Tucked into a corner in Shoreline’s Black-owned Black Coffee Northwest (BCNW), sits a bright blue and purple vending machine. This vending machine isn’t like other vending machines, stuffed with stale Fritos and old Rice Krispie treats. Instead, it’s filled with science-fiction books by Black authors — just swipe your credit card, and a book by Nichelle Nichols or Octavia Butler is all yours.
Witchcraft, futuristic tech, goblins, mermaids, magical spells, dystopian/utopian futures, and other fantastical imaginings are all common themes in science fiction. And every Black nerd knows that there is a sizable number of Black people who love to read the genre. So why is it still so difficult to track down speculative fiction stories written by contemporary Black women authors? There’s certainly no shortage of Black women writing in the genre. And many of those writers are incredibly prolific. The biggest challenge seems to be curatorial. Some of these works remain “undiscovered” by a wide swath of readers because there are not enough people who seek out, read, and vet published science fiction stories written by Black women.
