Posts Tagged ‘meta’

Nommo Award 2025 Short Story finalist: Bodies of Sand and Blood

We’re thrilled to share that Plangdi Neple’s story Bodies of Sand and Blood is a finalist for the 2025 Nommo Award for Best Short Story!  The Nommo Awards recognise works of speculative fiction by Africans, and are nominated and voted on by members of the African Speculative Fiction Society.

Bodies of Sand and Blood was first published in April 2024 as episode 580 with narration by Brent Lambert and featured as one of our 2024 Staff Pick episodes with new commentary as episode 621

You can read the other excellent Nommo Award finalists via the links on the award’s press release page.

 

Many congratulations Plangdi!

2024 at Cast of Wonders

2024 in review

  • Submissions window info: in addition to general submissions windows, we also opened to submissions for Halloween stories, our annual Banned Books Week event, and a limited-demographic window for Young Authors.
  • We published 48 stories over 45 episodes – a total of almost 150,000 words. 28 stories were original, and 20 were reprints.
  • We also produced seven re-issue episodes (6 Staff Pick stories, 1 Encore story)
  • This year we published five (and a half) stories by Young Authors, and were the first publication credit for a number of other authors. Our youngest author is a middle-grader who co-authored a story with her father!

You can access all our 2024 original fiction at this link. At the end of December, we’ll be releasing our Staff Picks from 2024.

We welcomed several new associate editors to the team: Rebecca Ahn and Becca Miles. We also wish Somto Ihezue all the best and a fond farewell as he moves on to bigger and better things.

 

Highlights

  • Award nominations: Cast of Wonders was nominated for the Outstanding Fiction Podcast Ignyte Award and the British Fantasy Award for Best Audio Work
  • Forbidden Voices by E J Delaney was nominated for the  2024 Woollahra Digital Literary Award
  • Park’s All-Night Ramyun and Snack Emporium by Seoung Kim was listed as one of the notable works of 2023 in the 2024 edition of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Hugh Howey and John Joseph Adams
  • Milestones! We reached our 600th Episode in August this year, and celebrated with a story by a Young Author: Double Yellow Lines, by J. M. Bueno
  • Team Kudos: Associate Editor Somto Ihezue was nominated for a Nommo award for his short story Like Stars Daring to Shine. Somto is also involved in an exciting collaboration with Innocent Chizaram Ilo on a short film (“On our Skin”) based on Innocent’s story Our Skin Will Now Bear the Testimonies, which was published by Cast of Wonders during our 2019 Banned Books Week event.
  • Various Cast of Wonders crew represented the team at Worldcon in Glasgow – if you missed Associate Editor Samuel Poots’ academic presentation on Terry Pratchett in the Time of Steam-Engines: What Is Our Role in a Pre-determined Future? then you missed a treat!  Editor Katherine Inskip moderated one of two panels on Book Bans and Moral Fascism, and was a panelist on the topic of The Conventions and Cliches of YA Fiction. Editorial Assistant and Associate Editor Amy Brennan entered the Masquerade with a well crafted Outlander-themed costume.

 

Special Events

Cast of Wonders also ran a number of special events through the year

  • Banned Books Week – 3 stories selected for our annual event celebrating the freedom to read
  • Lodestar and Hugo Spotlight episodes – 6 stories highlighting the short fiction of Lodestar Award nominees and Astounding Award nominees
  • Halloween Special Event – 5 pieces of short fiction co-released with our sister shows
  • Young Author Stories – 5 stories accepted from our limited-demographic submissions windows for Young Authors

We are looking forward to a baking-themed Christmas episode this year. Following that, the team will present their Staff Pick episodes for 2024.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay. Graffiti of a boy, screaming, in a Banksy-esque style

Banned Books Week 2024 – open to submissions 15-30th April

Every year in September, Cast of Wonders celebrates Banned Books Week, an annual international event celebrating the freedom to read and raising awareness of the immense social value of free and open access to information.

Unwanted, Unheard: Challenging the Silence

For Banned Books Week 2024, we want to see stories that challenge collective silence, that show the risks and consequences of inattention and inaction. We want the voices of the silenced and unwanted to be centered, in stories that demand to be heard.

At Cast of Wonders, we welcome stories that portray the full spectrum of human experience. We don’t challenge stories; we want stories to challenge us! Cast of Wonders looks for stories that evoke a sense of wonder, have deep emotional resonance, and have something unreal about them. We aim for a 12-17 age range: that means sophisticated, non-condescending stories with wide appeal, and without gratuitous or explicit sex, violence, or pervasive obscene language.

Preference for this submission window is under 5,000 words with an absolute limit of 6,000 words. Flash submissions under 1.5k are also very welcome!

Submissions must adhere to Cast of Wonders guidelines, and our standard rates apply (8c/word for original fiction, $20/$100 for reprints depending on length).  Submissions will be accepted from April 15-30 through our Moksha Portal – we can’t wait to read what you send in!

