Deeply saddened and more than a little shocked that we've lost Celeste Rita Baker. I had the privilege of editing her once—do read “De MotherJumpers” in Strange Horizons! strangehorizons.com/wordpress/fi...

Heartbroken to say the least. My dear friend and CW classmate Celeste Rita Baker has passed away. Words aren't enough to describe what an amazing, talented, warm, and loving human being she was. The world is so much emptier now. 💔

dick cheney died? congrats everyone

Gang, Archita Mittra needs our help. She's a vital critical voice, a great writer of fiction, and more importantly she's part of the community we've built and are building here. Let's help her reach a place where she can carry on being all of those things, and write whatever she has for us next. 🙏

Thank you to everyone who's donated & shared so far for your generosity. But Archita is at 70% to her goal & donations have slowed. Please help her get some security in this terrible time if you can.

Congrats World Fantasy Award winners and nominees!!

This week!

Vajra Chandrasekera has officially been awarded the 2025 iteration of the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize and our editor, Ayesha Channa, interviewed him about his experience. Interview Link: tasavvurnama.com/vajra-chandr... 🔮- #SouthAsian #SpeculativeFiction

Among other things, about Beckett's science-fictional play KRAPP'S LAST TAPE vajra.me/2025/10/30/t...

The ceasefire is not increasingly fragile. It is non-existent, as Israel continues its genocidal campaign.

"Rakesfall is an extraordinary achievement in science fiction, and a titanic work of art.” Congratulations Vajra Chandrasekera ( @vajra.me ) on the award of the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction! polity.lk/vajra-chandr...

Enchanting, playful, invigorating. Vajra compels his exquisite prose to contort and cavort against the borders of the page. The kind of prose you savor on your tongue, its ideas ten rich courses in three. I’m only 100 pages in and I’m just blown away. Please read it.

Totally deserved. You should check it out. Yes YOU

I have just finished the audiobook and it is a sumptuous experience that propels you through infinity and beyond! Highly recommended. Now I need to buy the physical book so I can re-read and make notes.

An incredibly well crafted story by @vajra.me -- from 2019?!-- that feels so au courant, as if it were written through the lens of this precise moment future-sf.com/fiction/apol...

Intergalactic Mixtape is live! This week, there’s a special section on the @ursulakleguin.com Prize for Fiction, with links to a collection of reviews for the winner, Rakesfall.

🎉ICYMI!🎉 We are DELIGHTED that @vajra.me's RAKESFALL is the winner of the 2025 @ursulakleguin.com Prize for Fiction! Huge congratulations Vajra and to all of the other finalists! See Vajra's acceptance speech here: https://geni.us/ursulak25 Buy the book: https://geni.us/rakesfall

An ethics class I'm taking just introduced me to this incredible short story by the amazing @vajra.me. Please read this. I feel changed from having done so. Thank you Vajra. Truly: future-sf.com/fiction/apol...

Archita is 66% to her goal--please keep sharing & donating if you can to help her get some security in this awful time. Thank you to everyone who's sharing & donating for your generosity.

📚 An extremely inadequate review of Rakesfall, by @vajra.me. #books

I'm doing an online interview with @kennethluke.bsky.social for @huxleyandhiro.bsky.social …iiiin about forty minutes—it's free and open to anyone! Drop in if you're interested and have a free hour or two. Details here: www.eventbrite.com/e/an-evening...

If you can, please donate to help one of our regular contributors in this time of need.

strongly endorse rakesrotting

WHAT IF, hear me out, we just got into bed and (re) read RAKESFALL all day and talked about THEORIES and LOVE and DEATH and WORMS and LEVERET and ANNELID and RESISTANCE.

Congratulations to @vajra.me , a shout out to @detroitjusticecen.bsky.social , a review of Iron Garden Sutra, a celebration of @othersidespec.bsky.social , and a cat: buttondown.com/yarntheory/a...

"There is nothing inherently liberatory in the imagination,but it must be made so." Please watch the Ursula K. Le Guin prize acceptance speech from @vajra.me and read his work, and support the Sameer Project.

Just donated what we could spare. Please consider donating yourself; that's got to be a truly horrible situation to deal with on multiple levels.

