Welcome to the Speculative Literature Foundation!
The Speculative Literature Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting literary quality in speculative fiction. We encourage promising new writers, assist established writers, facilitate the work of quality magazines and small presses in the genre, and work to promote a greater public appreciation of speculative fiction. Our mission is to promote literary quality in speculative fiction through our grants, programming, and more!
The SLF serves the speculative literature community through support from people like you. We’re a 501(c)3, and all donations are tax-deductible in the U.S. You can make a one time donation or become a member to receive cool perks like discounts for our courses and events, access to our bi-monthly writer’s encouragement letter, yearly anthology, and more!
The Working Class Writers Grant, Open Now!
Award: $1000.00 USD
Submissions: September 1 – September 30, 2023
Winner Announced: November 15, 2023
The Working Class Writers Grant is awarded annually to assist working class, blue-collar, poor, and homeless writers who have been historically underrepresented in speculative fiction, due to financial barriers.
October Courses and Workshops
Writing Your Identity: Creating Deep & Rich Characters With Mary Anne Mohanraj
$60 • October 7 • Workshop
In this workshop, you’ll be encouraged to write your identities through the lens of fiction, poetry and/or creative nonfiction.
Plot Considered as a Four-Dimensional Array of Brightly Colored Beads
$60 • October 15 • Workshop
In this class, students will consider story as a collection of related events, each of which occurs at a point in space and time, like a four-dimensional array of brightly colored beads.
Writing the SFF Novelette With Alec Nevala-Lee
$60 • October 21 • Workshop
This workshop will focus on idea generation, structure, and editing with an emphasis on the novelette, as well as elements of craft that can be applied to fiction of any length.
Intro to Writing Speculative Fiction With Eden Robins
$300 • October 25 – November 29 • Course
If you’ve always wanted to try your hand at writing speculative fiction but didn’t know where to begin, this class is for you!
Ep. 58 of MRAH Out Now: "Walter Jon Williams"
In this Deep Dive, Mary Anne Mohanraj and Walter Jon Williams cover the three R’s of writing craft: Raising the stakes, Reveals, and Reversals. This interview is a part of the Portolan Project, an initiative to provide a wealth of exceptional creative writing courses and resources.
Ep. 59 of MRAH Out Now: "Be a River, Not a Pipe"
In this episode of MRAH, Mary Anne and Ben talk about the complexities, wonders, and difficulties of living communally. They explore the systems we put in place to make decisions amongst our own groups, and to deal with potential bad actors in close-knit communities. They also discuss the importance of restorative justice and supporting one another through the fallow periods of our lives.
New Portolan Project Addition: K. Tempest Bradford
“They were essentially recreating the day [September 11th] because they started at whatever time in the morning everything kicked off…and I was like whoa, y’all are doing some heavy ritual magic here. So, I started thinking about that and I started thinking about ways to get into that, the thinking around rituals around death and how we deal with it, especially when it’s a mass death event…”
– K. Tempest Bradford
We recently charted an interview we had with Bradford, an award-winning teacher and media critic who writes speculative fiction steeped in Black Girl Magic. She’s the author of the Nebula nominated Ruby Finley vs. the Interstellar Invasion and over a dozen short stories.
Check out our Deep Dive with Bradford on ritual magic, grief, memory, structure, travel research, and more.
Our Latest Blog Posts
Announcing the Winner of the 2023 Diverse Writers Grant
The Speculative Literature Foundation is pleased to announce Ysabelle Cheung as the winner of the 2023 Diverse Writers Grant. The Diverse Writers grant
Announcing the Winner of the 2023 Diverse Worlds Grant
The Speculative Literature Foundation is pleased to announce Edward Rathke as the winner of the 2023 Diverse Worlds Grant. The Diverse Worlds grant
Donate
Our mission is to promote literary quality in speculative fiction through our grants, programming, and more.
The SLF is made possible by the kind contributions of those who believe in our mission—people like you. We’re a 501(c)3, and all donations are tax-deductible in the U.S.
For gifts over $1,000, gifts of stock, or to explore funding a grant, please contact our Development Director, Margaret Frey, and she’ll be happy to assist you. We encourage you to apply for matching funds from your employer if possible!
If you’d prefer not to use PayPal, we can also accept donations through our local community foundation.
SLF Newsletter
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