On Our Skin

Associate Editor Somto Ihezue and author Innocent Chizaram Ilo are currently working on a short film based on Innocent’s story Our Skin Will Now Bear the Testimonies, which was published by Cast of Wonders during our 2019 Banned Books Week event. This a HUGELY exciting project, and it’s just reached its Kickstarter funding goal – check out the campaign for  a sneak peak at how On Our Skin is developing, and maybe help the team reach their stretch goals?

Nerds of a Feather Hugo Recommendations

The Nerds of a Feather team create excellent round-up lists each year for the Hugo Awards, and we’re thrilled to see Cast of Wonders on their shortlist for best semiprozine!  You can check out all of their recommendations via this link (part 4/4, including links to earlier posts). They’ve also highlighted four Cast of Wonders stories in the Short Fiction category:

Both Hope and Breath by Riley Tao (Cast of Wonders 527)
Glass Flies by Gwen C. Katz (Cast of Wonders 548)
Disposable Gabriel by Brian D. Hinson (Cast of Wonders 567)
The Woods in the House by Amanda Cecelia Lang (Cast of Wonders 568 & 569)

Thank you so much, Nerds!

Cast of Wonders Associate Editor recruitment

Cast of Wonders is currently open to applications for new associate editors. We particularly welcome applications from younger people, and people from backgrounds which have historically been excluded from publishing.

Please email backstage@escapeartists.net for more information

Announcing our call for submissions for Banned Books Week 2023!

Every year in September, Cast of Wonders celebrates Banned Books Week, an annual international event celebrating the freedom to read and raising awareness of the immense social value of free and open access to information.

Joining the editorial team for this year’s call is Cast of Wonders Associate Editor, Simon Pan. Thank you, Simon, for the wonderful theme this year!

Guiding Sparks Between the Words: How Stories Illuminate the World Around Us

In times of conflict, division and change, it is more important than ever to build bridges of understanding.  We most commonly encounter the stories of others through news articles or in classrooms, kept at a scholarly or journalistic distance and often biased to favour privileged perspectives. Our own truths may also remain unvoiced and unknown, misunderstood even by those around us.

When it comes to illuminating these truths, stories have a key part to play: they help us to learn and appreciate things from perspectives we might never otherwise consider, and allow us to reshape our own experiences within the transformative lens of fiction. When we share our stories, we guide sparks of kinship and understanding, using narrative and emotion to help others experience a small window into another’s reality.

For Banned Books Week 2023, we want to see stories of discovery, of learning, of misconceptions unraveled, and how stories can serve as a guiding light to help us understand a new perspective, or to teach us valuable lessons when all other methods fail us. What that something is…well, that is up to you!

At Cast of Wonders, we welcome stories that portray the full spectrum of human experience. We don’t challenge stories; we want stories to challenge us! Cast of Wonders looks for stories that evoke a sense of wonder, have deep emotional resonance, and have something unreal about them. We aim for a 12-17 age range: that means sophisticated, non-condescending stories with wide appeal, and without gratuitous or explicit sex, violence, or pervasive obscene language.

Preference for this submission window is under 5,000 words with an absolute limit of 6,000 words. Flash submissions under 1.5k are also very welcome!

Submissions must adhere to Cast of Wonders guidelines.  Submissions will be accepted from June 1 to June 14 through our Moksha Portal – we can’t wait to read what you send in!

Submissions Schedule update

We’ve decided to push back our Banned Books Week submission window to the second half of May, and our next general submissions window to July.

We will be opening as scheduled in the second half of April to young authors only, i.e. authors under the age of 20 as of the end of April.

See our schedule page and submissions guidelines page for more information.

Cast of Wonders Flash Fiction Contest

We’re now in the last few days of voting in the final round of our flash fiction contest, and the competition is fierce!
If you’re a forum member, you can read and vote on the finalists here (and if you’re not a forum member, why not join up, introduce yourself, and join in on the fun?).

The three winning stories will be published here in early 2023!

Introducing our new assistant editors!

Stagehands Assemble!

There’ve been some changes backstage in the last month, and two of our very talented and hard-working staff members have stepped up to join the editorial team at Cast of Wonders. Cup Jacob and Alicia Caporaso have both shown their skills as associate editors in the slushpile; their careful and supportive critiques and advice have helped shape many of our published pieces, and helped the team provide what we hope are useful and fair rejection letters. They’ve got to grips with all the nuts and bolts of the production process, and have taken the lead on several smaller submission windows. Now, it’s time to give them a moment in the spotlight to introduce themselves in their own words.

First up is Alicia Caporaso, who has been with the team for the last five years.

