Hydra House Books is proud to announce the upcoming release of Ex Marginalia, a new collection of personal essays by writers of marginalized backgrounds and identities about the art, craft, and lived experiences of writing speculative fiction, co-sponsored by the Carl Brandon Society and edited by award-nominated author and editor Chinelo Onwualu.

In 2021, Hydra House Books released Pocket Workshop: Essays on living as a writer just as many in the United States were gaining a renewed interest in issues of racism, anti-Black violence, and the systemic oppression of marginalized communities. While Pocket Workshop drew its authors from a diverse pool of professional writers, it didn’t push the boundaries or open new ground for justice and equality in publishing.

Ex Marginalia aims to be an active and deliberate space for the writers who are most often excluded and ignored—authors who cannot and shall not remain in the margins, whose voices are vital to the present and future of speculative fiction.

Planned contributors include:

Nisi Shawl

P. Djèlí Clark

Julia Rios

Millie Ho

Chikodili Emelumadu

Suyi Davis Okungbowa

Hannah Onoguwe

Malka Older

Ibtisam Azem

Carlos Hernandez

L.D. Lewis

Shawn Frazier

S.B. Divya

and others.

Cover design by Ashe Samuels.

To support this project, tax-deductible donations can be given via the Carl Brandon Society’s Ex Marginalia page. Donors may opt to receive complementary copies of Ex Marginalia as follows:

• $25 donation: Receive an eBook edition (ePub, Mobi, PDF)
• $50 donation: Receive a softcover edition and the eBook
• $500 or more: Receive a limited hardcover edition, the softcover edition, and the eBook.

Donations will be used to offset publication costs and ensure that contracted authors from BIPOC, AAPI, LGBTQIA, disabled, and other marginalized communities will be paid professional rates.

The Carl Brandon Society will receive proceeds from sales of the book to support their mission of increasing racial and ethnic diversity in the production of and audience for speculative fiction.

Ex Marginalia will be released in the Fall of 2022, in trade paperback and ebook through most major online book retailers, and in a limited hardcover edition exclusively through the Hydra House Books website.