FIYAH IS UP FOR A HUGO!

In what is probably the 36th Hugo-related post you’ve read today, I’m here to shout at you that FIYAH is being nominated for a Hugo in the Best Semiprozine category. It’s a STACKED category as we’re on there with some incredible friends and colleagues doing amazing work year in and out:

• Beneath Ceaseless Skies, editor-in-chief and publisher Scott H. Andrews
• Fireside Magazine, edited by Julia Rios, managing editor Elsa Sjunneson-Henry, social coordinator Meg Frank, special features editor Tanya DePass, founding editor Brian White, publisher and art director Pablo Defendini
• FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, executive editors Troy L. Wiggins and DaVaun Sanders, editors L.D. Lewis, Brandon O’Brien, Kaleb Russell, Danny Lore, and Brent Lambert
• Shimmer, publisher Beth Wodzinski, senior editor E. Catherine Tobler
• Strange Horizons, edited by Jane Crowley, Kate Dollarhyde, Vanessa Rose Phin, Vajra Chandrasekera, Romie Stott, Maureen Kincaid Speller, and the Strange Horizons Staff
• Uncanny Magazine, publishers/editors-in-chief Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, managing editor Michi Trota, podcast producers Erika Ensign and Steven Schapansky, Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction Special Issue editors-in-chief Elsa Sjunneson-Henry and Dominik Parisien

I’m also extremely proud to know people both casually and otherwise who are nominated in other categories, (Phenderson, Julia, the whole squad over at Fireside among about a dozen others) some of whom belong to the secret-but-not-so-secret NSS Black SFF writers collective that birthed FIYAH. This has been such a gratifying day.

My boundless love and appreciation to my team: Troy, DaVaun, Brent, Danny, Kaleb, Phenderson, and Brandon. Their *exhaustive* passion for our mission to amplify and celebrate Black creators is what sustains our presence in this field. This labor is all blood, sweat, tears, and truncated Slack messages. We stumble in the balance between this and our other lives, but we make sure we can laugh as we dust each other off and get back to work. In 2.5 years, we’ve built this thing into what some Black writers consider their dream market. That is HUGE. This has been as real a family as one could hope for, staff, writers, and readers, and I’m so happy to see other people love on us as well.

FIYAH grew out of the necessity to fill a void, to shine a light in beautiful dark places that apparently only we could see. But what a thrill to be able to view this another way: FIYAH can exist because people want our stories. We don’t have to prove that anymore. There will be work to do in this field for a long time. Nothing in publishing changes quickly. But at least that question, the one of are people ready for this, has an answer. And it’s a relief that the answer is a resounding yes. We didn’t need a Hugo nod to tell us our work is valid. It’s really, really nice, though.

In addition to all that, we dropped FIYAH #10 yesterday, and Gumroad came through with the sponsorship that will allow the POB Project to grow this year. We have been and will continue to be busy in all the best ways. Thanks to everyone who sees the power of our message and finds it something worth supporting.