SFF folks: Archita Mittra is one of ours—you know her Ignyte Award-nominated critical writing in @locusmag.bsky.social, @strangehorizons.bsky.social, and @reactorsff.bsky.social, and her short fiction, most recently in @lightspeedmagazine.com. She needs our help. gofund.me/cd9b937c2

Fellow Calcuttan writer/editor Archita Mittra is in desperate need of financial help. She recently lost her father, her home was damaged in the recent rains, & her mother's in hospital. They don't have insurance, & she's a freelancer. I can vouch for her. Please share widely & donate:

after one of my first stories was published, architta reached out to me on twitter to strike up a conversation. it meant so much to a new writer like i was!! please help support someone who is so supportive to the sff community -- www.gofundme.com/f/help-archi...

I also want to thank @theoactually.bsky.social & @mollytempleton.com of the @ursulakleguin.com Foundation for doing the excellent (and hard) work of running this prize & hosting the panel. It was a privilege to work with you & my fellow selectors--my gratitude.

I urge everyone to seek out RAKESFALL and every other book on the shortlist. You will find each of them worth your time, and each of them a significant, beautiful part of this accursed century's literature. Whatever happens, great art still exists, against all odds, and that is to be celebrated.

Congratulations to @vajra.me for winning the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for his ferociously visionary RAKESFALL! & congratulations to all the finalists; I can confirm that this was an enormously challenging decision to make--because each novel in the shortlist was worthy of winning in its own way.

truly the best and most fun and thought-provoking and wildest book i read this year

Congratulations also to the other finalists: Andrea Hairston, Nola Hopkinson, Margaret Killjoy, Jared Pechaček, Eden Robins, Nghi Vo, and Ursula Whitcher. It was an extraordinary short list, and I highly recommend reading all of these books. More info on all of them below!

Congratulations to @vajra.me and RAKESFALL! It was a joy to be on the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction jury this year, alongside Indra Das, Kelly Link, Sequoia Nagamatsu, and Rebecca Roanhorse. I'll treasure our discussions of RAKESFALL and the other finalists for a long time. Congrats, Vajra!

I have a few reviews linked here: vajra.me/books/rakesf... (sorry for the qt instead of reply, can't seem to do the latter on this post)

Do you have a review or discussion of Rakesfall? Please share it with me! forms.gle/EdDytqbUtjz8... #booksky

“There is nothing inherently liberatory in the imagination, but it must be made so. It is necessary to pay attention to what is being written, to what we’re writing, and to what we are reading.”

Thank you @vajra.me for calling for donations to the Sameer Project and centering Palestine in your brilliant acceptance speech 👏

Big congrats to Vajra Chandrasekera for RAKESFALL's win; well deserved! (The entire UKLG Prize list is stellar, by the way: a snapshot of diverse literary excellence.) ARB editor @mishagw.bsky.social interviewed @vajra.me about the novel last year:

"a book about power... & the arrogance and undeserved self-belief of the powerful, their bottomless desire for more power, more wealth, until they shamelessly strive for not only a throne but godhood. This is in fact the world we already live in..." Yeah, gonna go get this now! Rght up my alley.

Excellent news - Rakesfall thoroughly deserves this recognition. I hope it leads to further discussion of (and attention on) what is a super important text. As I wrote for SH’s 2024 in review, “Rakesfall comes not to revivify the hoary bromides of SFF but dissolve them entirely into something new.”

and well worth listening to @davidnaimon.bsky.social 's superb interview with @vajra.me it goes deep on religion, politics, and just how Vajra conjures and structures his epic, brilliant novels

Also, don't miss Vajra's incredibly powerful acceptance speech (fitting given how many of Le Guin's speeches were and are so unforgettable): youtu.be/Y5h5ZDjWPTc?...

Congratulations Vajra! ICYMI: here is our deep dive together into RAKESFALL, the winner of the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction Audio: tinhouse.com/podcast/vajr... @ursulakleguin.com @vajra.me

UKL award shortlist was absurdly good this year, and @vajra.me’s RAKESFALL is a masterpiece that richly deserves this honor. Please go read it if you haven’t yet! also the rest of that shortlist!

So very happy for @vajra.me winning the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction!!! If you still haven't read Rakesfall you should remedy that soon!

O Vajra tá grandão, já tinha vencido o Locus e o Nebula com seu livro anterior. Editoras brasileiras, reajam minhas filhas