#inclusivefuture

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Queer book recs from IFM's editors

Mantha's Rec(s)

Lynn Flewelling's Nightrunner Series and Tamír Triad

Any chance Mantha gets they recommend Lynn Flewelling's Nightrunner Series and Tamír Triad. Both set in the same world but in two different eras, these fantasy series have become so dear to them over the years.

The Nightrunner books are part fantasy, part political intrigue, part murder mystery, all while exploring themes of belonging and identity. And while they don't have genders outside the binary, the two main characters are bi, cis men (with a little gender-nonconformity in there, too.)

The Tamír Triad tells the coming of age story of a trans girl at court in the midst of political upheaval: think Knights of the Round Table but King Arthur is trans.

Flewelling's writing is impeccable. She has a gift for character, detail, and setting that creates immersive worlds. Though not recent publications - the first book came out in 1996 - they were the first books Mantha read that showed them that the sky was truly the limit in fantasy writing.

Lydia's Rec

All the White Spaces by Ally Wilkes

Not for the faint of heart, All the White Spaces by Ally Wilkes is a historical thriller in which a trans man stows away on an expedition ship bound for the Antarctic from England.

Set just after WWII, the stakes are quickly raised when the ship - the only way the expedition is getting home - is destroyed just shy of their destination. Missing most of the crew and nearly all their supplies, the few remaining members of the expedition must find a way to survive the winter in Antarctica.

Stumbling across a German expedition's camp seems like a stroke of good luck - but where did the Germans go (and would they even believe the war was over?), and what lurks in the darkness just outside of the lamp light?

Sione's Rec

Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata

If you're a short story reader who loves weird, slightly dark speculative fiction (think George Saunders, Miranda July, Alexander Weinstein, Carmen Maria Machado), Sione highly recommends Sayaka Murata's book of short stories, Life Ceremony, which came out in paperback in May.

While the stories don't contain genders outside the binary, there is gay rep, asexual and aromantic spectrum rep, and neurodiversity rep.

But what really gets zir excied about this book are the themes! This is basically an entire short story collection about what's normal, who decides, and how changeable our social norms and taboos are, which opens a window into a future with many queer and neurodivergent possibilities. Ze hasn't been this excited about a new book in a very long time.

Originally published in our newsletter on July 31st, 2023.

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Calling all trans, nonbinary, agender, and genderqueer writers/artists!

Inclusive Future Magazine is opening its submissions for Issue 1: Visions from a Gender Inclusive Future for a second round!!

We’re looking for submissions of prose and art from trans, nonbinary, agender and genderqueer artists and writers that respond to the question: What might gender look like fifty years from now?

This round, we're specifically looking for pieces that fit in with and respond to the work we already have, like a feature article to accompany Liasis’ cover illustration (above). Find out more by visiting the call for submissions page.

(links and more details to follow in reblog)

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What would the world look like if queer people could be themselves from day one?

The other day, I came across a set of tweets by Australian writer and LGBT+ activist Alexander Leon which really struck a chord in me.

In the past few years, I've been doing a lot of figuring out what's really me and what parts of my identity are creations, parts of a persona I built - unknowingly - to protect myself. And like Alexander Leon, I've become grateful for this opportunity for self-discovery.

I started to wonder what a world would look like if queer kids didn't have to "sacrifice authenticity to minimise humiliation," if, in our adulthood, we weren't forced to parse out which parts of ourselves are constructed and which parts are authentic, if we didn't have to go through this process of "unlearning."

The tweets above were adapted from an essay that Leon wrote about this concept of having to unlearn your own identity. In it, he writes about how, from an early age, he felt that his whole life was a performance even before he knew why he was performing. And when he came out, he was unable to shake the persona he'd created in order to protect himself from the disapproval of teachers and ridicule of peers.

"In truth, I didn't know who my actual self was. And how could I? The barely out version of me was a collection of fragments, pieces of me which I'd left to atrophy rammed up against pieces I'd contorted into unsightly shapes to protect myself."

For me, it's not so much that I've been performing, pretending to be someone I'm not. Instead, I've been behaving in the only ways I thought I could. I didn't know there were other ways to be. Even after I realized I was queer, it took me years to realize that I didn't have to be attracted to men at all, and still more to realize I didn't have to be strictly one of two genders. I didn't know there were other options, other ways to be. Figuring out who I am has required unlearning of societal expectations and intense introspection.

"It's a task that involves enormous emotional and spiritual upheaval," Leon writes, "which many of us are forced to do alone, with scant resources, or little in the form of mentorship."

It makes me wonder: how would my life have been different if I had access to role models and mentors, if I knew from the beginning that it was possible to exist outside the gender binary? What would a world look like in which queer people weren't required to go through this "massive, existential and deeply difficult exercise" alone? Where would we be if we did have resources and mentors to guide us through this process? If we didn't have to go through this process of unlearning in the first place, if we could be our authentic selves from the beginning?

