Black Beans

We’re not accepting new members at this time, but if you’d like to contact one of the members of the group for any other reason, please use this form:

Nora (publishing as N. K. Jemisin) recently defected from the cold gulags of Bostonistan to the gold-lined streets of New Yorkia. She likes travel, cooking, cats, blogging against racism and sexism, designing new worlds, and long walks through city parks. She dislikes genetically modified food, except in horror stories where the food eats people.  Then it’s OK.

Nora is represented by Lucienne Diver of The Knight Agency.

Visit Nora’s website for a list of her works in progress and blog.

Bibliography

• The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. (Novel, first of a trilogy.)  Forthcoming from Orbit Books in 2009.
• “The You Train.” Strange Horizons. 2007.
• “Playing Nice With God’s Bowling Ball.” Forthcoming from Baen’s Universe sometime in 2008.
• “Bittersweet.” Abyss and Apex. 2007.
• “The Narcomancer.” Helix. 2007.
• “The Brides of Heaven.” Helix. 2007.
• “Dragon Cloud Skies.” Strange Horizons. 2005. Escape Pod. 2007.
• “Red Riding-Hood’s Child.” Fishnet. 2005.
• “L’Alchimista.” Scattered Covered Smothered. 2004. Escape Pod. 2007.
• “Too Many Yesterdays, Not Enough Tomorrows.” Ideomancer. 2004.

Genevieve is a writer based in New York. She is an occasional columnist at Defenestration, and her recent work has been published in Strange Horizons, Fantasy, Byzarium, and Quarter After Eight.

She has questionable taste in movies, a tragedy she tracks on her blog.

Visit Genevieve’s website.

Bibliography

• “A Man, A Plan, A Banal - Dark Kingdom.” Fantasy. April 2008.
• “Wedding Portrait.” Quarter After Eight. March 2008.
• “La Belle Dormant.” Byzarium. January 2008.
• “29 Union Leaders Can’t Be Wrong.” Strange Horizons. June 2007.
• “With Pride and Dignity Since 1976.” 10×10x10. June 2007.

Photo Credit: Ellen Datlow

Veronica is a writer whose work has appeared in Interfictions, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Trunk Stories, and Jabberwocky. Her poem The Room has been published by Papaveria Press. She writes poems that look like stories and stories that look like essays, and just to complete the cycle, essays that look like poems.

Veronica is currently an Assistant Professor in the English Department of Queens College-CUNY. In May 2007 she earned her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, having completed her dissertation, Re–Visionary Fantasies: Feminist Fairy Tales and Myth, about contemporary feminist revisions of fairy tales and classical myth, in which she closely examines the tropes of the mother–daughter relationship and the magic mirror. She has published academic work on the Harry Potter series as well as on interstitial arts. She has taught courses on English Renaissance women writers, 20th–century revisions of classical literature, children’s literature, and mother–daughter relationships in 20th–century literature. In her capacity as a scholar, she appears on the forthcoming collector’s edition DVD of The Princess Bride, expounding on the movie’s relationship to the fairy tale tradition.

Her writing is deeply infused with the city, its history, sights, and sounds, as well as with her mother’s books of fairy tales, which she read constantly while growing up. New York City history is one of her not–so–secret passions and interests, along with trains, sharks, Gene Kelly musicals, Lewis Carroll’s Alice, and The Wizard of Oz. She also bears a more–than–passing resemblance to Ellen Kushner; this is a wonderful thing and entirely coincidental.

Visit her blog for musings on literature, teaching, and other interests.

