How We Got Here
Artists, it has fallen to us to live in interesting times. It could be a blip, but it could be that everything we have ever done and thought and learned comes to this: WHAT WILL WE DO ABOUT IT? With this project, we want to declare that above all else, we will not give up quietly, and we will not leave the vulnerable behind. We will give a fuck. We will lift people up. We will stand shoulder to shoulder, head to head, to demand a better, kinder reality. In celebrating our collective strength, we will make sure there is something left to celebrate when the dust settles.
The term HOPEPUNK to refer to speculative fiction that focuses on hope and community was coined by author Alexandra Rowland in 2017, but it isn’t new. Octavia Butler’s work, especially the Earthseed series, is hopepunk. Adrian Tchaikovsky, Becky Chambers, Amal El-Mohtar, and many others have written hopeful, community-based, found-family, We-Will-Not-Run fiction. In addition, we are inspired by the writers, distributors, and readers of forbidden samizdat in the former Soviet Union and stretching along a long historical line of writers and readers who have lived under oppressive regimes and used poems, stories, and essays to connect, to organize, to find freedom and light together in the shadows.
More About Hopepunk
Some reading to enjoy, whether you expect to write something for this project or no. This list is by no means comprehensive, but we’ve tried to select works from a broad range of authors and spaces along the speculative fiction spectrum.
The City in the Middle of the Night (Charlie Jane Anders)
Parable of the Sower - Earthseed series (Octavia Butler)
A Psalm for the Wild Built - Monk & Robot series and Wayfarers series (Becky Chambers)
This is How You Lose the Time War (Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone)
Upright Women Wanted (Sarah Gailey)
The Sacrifice of Darkness (Roxanne Gay & Tracy Lynne Oliver)
The Gone-Away World (Nick Harkaway)
Moria Versus the Nightmare Machine - The Dream Chasers series (Martin Matthews)
We Set the Dark on Fire (Tehlor Kay Mejia)
The Future of Another Timeline (Annalee Newitz)
Binti (Nnedi Okorafor)
A Conspiracy of Truths (Alexandra Rowland)
The Sol Majestic (Ferrett Steinmetz)
Children of Time - CoT series (Adrian Tchaikovsky)
What We Seek
We are looking for about 20 flash (~500-2K words) and short stories (~2001-7K words), as well as poetry, to build an anthology that imagines different oppressions and different resistances, with characters who find or build communities (which can be a fellowship of a few or a settlement of many) in their own interesting times, characters who find ways to care for and support others, ways to survive, and/or ways to fight back. Stories can focus on the very small (a few households banding together to get urgent medical care for a neighbor, perhaps) or the bigger picture (a group of misfits going to ask the great king for help, perhaps, and exposing him for the tiny, broken man he is, if that rings a bell at all). They can be cozy or gritty, as long as they shine a light in the dark.
If you have a question about whether your idea fits, ask us.
Submission Guidelines
Content warnings are appreciated, but not required. Explicit sexual assault will not be appropriate for this collection. Language and themes that intentionally exclude should be used with care and consideration. (Put simply, exclude Nazis all you like, but if someone is excluding a person based on race, gender, creed, class, sexuality, etc, show your receipts, show why it’s necessary to the story. Feel free to ask if you aren’t sure.)
Contributors will be paid for their work after the [successful] crowdfunding campaign. Contributors will also receive a digital copy of the finished book. Submissions must be made to our email endoftheworldpublishing@gmail.com by May 1, 2025 to be considered for inclusion.