This world, a world in which queer folks can be themselves from day one, is what we want to imagine in Issue 1 of Inclusive Future Magazine: Visions from a Gender Inclusive Future. And, as Leon points out in the end of his essay, it's a world that we're in the process of building, "a reality we are all continuously creating" by being ourselves and deconstructing the gender binary.

[M]y struggle, as exhausting as it may be, is a gift through time to generations of queer people yet to come. My authenticity, our authenticity, allows us to create a reality in which young queer people will see an opportunity to thrive not as an actor forced to play a part, but simply as themselves, side-stepping the trauma of the closet and living their truth from day one.

It's for this reason that the other editors of Inclusive Future and I wanted to create this magazine. Envisioning a future that includes all of us, and considering what that would mean for all aspects of society, is an important step in creating the reality we wish to see.

Originally posted on our blog on April 9th, 2021. By Mantha Pratt (samwisegamgeeee).

If you want to be part of this project, we are currently accepting submissions from trans, nonbinary, agender, and genderqueer people! Submissions are open until October 6th. Visit our website for more info!

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Why we pay professional rates to contributors

It is not unusual these days for literary magazines to charge submission fees and/or to offer publication without payment. There are myriad reasons for this, many outlined in a great opinion piece by Joy Lanzendorfer (link in the reblog), but one of the most basic and prevalent being that it takes money to run a lit mag, even a very small one. (Example: it costs us about $250 a year just to maintain our ad-free website.) Many lit mag editors are already volunteering their time and energy to the project and literally can't afford to fund it.

Being writers ourselves, we recognize that it is a privilege to be published - a privilege often denied to those of us who are from marginalized and underrepresented communities.

But as editors, we recognize that it is an even greater privilege to publish work we love and want to see out in the world. Especially when we are soliciting work specifically from marginalized and underrepresented voices. Especially when people from these marginalized and underrepresented communities are often under physical threat and psychological duress simply for being who they are. Especially when people from marginalized and underrepresented communities often face employment discrimination, including reduced job opportunities and lower wages.

And especially when our contributors are undertaking the important - we believe, necessary - emotional and intellectual labor of developing a collective vision for a sustainable and socially just future. Labor that benefits not just marginalized and underrepresented communities, but all of us who want to live in an inclusive future that recognizes, validates, and celebrates the vast diversity of human experiences.

Therefore, one of the earliest and easiest decisions we made about this anthology project was to pay professional rates for contributors' work and to charge no submission fees.

As a speculative fiction publication, we're using the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) guidelines. As a professional organization, SFWA requires its voting members to have professional credentials, and one of those requirements is that a member needs to have been paid professional rates for a certain amount of their published work. Every so often, SFWA reviews and may change what counts as professional payment; currently (August 2023), that rate is 8¢ USD per word for prose.

Paying a SFWA professional rate allows our prose contributors to count work published by Inclusive Future Magazine toward their SFWA membership requirements. More importantly, however, paying our contributors professional rates is the right thing to do.

Submissions for Issue 1 are still open until October 6th, 2023! We're still looking for prose pieces inspired by our cover art and by Al Hess's illustration, a movie poster for Unbreakable Butch, political cartoons or comics, and fake advertisements. See the pinned post on our blog for more info!

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Publishing Goal Updates and Content Submissions Reopening

If you're subscribed to our newsletter, you may have heard about our new publication plan for Issue 1 of Inclusive Future Magazine. In the June Newsletter, we announced that we're putting together a 32(ish)-page zine, which will be available in print and digitally. At this point, we're thinking we'll likely be ready to ship worldwide during the fist quarter of 2024.

Although this is a smaller publication than we initially envisioned, we're super stoked about it because:

We actually have the resources to pull it off, thanks in part to a couple of generous donations, and

We will get to hold it in our grubby little hands sooner rather than later!

Our next step is to finalize the contents of Issue 1. Pieces we've previously published on our website will be in the next print issue, as well as new, never-before-seen content! Which brings us to some more really exciting news... 🥁🥁🥁

CONTENT SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW OPEN UNTIL OCTOBER 6TH

Did the pieces already published online inspire you like they did us? Hopefully they got you thinking about what a future would look like in which all expressions of gender or lack thereof are fully included. Maybe you even got to imagining the movie poster for Unbreakable Butch, or thinking up the feature story behind the cover illustration by Liasis. Now's your chance to share those ideas with us!

Since Inclusive Future Magazine is an anthology of speculative epistolary fiction - that is, prose and art in the guise of a pop culture magazine that imagines a more inclusive future - we're asking you to imagine that it's the year 2068. In this future, we've achieved gender equality in the broadest sense. Not only are genders outside the binary widely acknowledged and accepted, but people of all genders are paid equally for equal work, have equal opportunity, are included in scientific studies, and are marketed to equally.

You are writing and making art from this future, roughly fifty years from now, and you are submitting a piece of work to an international culture magazine whose target audience includes English-speaking adults of all genders living anywhere in the world.