Bibliography

• “Rats.” Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 21. eds. Kelly Link, Gavin Grant, and Ellen Datlow. 2008
• “Serpents.” The Best of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. eds. Kelly Link and Gavin Grant. 2007.
• “Rats.” Interfictions. eds. Delia Sherman and Dora Goss. 2007.
• “Sir Walter Raleigh in Guiana.” Jabberwocky 2. ed. Sean Wallace. 2006.
• “The Odyssey.” Journal of Mythic Arts. May 2006.
• “Swimming.” Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. 2006.
• The Room. Papaveria Press, 2006.
• “Why I Hate Penn Station.” Trunk Stories. 2005.
• “How to Bring Someone Back From the Dead.” Jabberwocky. ed. Sean Wallace. 2005.
• “How to Bring Someone Back From the Dead.” Journal of Mythic Arts. Autumn 2004.
• “Evenfall #3.” Rev. of Evenfall by Pete Stathis. Trunk Stories. November 2003.
• “Magic and Misery.” Rev. of Witch Week by Diana Wynne Jones. Trunk Stories. November 2003.
• “Serpents.” Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. November 2003.

Tempest is a speculative fiction writer born in Cincinnati, Ohio. She’s lived in many different places, including Denver, Colorado, Ft. Worth, Texas, and New York City, where she currently resides. She attended New York University’s Gallatin School for Individualized Study where she had the opportunity to write and produce several plays and performance pieces (under the name K. T. Bradford) in Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway spaces.

Since 2000 she’s concentrated on fiction, with stories appearing in the Interfictions anthology, Farthing Magazine, Peridot Books, Abyss & Apex, and more. In 2003 she attended the Clarion West Writer’s Workshop and prior to that was a member of the OWW (SF&F Online Writing Workshop) for many years. She currently co-coordinates the Ohayo Mountain Retreat in New York State. Though her heart is in science fiction and fantasy, many of her stories don’t fit squarely into one genre or another. Consequently, she is an active member of the Interstitial Arts Foundation.

Tempest is African-American (with a few other ethnicities thrown in). She is a member of the Carl Brandon Society.

Tempest has worked as an editor or assistant editor for Peridot Books (now Allegory Magazine), The Fortean Bureau, and Sybil’s Garage. She is currently the non-fiction editor for Fantasy Magazine.

Visit K. Tempest’s website to read her blog, full bibliography, and latest news.

Bibliography

• “Black Feather.” Interfictions. eds. Delia Sherman and Theodora Goss. 2007.
• “The Seventh Reflection.” Thou Shalt Not… ed. Lee Allen Howard. 2006.
• “Change of Life.” Farthing Magazine, issue 3. 2006.
• “Hard Rain.” Farthing Magazine, issue 2. 2006.
• “Elf Aware.” (as Finley Larkin) Cafe Irreal. 2003.
• “Why I Don’t Drink Anymore.” (as Finley Larkin) Abyss & Apex. 2003.
• “What We Make of It.” (as K T Bradford) Peridot Books. 2000.

Photo credit: Ellen Datlow

We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains. –Ursula LeGuin

The Black Beans Are:

• A New York City-based group that meets once a month.
• Four women who like to tell stories.
• Writers of speculative literature, which includes fantasy, science fiction, horror/dark fiction, and strange stories that fall off the map into the interstices of literature.
• Authors of other types of works, including poetry, essays, dissertations, and movie reviews, to name a few.

The Black Beans Are Not:

• Actually beans.
• Necessarily black.
• Obsessed with coffee.

Latest Publications:

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin.  Forthcoming from Orbit Books in 2009.

“Too Many Yesterdays, Not Enough Tomorrows” by N. K. Jemisin.  Riffing on Strings. (reprint)

“Rats” by Veronica Schanoes. Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 21.

“Playing Nice With God’s Bowling Ball” by N. K. Jemisin. Forthcoming from Baen’s Universe in 2008.

“A Man, A Plan, A Banal - Dark Kingdom” by Genevieve Valentine. Fantasy.

“Black Feather” by K. Tempest Bradford. Interfictions.

The Interfictions anthology, which includes stories by both Tempest and Veronica, is included in the Tiptree Award Honors List for 2007! We’re really pleased the jurors acknowldged all of the contributors with this honor.

In even better news, Veronica’s Interfictions story “Rats” was chosen for the Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror 21!