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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!
Speculative fiction is an umbrella term for any literature with a speculative or fantastical element, anything that isn’t strictly realist, such as science fiction, fantasy, folklore, fairy tales, ghost stories, 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 Gulliver's Travel Grant is Upcoming!
Award: $1000 USD
Submissions: Nov 1 - Nov 30, 2025
Winner Announced: January 2026
Since 2004, the Gulliver Travel Grant has been awarded annually to assist writers of speculative literature in their non-academic research. These funds are used to cover airfare, lodging, and other travel expenses. Travel may be domestic or international. You may apply for travel to take place at any point in the following year.
Video Playlist from November Deep Dish Uploaded
Check out our readers from our Deep Dish reading event this past November! Our featured readers were Jay Bonansinga and Eiren Caffall, with rapid-fire readers Tina L. Jens, Eliza Sullivan, Angeli Primlani, Rory Leahy, Sullivan Peterson-Quinn, Connor Nevitt, and Benjamin K. Herrington.
Ep. 69 of MRAH Out Now: "The Visibility Episode"
In this episode of MRAH, Mary Anne and Benjamin pull back the curtain to discuss publishing, the changing industry, and their advice for getting your books in front of the right readers.
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.
Deep Dish Monthly Spotlight: Richard Chwedyk
Chicago born and bred, Richard Chwedyk won a Nebula Award in 2002 for his novella, Bronte’s Egg, and has been nominated for the Hugo, Sturgeon, and Rhysling awards. He’s best known for his “saur” stories, about a group of bioengineered dinosaurs, sold as toys but abandoned and living in a sort of shelter home. Currently, he’s a moving target in the ever-changing, ever-shrinking academic environment at Columbia College Chicago, teaching creative writing, fantasy writing, and Tolkien. Like most science fiction writers, he is “mostly harmless,” but approach with caution.
Our Latest Blog Posts
SLF’s 2025 Older Writers Grant
Here is our shortlist for our 2025 Older Writers Grant! All of these talented writers were selected by one of our jurors to be a
Announcing the Winner of the 2025 Older Writers Grant
Announcing the Winner of the 2025 Older Writers Grant The Speculative Literature Foundation is pleased to announce that Maria Olujic is the winner of the
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, Sue Bedry, 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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