Specifically, we’d like to see pieces that fit in with and respond to the work we already have, like an article to go with Al Hess' amazing artwork (pictured here) or a feature article to accompany Liasis’ cover illustration (above). Find out more by visiting our call for submissions page on our website.

To see what past, successful submissions have looked like, check out Issue 1 on our website!

If you submitted a piece during our last call, we will automatically consider the piece again during this round. If you didn’t, or would like to submit again, then you can find instructions on how to submit on our website. We’re excited to see what you come up with!

Originally posted on our blog on July 31st.

Links in reblog.

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Inclusive Future Magazine, Issue 1: Visions from a Gender-Inclusive Future

A speculative fiction anthology for, by, and about transgender, nonbinary, agender, and genderqueer folks.

IMAGINE: It's the year 2068, and we've achieved gender equality in the broadest sense. Not only are genders outside the binary widely acknowledged and accepted, but people of all genders and without gender are paid equally for work, have equal opportunity, are included in scientific studies, and are marketed to equally.

Issue 1 of Inclusive Future Magazine envisions this future through fictional articles and art, as if it were an international pop culture magazine published 50 years in the future and whose target audience includes adults of all genders and without gender, living anywhere in the world.

Our project is currently LIVE on Kickstarter!

With 19 days to go, we're 12% of the way toward our goal. Kickstarter projects are all or nothing, so if we don't fund, we won't be able to move forward with our project. If you're passionate about trans rights and want to help a group of nonbinary creators achieve their dream of publishing this magazine, consider backing us on Kickstarter (link in the reblog) or sharing this post with your friends!

We're also currently accepting submissions!

We're accepting poetry, prose, and art from trans, nonbinary, agender, and genderqueer creators! Please check out our website (inclusivefuturemag.com) for more details!

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Our first publication is now live!

Hello again, everyone!

We’re excited to announce that our first publication, “Unbreakable Butch: An Interview with Grita Jennifer” by Naomi Norbez (he/they) is now available on our website!

Norbez’s piece was one of our first submissions, and the moment we set eyes on it we all knew that -- one way or another -- we had to find a way to publish it. It was exactly what we dreamed about when we set out to create Inclusive Future Magazine.

This interview with a movie star comes from a future where all genders and sexualities are accepted--even in religious communities. Sounds interesting? Check it out on our website!

About the author

Naomi Norbez is a writer and game maker from New Jersey. When he’s not binge-watching 'The Good Place', he’s creating new interactive fiction, reading, or writing fanfic (again). You can follow them on Twitter @NaomiNorbez.

We’ve got a few more publications coming down the pipes over the next few months! Stay tuned for more information.

If Norbez’s piece inspired you and you’d like to make it possible for us to bring you even more glimpses into a future that’s more inclusive for all, support our Ko-fi, or follow us @ inclusivefuture on Instagram and Twitter!

Links in the reblog!

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Check out our newest publications!

Since we last gave you an update, we've posted two new pieces on our website!

"Grow Your Own Microgarden" by Juliet Kemp

Coming from a future where anybody can grow their own DIY pharmaceuticals -- such as insulin, testosterone, and spiro -- this instructional article will show you how to exercise your green thumb no matter the space you have in your home.

About the author: Juliet Kemp (they/them) is a queer, non-binary, writer. Their short fiction has appeared in venues including Analog and Cast of Wonders, and they were short-listed for the WSPA Small Press Award 2020. The Rising Flood, the third book in their Marek series, is out in late 2021. They live in London by the river, with their partners, kid, and dog, where they try to fit an ever-increasing number of plants into a microscopic back garden. They can be found on Twitter as julietk, or at julietkemp.com.

"HologramU: How Gender Dysphoria Created A Scientific Revolution" by Ryan Breadinc

In the future, our reporters interview inventor Martine Ramirez, the creator of a new holographic technology that allows you to leave your house in the form you choose.

About the author: Ryan Breadinc (he/him) is an up-and-coming writer from Bunbury, Western Australia. A self-proclaimed mess of a human being, he’s found his  passion in writing the weirdest shit he can come up with at the time, and then bullying his friends into reading it. (Just kidding.) He found his passion for books in early childhood, reading horror stories and extremely cheesy supernatural romance drivel when he was much too young for it. It’s stayed with him, and now he makes his own  horror stories and extremely cheesy supernatural drivel. You can find him rambling about half-baked ideas for his next story on social media, or in his office with a few birds yelling at him for attention as he tries desperately to get some work done. His Twitter and Instagram are breadincbooks, and his website is also breadincbooks.com.

Sound interesting? Check out both articles on our website!

We've got more articles like these coming down the pipes; stay tuned for more information!

These pieces inspire you and you’d like to make it possible for us to bring you even more glimpses into a future that’s more inclusive for all, support our Ko-fi, or follow us @ inclusivefuture on Instagram and Twitter!

Links in the reblog!