Essays in the Publishing Taught Me: A SFWA Anthology Project Series

• Introduction – by Nisi Shawl, Somto Ihezue, and Zhui Ning Chang

• The Inexorable Growth of BIPOC in Publishing – by Emily Jiang – Published on 9/4/2024

• Dance the Exotic Dance for Me! –  by Yoon Ha Lee – Published on 8/7/2024

• The Ballad of the Slush Reader What I’ve Learned (And What I Want to Know) about Reading Slush – by Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas –  Published on 7/3/2024
• Culture: Moving Beyond Set Dressing – Kanishk Tantia – Published on 6/5/2024

• Yes, We Need Diverse Books, But We Also Need Diverse Reviewers–Still* by Erika Hardison – Published on 5/1/2024

• Working with Your Career’s “Track Changes”: Advice from One BIPOC Editor by Diana M. Pho – Published on 4/3/2024

• Take Editing Humor Seriously. Please. by James Beamon – Published on 3/6/2024

• Inside the Fiction Editor’s Mind: Does the Writer’s Identity Matter?  by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki – Published on 2/7/2024

The Publishing Taught Me anthology project was created, proposed, and supported by an all-SFWA volunteer team, and funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.  Essay selection and revision was overseen by multiple award-winning editor Nisi Shawl and their two editorial interns, Somto Ihezue and Zhui Ning Chang.  Shawl, Ihezue, and Chang, and our stalwart SFWA volunteers also created and presented the project’s two online panels.  Here are links to our YouTube recordings of the panels, which took place on October 25, 2024 (with Somto Ihezue, Zhui Ning Chang, Diana M. Pho, and Erika Hardison) and on October 29, 2024 (with Nisi Shawl, Kanishk Tantia, Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas, and Emily Jiang).

We hope that the insights offered on the panels and in this anthology prove helpful for many years to come.

News:

9/4/2024

All eight essays for the Publishing Taught Me anthology are now online. An Editors’ Afterword is scheduled for October 2, and in November anthology authors will have a chance to participate in an online symposium on the topic of promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in our genres.

4/2/2024

We are pleased to announce that our online anthology Publishing Taught Me now has a full roster of contributors! In addition to currently published essays by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and James Beamon, we have essays upcoming from Diana Pho, Erika Hardison, Kanishk Tantia, Nelly Garcia-Rosas, Yoon Ha Lee, and Emily Jiang. Their essays will be posted on the first Wednesday of each month through September.

Read the announcement on the full roster here.

The call for submissions for four additional essays has been closed. Authors of the four accepted pitches will be notified by 6 p.m. Pacific Time on February 22. The completed essays should be approximately 700 to 2000 words long.

Payment will be a flat $300 for each accepted, edited, and finalized essay. Deadlines, contracts, and revisions will be forthcoming for each essay. Authors will be invited to participate in a 2024 online panel on the general topic of BIPOC experiences in SFFH publishing.

The Publishing Taught Me project is overseen by multiple award-winning editor Nisi Shawl and two editorial interns, Somto Ihezue and Zhui Ning Chang.