We’ve been out and about online and on social media for two weeks now, and it’s been a whirlwind. We’ll post updates roughly once per week through our Kickstarter to provide more details about the perks as well as about the amazing group of science fiction and fantasy author’s we’ve lined up with commissioned stories for our first year of publication. We already have a lot of updates so we’re just going to jump right into them.
The Buzz
We’ve been busy talking with top-notch science fiction and fantasy authors, putting together an amazing list of solicited stories that we’ll publish in addition to work from our general submission pools. We’ll announce a couple of those authors each week with weekly update between now and when the Kickstarter campaign launches on October 1, 2021.
This week, we’re thrilled to announce that both Alaya Dawn Johnson and Nisi Shawl are among the authors providing original work for Solarpunk Magazine.
Alaya Dawn Johnson is an award-winning author of speculative fiction for adults and young adults. Her 2013 novel The Summer Prince is listed by best-sci-fi-books(dot)com as the second best solarpunk book of all time.
Nisi Shawl is an African-American writer, editor, and journalist. They are best known as an author of science fiction and fantasy short stories who writes and teaches about how fantastic fiction might reflect real-world diversity of gender, sexual orientation, race, colonialism, physical ability, age, and other sociocultural factors. They are also the author of Everfair, an African steampunk novel that was a finalist for the 2016 Nebula Award, and co-author of the book, Writing the Other: A Practical Approach, a seminal text on writing diverse characters.
Kickstarter Updates
The most important update we have on the Kickstarter Campaign is that the start date has been pushed back one week to October 1st. Trust us, you won’t be sorry!
In addition to providing fantastic original fiction for Solarpunk Magazine, we are incredibly grateful that both Alaya Dawn Johnson and Nisi Shawl have contributed perks to our Kickstarter Campaign.
Mrs. Johnson has contributed a signed copy of seminal solarpunk novel The Summer Prince. Mx. Shawl has generously contributed a one hour of her to host an online meet & greet with five of our Kickstarter backers. For one hour you and a small group of other backs get to chat with Mx. Shawl, ask questions about her work, and meet one of the premier science fiction authors of our time!
New Solarpunk Magazine Team Member
We couldn’t be more excited to announce that creative director and strategist Hal Hefner has joined our editorial the Solarpunk Magazine Creative Director! Hal uses award winning illustration, design, writing, and strategy to create digital and physical experiences. As an illustrator he’s worked on all types of digital and print media for books, games, video games, magazines, comic books, posters, storyboards, concept art, trading cards, pitches for ad campaigns and more.
He is most recognized for his pop art series, CONSUME, which has been shared on the internet millions of times while also being shown in galleries and festivals all over the world. In addition to CONSUME, Hal wrote and Illustrated Heavy Metal Magazine’s first webcomic, Gates. He is also an accomplished marketing executive who creates social, experiential and 360 campaigns for major entertainment properties such as movies, TV/streaming, games, toys and more. Most recently he has worked on campaigns for The Wheel of Time for Amazon, Titans for HBOMax and Loki for Disney+, to name just a few.
With his creative toolkit, Hal is dedicated to the advancement of new narratives for the human race that do not end with a cyberpunk dystopia or an apocalypse. He is currently in production on the Serpentseed, an episodic solarpunk, drama epic set in the near future, and created with multiple forms of media. #DemandABetterFuture
We are excited to work with Hal and about what he has to bring to Solarpunk Magazine. Our next update will post in a week. Until then, follow us Twitter for daily updates.