Today’s GalleyCrush is Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction, edited by Joshua Whitehead, forthcoming from Arsenal Pulp Press on September 22, 2020.
Perfect pitch: A bold and breathtaking anthology of queer Indigenous speculative fiction, edited by the author of Jonny Appleseed.
First lines: “I am Abacus. Rat. A tool. Designed. Crafted. Created. An engineered bio-computing AI.”
Big blurb: “The so-called end times feel so perilously close right now. With such a cacophony of anxiety, despair, and cynicism bearing down on us, it is sometimes easy to forget that Indigenous peoples have been here before, and we still remain to uphold our responsibilities to the world and to one another. Our stories guide us forward into an ever-uncertain future, just as they guide us back home. And as editor Joshua Whitehead affirms in the introduction, Love After the End is a book we need right now—and well beyond the now. The stories here are difficult, they’re beautiful, they’re hilarious and sad and frightening and hopeful. But more than all of that, they guide us back to ourselves and to our relations on a shimmering trail of song and stardust.” —Daniel Heath Justice
Book notes: Paperback, fiction, 224 pages.
Author bio: Joshua Whitehead is an Oji-nêhiyaw, Two-Spirit (2SQ) member of Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1) in manitowapow. He is the author of the novel Jonny Appleseed (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018), which won a Lambda Literary Award, and the poetry collection full-metal indigiqueer (Talonbooks, 2017). He was also the winner of the Governor General’s History Award for the Indigenous Arts and Stories Challenge in 2016.
