We are raising funds to publish Problem Daughters, an anthology of speculative fiction by and about marginalized women, edited by Nicolette Barischoff, Rivqa Rafael and Djibril al-Ayad, to be published by Futurefire.net Publishing.

Our funding goal of $9,000 will allow us to pay our contributors professional rates ($0.06/word for short stories, $100 flat rate for poems and essays). It will also pay for cover art and internal illustrations, publicity and advertising, review copies, rewards for supporters, and other expenses involved in publishing a full-length anthology of challenging, engaging works.

Now that our campaign has reached $4,500 of funding, we’re able to guarantee pro rates for fiction, but if we stop at that level, we'll have to produce a much shorter anthology, without essays or internal art. We feel it’s particularly important to pay professional rates to the authors we’re hoping to publish in this anthology, who will be predominantly marginalized people themselves.

Potential contributors please note: our call for submissions is now open to short stories and poems! We look forward to reading your work.

Who we are

Futurefire.net Publishing is the publisher of The Future Fire magazine of social-political speculative fiction, and of several anthologies: Fae Visions of the Mediterranean (2016, co-edited by Valeria Vitale), TFF-X (2015, co-edited by Cécile Matthey and Valeria Vitale), Accessing the Future (2015, co-edited by Kathryn Allan), We See a Different Frontier (2013, co-edited by Fabio Fernandes), and Outlaw Bodies (2012, co-edited by Lori Selke).  Djibril al-Ayad, a French-born historian and futurist, co-edited these anthologies and has edited TFF since 2005.

Nicolette Barischoff was born with spastic cerebral palsy, which has only made her more awesome. Her fiction has appeared in Long Hidden, Accessing the Future, The Journal of Unlikely Academia, Podcastle, and Angels of the Meanwhile. She regularly writes about disability, feminism, sex- and body-positivity, and how all these fit together. She’s been on the front page of CBS New York, where they called her activism public pornography and suggested her face was a Public Order Crime.

Rivqa Rafael is a queer Jewish writer and editor based in Sydney. She started writing speculative fiction well before earning degrees in science and writing, although they have probably helped. Her previous gig as subeditor and reviews editor for Cosmos magazine likewise fueled her imagination. Her short stories have appeared in Hear Me Roar (Ticonderoga Publications), The Never Never Land (CSFG Publishing), and Defying Doomsday (Twelfth Planet Press). In 2016, she won the Ditmar Award for Best New Talent.

Risks and challenges

Publishing an anthology has risks, which we have considered and have contingency plans to minimize. If we don’t reach our minimum funding target, we will still go ahead with a semi-pro anthology, and whatever happens all backers will receive a high-quality print publication and other promised perks. If we don’t receive as many quality submissions as we’re hoping for, we will extend our call for submissions and reach out more actively to potential contributors. In the event of unexpected setbacks, we have a strong network of collaborators to fall back on, and extensive experience in solving problems as they arise.

However, we think these risks are minimal. We believe that this project is important and exciting. FutureFire.net Publishing has run three successful crowdfunding campaigns for previous anthologies, and produced two others without crowdfunding. We’re confident that we can deliver the rewards our backers are promised—and produce a beautiful, professional volume of stories from voices that need to be heard.

Other ways you can help

Have a minute to spare? We would be grateful for any support and signal boosting for our fundraising campaign. Please tweet, blog, and share links to our campaign for Problem Daughters. We talk about this campaign at the TFF blog, at Djibril, Nicci and Rivqa’s Twitter accounts or the #ProblemDaughters hashtag, and Facebook. You can also use the buttons here on Indiegogo to share this fundraiser with your friends and contacts.

Header image credit and caption: Illustration of "Dare", The Future Fire no. 26 (© 2013 Eric Asaris). Image shows the silhouette of a long-haired woman in a long dress, her arms outstretched as she looks at the background, a yellow, orange and brown star chart. 

Overview image credit and caption: Illustration of "Rustsong", The Future Fire no. 32 (© 2015 Cécile Matthey). Image shows a nonbinary youth with dirty, beige skin holding a knife in their left hand, against a background of an underground cave.

Text images captions, top to bottom:

(1) Collage of The Future Fire  covers (from left: issues 30, a woman with white skin and hair holds a violin and bow in an auditorium, as music pages, drones and hearts float around her; 29, two young women kiss, one of whom has brown skin and short black curly hair, a gray coat and a satchel, while the other has pale skin, straight black hair and a pink coat; 21, a woman with light brown skin wears a uniform comprising a brown jacket and cornered hat; and 12, a naked woman with a bald head covers her body with her arms while being surrounded by floating cogs).

(2) Cover of Sofia Samatar's The Winged Histories, which features a young woman with black hair and brown skin. She wears a uniform of a green jacket, red sash and blue pants. She rides a large, mythical creature similar to a vulture.

(3) A collage of six photos, each featuring one of three crocheted undead dolls made by Valeria Vitale in various settings. The dolls are 20cm tall. One has the likeness of an older person with long gray hair, beige skin, a purple-and-white spotted shirt, and navy pants. The second has long ginger hair, mismatched eyes and beige skin, and wears a pink checked shirt, green cardigan and blue pants. The third has pale skin and short black hair and a black moustache, and wears a teal shirt and navy pants. 

(4) A collage of Futurefire.net Publishing anthologies (from left: Outlaw Bodies, a person, drawn in black and white, leans over with their hands to their head while black cables emanate from their scalp; the background is multicoloured; We See a Different Frontier, a green, red and yellow patchwork spaceship orbits a green and blue planet; Accessing the Future, a brown-skinned woman in a space suit orbits a blue and white planet; TFFX, the title of the book appears as though sculpted on a rocky surface with a dark background; and Fae Visions of the Mediterranean, a white sailboat is attacked by a sea serpent in a turbulent ocean).