"Salaam treats words like the seductive weapons they are. She wields them to weave fierce, gorgeous stories that stroke your sensibilities, challenge your preconceptions and leave you breathless with their beauty."--Nalo Hopkinson, Author of the Nebula nominated novel The New Moon's Arms Kiini Ibura Salaam's short stories (and the characters who inhabit them) are vital, fantastic in all senses of the word, audacious and tender."--Kelly Link, author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated collection Get In Trouble In this eagerly-awaited collection, Kiini Ibura Salaam continues her exploration of the dark, the sensual, and the mysterious with fiction that disturbs, delights, and dazzles. The five stories and one novella collected in When the World Wounds examine the tumultuous nature of the human condition through such wild imaginings as sensual encounters with deer, escapism in a dystopic prison, and volcano women. In "The Taming," a lupine creature is trapped by beasts whose nefarious nature is beyond their prey's understanding. In "Hemmie's Calenture," a woman escaping enslavement is thrust into a war between gods."The Pull of the Wing" is the prequel to Salaam's wildly popular Of Wings, Nectar, and Ancestors trilogy. "Because of the Bone Man" transports readers to the desolate landscape of post-Katrina New Orleans and the struggle of the city's culture bearers to carry on. A welcome follow-up to Salaam's award-winning Ancient, Ancient, When the World Wounds is perceptive and engaging as it examines our world's callous and perilous landscapes while tickling the imagination and startling the senses. "Kiini Ibura Salaam is a natural-born storyteller and a gorgeous writer who chooses her characters and words with the care and skill of a poet. Her stories are transformative, wise and vivid with the quality of fantasy and fable. I loved reading this!"--Sherre Renee Thomas, Editor of the World Fantasy Award winning anthology Dark Matter: Reading the Bones "Salaam's collection...introduces readers to alternate worlds built around magic, sensuality, sexuality, and the search for emotional comfort, however tenuous...Salaam's unusual settings and lonely characters will call to readers who hunger for sex, identity, or just a place to belong."--Publishers Weekly Kiini Ibura Salaam's first collection Ancient, Ancient (Aqueduct Press, 2012) won the James Tiptree Award. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

A gathering of innovative, speculative fictions by writers of color, both established and emerging  The innovative fictions in Infinite Constellations showcase the voices and visions of 30 remarkable writers, both new and established, from the global majority: Native American/First Nation writers, South Asian writers, East Asian writers, Black American writers, Latinx writers, and Caribbean and Middle Eastern writers. These are visions both familiar and strange, but always rooted in the mystery of human relationships, the deep honoring of memory, and the rootedness to place and the centering of culture.The writers in this anthology mirror, instruct, bind and unbind, myth-make and myth-invert, transform and transmute, make us belly-laugh or hum our understanding, gasp or whisper gently, and remember that sometimes we need to holler and fight as we grieve. Any dangers herein, imagined or observed in poem and story, transport us: moving from latent to extant, then unleashed.This work does not presume; it presents and blossoms, creating a constellation of appearances, a symphony of belonging.“In collecting this work,” note editors Khadijah Queen and K. Ibura, “we felt humbled by the love threaded throughout the voices speaking to us in stories and poems that vault beyond expectation and settle in our consciousness as an expansion of what’s possible when we tend to one another with intention. We felt lifted, held aloft in these arrangements of language. We hope that as you read each story and poem, you will find the same sense of empowerment and celebration that we know has sustained us over countless generations, and in their beauty and humor and intelligence and complexity, continue to enrich us still.”CONTRIBUTORSGeorge Abraham / Kenzie Allen / Shreya lla Anasuya / Thea Anderson / Wendy Chin-Tanner / Alton Melvar M. Depanas / Yohanca Delgado / Jennifer Elise Foerster / Aerik Francis / AndrÉ O. Hoilette / Brian K. Hudson / K. Ibura / Pedro Iniguez / Ruth Ellen Kocher / Ra’Niqua Lee / Tonya Liburd / Kenji C. Liu / Shalewa Mackall / Lucien Darjeun Meadows / Melanie Merle / Juan J. Morales / Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint / Cindy Juyound Ok / Daniel JosÉ Older / Soham Patel / Lynn C. Pitts/ Kahadijah Queen / Sheree RenÉe Thomas /  Sarah Sophia Yanni / dg nanouk okpik / shakirah peterson

