It’s time for the fourth and final Eating the Fantastic conversation from StokerCon 2026, following my culinary chats with Arley Sorg, Kate Maruyama, and Jamal Hodge.

This episode’s guest is Todd Sanders, a poet as well as both the editor and publisher of Air & Nothingness Press, which is about to celebrate its 30th anniversary. I find the evolution of that press fascinating, for what began with the release of French Surrealist poetry in translation evolved into one of the more interesting genre presses out there — one with anthology calls so eclectic my reluctant muse — which is reluctant to rise to the challenge of theme anthologies — even woke for one of them.

We discussed how his love for French Surrealist poet Robert Desnos led to the creation of Air and Nothingness Press, why he’s been able to survive for 30 years when so many other presses have failed, which poet he wanted to be when he grew up, the art objects he created from from the short stories of Mary Robinette Kowal and Benjamin Rosenbaum, the reason he decided to publish an anthology of stories with obnoxiously long titles, what he’s learned from using Kickstarter to fund books,  a spam text I received which sparked his idea for a future anthology, plus much more.

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My third Eating the Fantastic conversation during the 2026 StokerCon — following my chats with Arley Sorg and Kate Maruyama — was with the award-winning writer of horror poetry and prose Jamal Hodge mere hours after his Bram Stoker Award win of the previous night.

That isn’t the only award recognition Hodge has received along his writing journey, for he’s also an Elgin Award winner, a Dwarf Stars Award winner and a Rhysling Award finalist. His collections include The Dark Between the Twilight, which earned him his first Bram Stoker Award nomination, as well as Everything Endless, written with previous guest of this podcast Linda Addison, which is what resulted in this year’s win.

His creative life isn’t limited to the page, for he’s also a multi-award-winning filmmaker who’s a sitting Board Member of Harlem Film House and Axs Lab. His films have been an official selection in over 100 Film Festivals, and have won more than 50 awards including The Vanguard Award (Best of The Fest) at the Hip Hop Film Festival (2020), Best Director at The Chelsea Film Festival (2020) and Best Director at GenreBlast (2020). He co‑produced the Academy Award‑nominated documentary Armed Only With a Camera: The Life & Death of Brent Renaud, and is producing the upcoming animated feature Pierre the Pigeon Hawk. He also directed the first season of the Discovery ID series Primal Instinct.

His upcoming books include I’m Not a Good Person, I’m a New Yorker from Crystal Lake Publishing in Sept 2026, plus Shards of Gotham: New York City Through the Looking Glass from Ruadán Books in June 2027.

We discussed how winning a Stoker Award the previous night altered his ambitions, why Linda Addison is his favorite collaborator, how most things we think of as choices aren’t, why he prefers Batman to Spider-Man, the reason the environment in his stories is not your friend, the way the living are controlled by the dead, how he always starts a project thinking it’s one thing only to discover it’s something else, what Mega Man has to do with him becoming a better writer, his favorite short story of all time, how 1984 made him realize what writing could do, the way poetry healed him, plus much more.

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My second Eating the Fantastic conversation during StokerCon — following last episode’s chat with Arley Sorg — was with Kate Maruyama.

Kate’s is the author of Alterations and The Collective (both published in 2025), plus Bleak Houses (2023) and Harrowgate (2013). Her novella Family Solstice was named Best Fiction Book of 2021 by Rue Morgue Magazine. Her short work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Analog and Asimov’s, and she’s a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, plus winner of the Uncharted Short Story Prize. She served on the working board for Women Who Submit, and is currently on the Board of Directors for the Shirley Jackson Awards.

We discussed the way her love for the Golden Age of Hollywood began, the bribes her mother paid her so she’d write (and the reason she stopped paying), why abandoned short stories make marvelous prompts, the most important thing to teach about writing, how to decide which of her two 2025 Hollywood novels you should read first, the beauty of the novella form, the reasons she cut 100 pages from one of her recent novels, the difficulties in writing for theme anthologies, the 350-page novel she turned into a short story (and what she learned from the process), plus much more.

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Out in the real world, I find myself straddled between July’s Readercon and August’s Worldcon, but on Eating the Fantastic’s timeline, June’s StokerCon is just about to begin. My first guest of four from that Pittsburgh con is Arley Sorg. Arley’s an associate literary agent at kt literary, and long-time listeners will have previously heard me chat with him briefly during my 2017 Nebula Awards weekend lightning-round donut episode.

Arley’s a 2022 Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award recipient, a 2021 and 2022 World Fantasy Award finalist, as well as a 2022 Locus Award finalist for his work as co-Editor-in-Chief at Fantasy Magazine. He was a 2022 Ignyte Award finalist in two categories: for his work as a critic, and for his essay “What You Might Have Missed” in Uncanny Magazine.