Hello! My name is Alicia Caporaso, and I am so happy to take on the role of Assistant Editor at Cast of Wonders. I first learned about Escape Artists around 2008 through listening to the French-language Science Fiction and Fantasy Podcast Utopod, which, on Science Fiction blogs, was repeatedly and favorably compared to EscapePod. I had to check it out, and have been listening to EscapePod, Podcastle, PseudoPod, and Cast of Wonders ever since (that’s a lot of stories!). I was one of the winners of the first Podcastle Flash Fiction Contest in 2010 with my story The Water Sprite, and I still have my original Podcastle t-shirt that I won! In 2017 I applied to be an Associate Editor with Cast of Wonders and have loved every minute of reading stories submitted to us. I was honored to guest edit Banned Books Week 2022, which gave me an excellent introduction to the behind-the-scenes process of editing our podcast. I am blown away by the diversity and creativity of our authors. We have a true community of storytellers here.

I am a marine archaeologist with undergraduate degrees in Anthropology and Engineering, a Master’s degree in Anthropology, and a Ph.D. in Oceanography (I love it when authors incorporate science into stories!). I work as a marine scientist for the U.S. federal government in the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean. My office is in New Orleans, but I work from Minnesota (yay remote work!). My two little Louisiana Swamp Monsters – they look like dogs, but you know – just experienced their first snow, and I can’t say that they like it yet. We are looking forward to getting to know the speculative fiction community here and I can’t wait to go to my first CONvergence!

And here’s Cup Jacob, with his thoughts about YA fiction and working with Cast of Wonders.

Young Adult Fiction is some of the most impactful literature because we read them at the age we started reading for ourselves. By this I mean we chose to read these stories instead of having an adult decide what we might like.

I wasn’t the nicest of kids and I would get into a lot of trouble in grade school. Detention where I went to school meant having our play hours replaced with library time. And I loved it! I started with the encyclopedias, then I discovered our school’s huge collection of Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and Three Investigators Mysteries. I eventually started going to the library outside of detention hours.

Soon after, I discovered the used book stores and with my student allowance savings I discovered Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn, Ursula LeGuin’s A Wizard of Earthsea, while high school literature classes introduced Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s This Earth of Mankind and Ceres Alabado’s Kangkong 1896.

For some condescending reason, many adults consider young adult literature as easy reading. I don’t see anything wrong with that. This ease in reading is often achieved by a musicality of language and a tightness of structure that many so-called adult stories aspire for. It harkens back to our early civilizations where stories are oral, they are recited to an audience, and they provoke conversation after, building community.

Nowadays, I am often stuck doing things I would rather not be doing and podcasts have helped make those times worth living. It seems that long commute hours and chores have replaced detention of my childhood, while podcasts like Cast of Wonders make these hours not just liveable but wonderful.

I look forward to more stories with you.

Banned Books Week 2022 – call for submissions

To See Yourself in Pages, Paragraphs, Sentences, and Words: Books, Stories, and Representation

Each year, the American Library Association Office of Intellectual Freedom (OIF) compiles a list of the top 10 most challenged books that are requested for removal from schools and libraries. In 2021, the OIF documented 729 challenges of 1597 books and materials; however, it estimates that 82-97% of challenges go unreported. That means approximately 50,000 challenges to books were made in 2021! While trends in the subject of challenged books may reflect reactionary response to social movements that challenge prevailing authorities – reasons given for many top-10 challenges in 2020 during the peak of the Black Lives Matter movement include “promoting anti-police views” – most books are challenged for centering the lived experiences of marginalized peoples along racial, gender, and social lines. 

In the United States, more than 12 states have recently passed laws that restrict how public-school teachers can talk about race, gender, and sexuality in the classroom, including banning associated materials from school libraries. Some states have even begun debating whether to expand these restrictions to public libraries that serve adult readers. (For a discussion of these trends, see this article.) 

At Cast of Wonders, we welcome stories that portray the full spectrum of human (and non-human) experience. We don’t challenge books; we want books and stories to challenge us! 

For Banned Books Week 2022, send us your stories that show how books and stories serve as a beacon for identity, serving to draw peoples and communities together; books that make the statement: “This is who I am, this is who we are, and we will be heard!” (This phrase need not appear in the story but should be a resonant theme). The book should feature prominently in the story and not serve as a prop or McGuffin; however, we encourage creativity in interpreting what a book is and how it is woven into the story. We like to be surprised! We are especially interested in stories that feature joy and hope, even if the setting is intergalactic war or a zombie apocalypse. 

Cast of Wonders looks for stories that evoke a sense of wonder, have deep emotional resonance, and have something unreal about them. We aim for a 12-17 age range: that means sophisticated, non-condescending stories with wide appeal, and without gratuitous or explicit sex, violence or pervasive obscene language.

Preference for this submission window is under 5,000 words with an absolute limit of 6,000 words. Submissions must adhere to Cast of Wonders guidelines. 

Submissions will be accepted from May 1 to May 14 through our Moksha Portal – we can’t wait to read what you send in!

Joining the editorial team for this call is one of our long-standing Associate Editors, Alicia Caporaso. We’re thrilled to have her and all of her expertise on the team for this event.