"Salaam treats words like the seductive weapons they are. She wields them to weave fierce, gorgeous stories that stroke your sensibilities, challenge your preconceptions and leave you breathless with their beauty."--Nalo Hopkinson, Author of the Nebula nominated novel The New Moon's Arms Kiini Ibura Salaam's short stories (and the characters who inhabit them) are vital, fantastic in all senses of the word, audacious and tender."--Kelly Link, author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated collection Get In Trouble In this eagerly-awaited collection, Kiini Ibura Salaam continues her exploration of the dark, the sensual, and the mysterious with fiction that disturbs, delights, and dazzles. The five stories and one novella collected in When the World Wounds examine the tumultuous nature of the human condition through such wild imaginings as sensual encounters with deer, escapism in a dystopic prison, and volcano women. In "The Taming," a lupine creature is trapped by beasts whose nefarious nature is beyond their prey's understanding. In "Hemmie's Calenture," a woman escaping enslavement is thrust into a war between gods."The Pull of the Wing" is the prequel to Salaam's wildly popular Of Wings, Nectar, and Ancestors trilogy. "Because of the Bone Man" transports readers to the desolate landscape of post-Katrina New Orleans and the struggle of the city's culture bearers to carry on. A welcome follow-up to Salaam's award-winning Ancient, Ancient, When the World Wounds is perceptive and engaging as it examines our world's callous and perilous landscapes while tickling the imagination and startling the senses. "Kiini Ibura Salaam is a natural-born storyteller and a gorgeous writer who chooses her characters and words with the care and skill of a poet. Her stories are transformative, wise and vivid with the quality of fantasy and fable. I loved reading this!"--Sherre Renee Thomas, Editor of the World Fantasy Award winning anthology Dark Matter: Reading the Bones "Salaam's collection...introduces readers to alternate worlds built around magic, sensuality, sexuality, and the search for emotional comfort, however tenuous...Salaam's unusual settings and lonely characters will call to readers who hunger for sex, identity, or just a place to belong."--Publishers Weekly Kiini Ibura Salaam's first collection Ancient, Ancient (Aqueduct Press, 2012) won the James Tiptree Award. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

A gathering of innovative, speculative fictions by writers of color, both established and emerging  The innovative fictions in Infinite Constellations showcase the voices and visions of 30 remarkable writers, both new and established, from the global majority: Native American/First Nation writers, South Asian writers, East Asian writers, Black American writers, Latinx writers, and Caribbean and Middle Eastern writers. These are visions both familiar and strange, but always rooted in the mystery of human relationships, the deep honoring of memory, and the rootedness to place and the centering of culture.The writers in this anthology mirror, instruct, bind and unbind, myth-make and myth-invert, transform and transmute, make us belly-laugh or hum our understanding, gasp or whisper gently, and remember that sometimes we need to holler and fight as we grieve. Any dangers herein, imagined or observed in poem and story, transport us: moving from latent to extant, then unleashed.This work does not presume; it presents and blossoms, creating a constellation of appearances, a symphony of belonging.“In collecting this work,” note editors Khadijah Queen and K. Ibura, “we felt humbled by the love threaded throughout the voices speaking to us in stories and poems that vault beyond expectation and settle in our consciousness as an expansion of what’s possible when we tend to one another with intention. We felt lifted, held aloft in these arrangements of language. We hope that as you read each story and poem, you will find the same sense of empowerment and celebration that we know has sustained us over countless generations, and in their beauty and humor and intelligence and complexity, continue to enrich us still.”CONTRIBUTORSGeorge Abraham / Kenzie Allen / Shreya lla Anasuya / Thea Anderson / Wendy Chin-Tanner / Alton Melvar M. Depanas / Yohanca Delgado / Jennifer Elise Foerster / Aerik Francis / AndrÉ O. Hoilette / Brian K. Hudson / K. Ibura / Pedro Iniguez / Ruth Ellen Kocher / Ra’Niqua Lee / Tonya Liburd / Kenji C. Liu / Shalewa Mackall / Lucien Darjeun Meadows / Melanie Merle / Juan J. Morales / Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint / Cindy Juyound Ok / Daniel JosÉ Older / Soham Patel / Lynn C. Pitts/ Kahadijah Queen / Sheree RenÉe Thomas /  Sarah Sophia Yanni / dg nanouk okpik / shakirah peterson