He’s a senior editor at Locus, a reviewer for Lightspeed, a columnist for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and an interviewer for Clarkesworld. He was a guest critiquer for the 2023 Odyssey Writing Workshop and the week five instructor for the 2023 Clarion West Workshop. Plus he’s out there across social media promoting the philosophy writers should “never give up, never surrender” as much as I have.

We discussed the difficulty in getting the help you need as a beginning writer when you don’t know what you don’t know, the serendipity that got him a job at Locus, how to inhabit the community that is while envisioning the community that could be, why an agent might prefer in-person pitches over email, the importance of doing things without an agenda, the way we learned to deal with both rejecting and being rejected, how to make sense of the myths and rumors of science fiction publishing, why he feels comfortable in his role as an agent, plus much more.

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It’s time to say farewell to this year’s Balticon with the second of two conversations I recorded for you there, the first being last episode’s BBQ lunch with Mark L. Van Name. This time around you’ll eavesdrop as I chat and chew with award-winning writer Somto Ihezue, who at the time of our conversation was both a Nebula and Locus Award finalist for “We Begin Where Infinity Ends,” published last year in Clarkesworld. Ihezue went on to win the Locus Award for that novelette shortly thereafter.

He was also nominated in 2023 for a British Fantasy Award — the Sydney J. Bounds Award for Best Newcomer. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in Tor: Africa Risen Anthology, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Fireside Magazine, Podcastle, Escape Pod, Strange Horizons, Poetry Magazine, Cossmass Infinities, Flash Fiction Online, Nightmare, OnSpec Magazine, Omenana, Africa In Dialogue, Mothersound: The Sauútiverse Anthology, The Year’s Best Anthology of African Speculative Fiction, and others.

He’s also been involved on the other side of the writer/editor equation, as Acquiring Editor at Android Press and Associate Editor for Cast of Wonders.

We discussed why fireflies matter, how the social media algorithm led him to writing workshops, finding the courage required to write his award-winning story, why the literature of the fantastic is his chosen playground, how he brings the geography of his stories to life, the startling fact his first published short story was also the first he ever wrote, the way the Clarion workshop experience made his writing better, the importance of community, the way readers speak about his poetry vs. the way they speak about his prose, how his editing gigs helped make his own rejections less bothersome, plus much more.

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I captured two fascinating Eating the Fantastic conversations for you during last month’s Balticon. I wish I could have squeezed in a third, but planning for and hosting the podcast’s 10th anniversary party there — where I served up 26 dozen donuts in the con suite — exhausted some of my spoons.

First up, my lunch with award-winning writer Mark L. Van Name, recorded on the con’s opening day several hours before programming began. Balticon was the perfect place to break bread with Van Name, because 18 years earlier there, he won the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel for his 2007 book One Jump Ahead. That was the first of his Baen Books about Jon and Lobo, which include Slanted Jack (2008), Overthrowing Heaven (2009), Children No More (2010), and No Going Back (2012). His short fiction has been published in magazines and anthologies such as Asimov’s Science Fiction, When the Music’s Over, Full Spectrum 3, Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic, and many more.

Van Name is more than his many short stories and novels, for he was also the cofounder of the Sycamore Hill Writer’s Workshop with previous guest of the podcast John Kessel, as well as the editor of the critical magazine of short fiction, Short Form.

We discussed his first short story sale to a 1979 Clarion classmate of mine, why it sometimes takes him decades before he feels a story’s ready to send out, the reason he still has a massive comic book collection (and why I don’t), the comic book which helped save his life, the reason he doesn’t require advances on his novels, his mixed feelings about writing workshops, the 17 minutes Harlan Ellison spent savaging one of his stories, why you have to let go of caring what readers make of your writing, how his John and Lobo series was born, the way he balanced a demanding day job with the writing life, plus much more.

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Two Hugo Award-nominated podcasts collide in the fifth and final episode of Eating the Fantastic recorded during this year’s Eastercon. John Coxon and Alison Scott, two-thirds of the award-winning team behind Octothorpe (absent their equally entertaining cohost Liz Batty) took me on walkabout to a nearby Nando’s so I could experience its peri-peri chicken for the first time — and we recorded not just our meal, but the hikes there and back again.

We discussed the many first-time Eastercon attendees I encountered who were there due to their podcast, Nando’s place in British culture and why it was chosen to be our venue for this episode, what they’re willing to reveal about cohost Liz Batty in her absence, how the coming of COVID-19 kickstarted the creation of Octothorpe, why they didn’t launch an old-school fanzine instead, how the first episode wasn’t even originally intended to be the first episode, why we’re still here considering 90% of podcasts don’t make it past three episodes, how to comment responsibly on fandom while being a part of fandom, the reason their letters of comment section is so important, what changed about the show once they realized people were actually listening, advice for those who’d like to start podcasts of their own, plus much more.

