Maguire” is by Sarina Dorie, who has sold about 100 short stories to places like Cosmos, Daily Science Fiction, and Sword and Laser. She's also written the steampunk romance series The Memory Thief and the collections Fairies, Robots and Unicorns—Oh My! and Ghosts, Werewolves and Zombies—Oh My!

* L. Timmel Duchamp's recent writing includes The Waterdancer's World and Never at Home. Her five-novel Marq'ssan Cycle series was awarded a Special Honor by the 2009 James Tiptree, Jr. Award jury, and she won the 2017 World Fantasy Special Award—Professional for her work with Aqueduct Press. Her “The Forbidden Words of Margaret A.” was first published in Pulphouse 8 and also appeared in The Women Who Walk Through Fire. re. (You can read it at her website.)

* Estíbaliz Espinosa has published seven poetry books, short stories about scientific women, and some books of poetry translation. “23 commuter line chromosomes,” first published in Galician in her collection Curiosidade, appears here in its first appearance in English, translated by the author.

* “Five Meters Ahead, Two Centuries Away” is by A.T. Greenblatt, a mechanical engineer by day and a writer by night. Her work is forthcoming or has appeared in Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Mothership Zeta, and elsewhere.

* “The Cold Waters of Europa” is by Claudine Griggs, the Writing Center Director at Rhode Island College. She is the author of Journal of a Sex Change: Passage through Trinidad, S/he: Changing Sex and Changing Clothes (Dress, Body, Culture), and numerous short stories which have appeared in Escape Pod, Lightspeed, Baen Books’ Best Military and Adventure Science Fiction, and elsewhere.

* “Your Life Will Look Perfect From Afar” iis by Audrey R. Hollis, a writer based in Los Angeles. Her work has been in several publications, including Leading Edge, Lunch Ticket, and Autostraddle.

* “Taking It Back” is by Joanna Michal Hoyt, whose fiction has appeared in publications including Crossed Genres, Daily Science Fiction, and Mysterion.

* “Election Season” is by Canadian Rebecca Jones-Howe, the author of the short story collection Vile Men. Her work has been published in [PANK], Punchnel’s, and Pulp Modern, among others.

* “Viva La Muñeca” is by Ezzy G. Languzzi, a Latinx writer of speculative short fiction.

* “Like I Need a Hole in the Head” is by Maggie Maxwell. She has neither pets nor superpowers, so she writes about both to make up for it.

* “Make Pretty” is by Rati Mehrotra. Born and raised in India, she makes her home in Toronto. Her first book, Markswoman, was published in January. Her stories have been in Apex Magazine, AE - The Canadian Science Fiction Review, Urban Fantasy Magazine, Podcastle, and many more.

“Liquid Glass” is by Argentine author Teresa P. Mira de Echeverría. Her novelette, Memory, is also available from Upper Rubber Boot Books (in a translation into English by Lawrence Schimel, who also translated “Liquid Glass”), and was a finalist for the Spanish national science fiction award, the Ignotus.

* “Below the Kirk, Below the Hill” is by Premee Mohamed, an Indo-Caribbean scientist based in Canada. Her speculative fiction has been published by Nightmare, Martian Migraine Press, Innsmouth Free Press, and many others.

* “Maidens of the Sea” is by Wendy Nikel, whose fiction has appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Nature: Futures, and elsewhere.

* “Frankenstein Sonata” is by author and translator Julie Nováková. She has published short fiction in Clarkesworld, Asimov’s, and Analog, and has received the Encouragement Award of the European science fiction and fantasy society, and the Aeronautilus Award for the best Czech short story of 2014 and 2015, and for the best novel of 2015.

* “Matched Set” is by Aimee Ogden, who has been a science teacher and a software tester. Now she writes stories about sad astronauts and angry princesses. Her work has appeared in Daily Science Fiction, The Sockdolager, and Shimmer.

* “Three Days, Two Nights” is by Therese Pieczynski. She has published in Asimov’s, Daily Science Fiction, River City, the anthology Imagination Fully Dilated, and with Nancy Kress in New Under The Sun.

* “Mary in the Looking Glass” is by Laura E. Price. Her work has appeared in On Spec, Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, GigaNotoSaurus, Penumbra eMag,and Betwixt.

* “The Red” is by Clarice Radrick, whose work can be found in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Spellbound, Haiku of the Dead, Under the Juniper Tree, Inchoate Echoes, and elsewhere.

* Nisi Shawl wrote the Belgian Congo steampunk novel Everfair, co-authored Writing the Other: A Practical Approach, and co-edited Strange Matings: Science Fiction, Feminism, African American Voices, and Octavia E. Butler and Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany. Her story collection Filter House co-won the James Tiptree, Jr. Award in 2009 and was nominated for that year’s World Fantasy Award. Her “Street Worm” was first published in Streets of Shadows, and also appeared in Street Magicks.

* “The Donor” is by Tabitha Sin, whose writing has been in Dear Robot: An Anthology of Epistolary Science Fiction, Amok: An Anthology of Asia-Pacific Speculative Fiction, and elsewhere.

* Angela Slatter wrote the urban fantasy novels Vigil and Corpselight, as well as eight short story collections. She has won a World Fantasy Award, a British Fantasy Award, a Ditmar, and six Aurealis Awards. Her “The Song of Sighs” was first published in Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth and also appeared in New Cthulhu 2: More Recent Weird.

* “Sunbasker” is by D.A. Xiaolin Spires. She takes trips to East and Southeast Asia to influence her writing and leave her craving durian, fermented foods and copious amounts of wonder that fuel her body, spirit and imagination.

* “Tidal Bloom” is by Priya Sridhar, the author of Carousel, whose work has also appeared in Aurora Wolf, Drabbler Harvest, and Indian SF.

* “Blood Sausage” is by freelance writer and editor Jae Steinbacher. She is a graduate of North Carolina State University’s MFA in Fiction program, and of the 2014 Clarion West Writers Workshop. Her stories have been published in Terraform, Escape Pod, and PodCastle.

* Sonya Taaffe's short fiction and poetry can be found, amongst other places, in her Ghost Signs (Aqueduct Press) and in the anthologies The Museum of All Things Awesome and That Go Boom, Genius Loci, and An Alphabet of Embers: An Anthology of Unclassifiables. Her “Like Milkweed” first appeared in Not One of Us #52.

* “Profanity” is by Liz Ulin, who won the 2014 Fresh Voices Screenplay Competition, and was a finalist in The Canadian Authors Association Short Story Competition.

* “Infinite Boyfriends” is by Marie Vibbert, whose work regularly appears in Analog and has won Apex Magazine’s Story of the Year.

* “Think, Baby Turtle” is by Mingzhao Xu, who immigrated to the United States from China as a child, and now lives in California.

* “The Ladies in the Moon” is by Xin Niu Zhang, who was born in Shanghai, grew up in Toronto, and is currently studying at the University of Waterloo.

Editor Joanne Merriam is an immigrant to Nashville from Nova Scotia, whose writing has appeared in The Glaze from Breaking (Stride, 2005), and in dozens of magazines and journals, including Asimov's Science Fiction, The Fiddlehead, The Journal of Unlikely Entomology, Pank, and Strange Horizons. She runs Upper Rubber Boot Books year-round and administers Small Press Week every November.