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The first book of our 2024 season is out now: the beautiful, surreal, and tender magical realist novel The Jaguar Mask by Michael J. DeLuca.

Check out some of the high praise this book is getting:

“This fascinating political fantasy … [is] poignant and lyrical … [and] will entice those seeking fantasy dealing with serious topics like resource draining and climate justice.” – Publishers Weekly

“An explosive work of magical realism … The Jaguar Mask is an arresting novel about constant upheavals and fights against oppression in which a few people make a difference.” – Foreword Reviews

“The Jaguar Mask is a gorgeously capacious novel. It is sophisticated, playful, frightening, leaping from hardboiled murder mystery to family biography, telling tales of revolution and magic along the way.” – Rebecca Campbell, 2023 Ursula K Le Guin Prize Winning author of Arboreality

Read more about the book here and grab your copy of this uniquely compassionate and fierce fantasy today.

What’s Next in 2024?

After The Jaguar Mask, we have two more books coming out in late 2024:

• Zebra Meridian and Other Stories by Geoffrey W. Cole (September), a dark and absurd short story collection that brings science fiction, fantasy, and horror into conversation with environmental issues and a unique examination of the human condition; and
• You Will Speak For The Dead by R.A. Busby (October), a surprisingly tender body horror novella about a troubled hoarder house cleaner.

Forthcoming Books Acquired During Our Open Call

At the end of 2023 we were open to general submissions. During that open call we acquired the following books:

• Origin of Desire in Orchid Fens by Lynn Hutchinson Lee (novella; dark fantasy; Canadian)
• Seed Beetle by Mahaila Smith (poetry collection; science fiction; Canadian)
• What a Fish Looks Like by Syr Hayati Beker (novella in short stories; science fiction fairy tales)
• The Other Shore by Rebecca Campbell (short story collection; speculative fiction; Canadian)
• The Wildcraft Drones by T.K. Rex (short story collection; interconnected short stories, speculative fiction)
• The Wetworks Miracle by Caleb Sierra (novella; weird horror/dark fantasy)

We’re still working out agreements and reading manuscripts from the call, so will have more acquisition announcements soon! We are always interested in chatting with Canadian and/or BIPOC authors about their environmental storytelling projects, so if this sounds like you and your current WIP, please get in touch via our contact page.

We are so excited to share the news that Rebecca Campbell’s Arboreality has won the 2023 Ursula K. Le Guin $25,000 Prize for Fiction. We were astounded to have another title land on the shortlist, after Cynthia Zhang’s After the Dragons made the UKLGPF shortlist last year. To have a Stelliform Press book win the big prize this year is such a thrill and an honour.

Thank you to the judges William Alexander, Alexander Chee, Karen Joy Fowler, Tochi Onyebuchi, and Shruti Swamy, and to the shortlisted authors for their incredible work. Please check out their shortlisted books, especially if they’re published by a small press.

Check out the virtual awards ceremony recording, where you can hear author readings from all the shortlisted books and a touching acceptance speech from Rebecca Campbell. We are currently in the process of printing a special edition of the Arboreality paperback that will include a refreshed cover with gold foil title and and interior cover featuring botanical drawings of the science fictional tree arbutus aurum.

Join Tiffany Morris, Suzan Palumbo, & Stelliform Press to chat about Morris’s highly anticipated debut novella, the Indigenous swampcore Green Fuse Burning. The event is part of Can*Con programming on October 14th. If you’re a Can*Con attendee, the launch is accessible via Sched. If you are not at Can*Con, grab a ticket for free, or pick up a copy of Green Fuse Burning a discount.

Click here to reserve your ticket and receive Zoom login info.

Come to the launch for Octavia Cade’s You Are My Sunshine and Other Stories, a new eco-horror to solarpunk short story collection. Cade will be in conversation with Arthur C. Clarke winning author Laura Jean McKay, whose collection Gunflower is out in Australia and the UK early October. The conversation promises to be exciting and attendees have a chance to win a copy of Gunflower and other goodies.

Grab a free ticket or a ticket + discounted book here.

We’ve had a busy month with the release of Sordidez and exciting news about a couple exciting awards.

E.G. Condé’s Sordidez at the LA Review of Books

Taryne Jade Taylor has penned an extensive review of Condé’s novella, which situates the book within the history of a Latinx speculative fiction canon. The review also argues for the importance of dialogue between specific branches of Indigenous Futurism, such as the Taínofuturism which Condé is helping to found and the Mesofuturism with which it dialogues in the novella.

The review spent some time on the front page of the LA Review of Books website and how can be found here:

Taínofuturism, the Hope for a Better Future: On E. G. Condé’s “Sordidez” by Taryne Jade Taylor.

An Award Nomination for The House of Drought and a Win for Arboreality

Our 2022 novellas have already made a great showing on this year’s award ballots and now we get to add two more to the list. We’re thrilled to share that Dennis Mombauer’s The House of Drought has been nominated for a World Fantasy Award.

Find the full final ballot at Tor.com.

Rebecca Campbell’s Arboreality, which has already been nominated for a Philip K. Dick Award, an Ursula K. Le Guin Prize, and a Utopia Award, secured a win for Best Cover Art. The win goes to our fabulous cover artist Rachel Yu Lobbenberg. Find the full list of winners at the CSFFA website.

We are grateful to voters and judges for considering Stelliform’s work, and to the readers who make this whole endeavor possible.