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Out in the real world, I’m straddled between last weekend’s Balticon and next weekend’s StokerCon, but here on the Eating the Fantastic timeline, I’m still back attending Eastercon. So please join me in Birmingham and take your seat at the table for my dinner with John Jarrold.

Jarrold ran three science fiction and fantasy imprints in the UK since 1988, and over the years worked at Orbit Books, Macdonald Futura (now Little, Brown UK), Legend Books, Random House UK, Simon & Schuster, and others. Starting in 2002, he began acting as a script doctor for agents and new authors, and did freelance editing for publishers including Hodder & Stoughton, Random House, HarperCollins, Pan Macmillan, Transworld, Simon & Schuster, Orion/Gollancz, Constable & Robinson, and Time Warner. In 2004 he launched the John Jarrold Literary Agency, which he still runs today.

I could provide a list of the authors he’s worked with over the years, but it would make for a shorter list if I told you who he hasn’t worked with.

We discussed his first Eastercon 53 years ago, his “obsessive” love for J. R. R. Tolkien, the best commercial deal he ever did, how to dispassionately judge the writing of people you already know, his editorial encounter with Michael Caine, the bidding war over George R. R. Martin’s  A Game of Thrones, how he learned to write editorial revision letters writers would understand, the ways in which working with authors of science fiction is different than in the wider world of publishing, when it’s time for an author to reinvent themselves under a pseudonym, splitting one’s time between the business and artistic sides of publishing, what he means when he says getting published “is the jam on the bread, it’s not the bread,” the sorts of submissions he’s seeing too much and too little of at his agency, plus much more.

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My guest this third of five conversations recorded last month during the UK national convention Eastercon is Charles Stross, an 18-time Hugo Award-nominated writer who’s won three times for his novellas. I’ve been reading him for nearly four decades, ever since his first Interzone short story publication in 1987, but he really blew me away with his 2001 Asimov’s novelette “Lobsters,” which seems to have made an impression on the rest of the world as well, for it went on to become the first of his stories to be nominated for a Hugo and a Nebula.

He’s also won Locus Awards for both Best Novel and Best Novella, and has been shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. His novels have also won the Kurd Lasswitz and Italia Awards. The Regicide Report, the final book in his Laundry Files series, was released in January. His other series include Merchant Princess and the Singularity. Plus he’s got a whole new series in the works, one for which I got an advance peek, and you’ll hear us talk all about it in the conversation which follows.

We discussed the twelve “novel-shaped objects” he wrote before making his first professional sale, what changed in his life which meant instead of taking three years to write one novel he could write three novels in one year, why back at the beginning of his career he considered himself the “failure to launch” of the Interzone generation of writers (and how that changed), how to best take the temperature of critique group criticism, why it was time to wrap up his Laundry Files series (and who he had to become in order to be able to write that finale), the way the opening sentence of an as yet unfinished novel became the seed for a new series in progress, how his love for Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat novels ties into his next project, the evolving nature of convention-going for long-time attendees, and much more.

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One of the first things I did after deciding to attend this year’s Eastercon in Birmingham was research the city’s culinary specialties, which is how I learned about the Birmingham balti, so famous the city has even applied for cultural heritage protection for the cuisine. On the first night of the con, award-winning writer Paul McAuley and I headed over to Shababs — which reportedly serves up the best — to check some out.

McAuley has published twenty-five novels — the most recent of which, Loss Protocol, was released in February — as well as more than a hundred short stories. A twenty-sixth novel, Heaven’s Grand Design, will follow. His fiction has resulted in five nominations and a win for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, seven nominations and a win for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, two nominations apiece for the Philip K. Dick Award and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, winning each of those once, as well as multiple nominations for the  British SF Association Award and British Fantasy Award.

He’s also co-edited an anthology, In Dreams, with Kim Newman, and published a Doctor Who novella and a BFI Film Classic on Terry Gilliam’s film Brazil. He wrote a regular book review column in Interzone magazine back in the 1990s, and since then has written book and film reviews and pieces of journalism for a variety of publications, including the Guardian and Independent newspapers, Crime Time, Arc magazine, New Scientist, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

We discussed his fascination with James Joyce and how it played out (or didn’t) in his own writing, why he’s thrilled the first short story he sold to a pro market was never published, the reasons he loves Los Angeles, what he learned as a scientist which helped him write better science fiction, why he compared his writing style to Raymond Chandler’s, the way his world-building takes place during writing and not before, whether or not his new novel should be considered science fiction, what I feel that hovel has in common with Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams, our shared love of the ambiguous ending, what he learned by rereading his short fiction to assemble a career-spanning collection, and much more.

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