The lovely people at Lethe Press are already well known for producing the Wilde Stories and Heiresses of Russ series of anthologies which collect, respectively, the best gay and the best lesbian speculative short fiction of the year. Now at last there will be a trans-themed companion series. Transcendent, edited by K.M. Szpara, will look for the best speculative short stories featuring trans characters. The call for submissions for stories published in 2015 is here.

Please note that this is a “best of” series. They want reprints, not original fiction. Pay is correspondingly lower.

Also the requirement is that the story should contain a trans character of some sort. The author does not have to be trans-identified. However, the editor is someone I would trust to filter out anything hamfisted or offensive.

The call for submissions is a classic example of the dangers of trying to list every sort of identity you want to include. It manages to not list how I identify, and it includes at least one category that will have some activists furious. Don’t try to cover all of the bases, folks, it always ends badly. Thankfully I know it is being done in good faith.

I don’t have anything to submit from 2015, but I will have at least one story from 2016 because I have sold one with a trans character to Holdfast Magazine. So I want this thing to be a success, OK?