To imagine and build better futures, we’re championing a new wave of inclusive storytelling that centers nonhuman characters and positive multispecies interactions. Whether the setting is urban or rural or a space station, we’re looking for stories and artwork that put human-nonhuman or even nonhuman-nonhuman relations in the spotlight. We encourage creators to imagine nonhuman main characters, and we welcome narratives that acknowledge the agency of multispecies actors, both in the worldbuilding and in the plot. Because this is a solarpunk anthology, stories that acknowledge the realities of climate change and address those challenges through uplifting possibilities will have the best chance.

We’re defining “creature” broadly, so let us see your depictions of wild animals as well as domesticated ones, of intelligent fungi or plastic-eating bacteria, of lakes and rivers granted personhood. Reconsider the traditional tropes of alien first contact and sentient AI, and envision them in a way that doesn’t replicate the same old oppressions and assumptions of human dominance. We’re looking for work that acknowledges humans as one species in a larger ecosystem, for human characters who strive for cooperation with (rather than dominance over) other creatures, for settings that reflect a sustainable balance of nature and technology.