Don't Go Alone: Creating Space with Shingai Njeri Kagunda

Shingai Njeri Kagunda, T. K. Rex and Doug Henderson discuss editing fiction publications, the triumphant return of Fantasy Magazine, and creating space for underrepresented writers.

Shingai Njeri Kagunda (they/she) is an Afrosurreal/futurist storyteller from Nairobi, Kenya with a Literary Arts MFA from Brown. Shingai’s work has been featured in The Best American Sci-fi and Fantasy 2020 and 2023 editions, Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction in 2021, and Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2020. They have work in Omenana, Fantasy Magazine, FracturedLit, Khoreo, Baffling Magazine, Lightspeed, Psychopomp, Frivolous Comma and several anthologies including Africa Risen, Will This Be A Problem, and Afro-Centered Futurisms in Our Speculative Fiction. Their debut novella, & This is How to Stay Alive, won the Ignyte Award for best novella in 2022. Their short story "Air to Shape Lungs", was chosen in 2023 for the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy list and anthology. Their essay "Black Futurisms vs. Systems of Domination" was nominated for the 2025 British Science Fiction Association award, and their newly released novelette, We Who Will Not Die, was named Locus Recommended Reading. Shingai is the co-founder of Voodoonauts Summer Writing Workshop, a creative writing teacher, an eternal student, and a lover of all things soft and Black.

Other stuff we talked about in the episode:

• Fantasy Magazine
• Podcastle
• Voodoonauts Afrofuturist collective & workshop
• & This Is How To Stay Alive
• Ignyte Awards - centering the contributions and experiences of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) in Speculative Fiction
• FIYAH Magazine - speculative fiction by and about Black people of the African Diaspora
• Let the Star Explode - short story by Shingai Njeri Kagunda
• Hi From Shelling Point - story story by T. K. Rex, in Utopia Magazine
• Arley Sorg - Co-Editor of Fantasy Magazine
• Rooted & Written, BIPOC conference at the Writers Grotto
• The Nebula Awards
• British Fantasy Awards
• #PublishingPaidMe - link to the Vox explainer
• Yvette Lisa Ndlovu
• Sheree Renée Thomas
• Suyi Davies Okungbowa
• Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
• Just Keep Writing podcast
• Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center - a 1984 book about feminist theory by bell hooks