FEMSPEC
An interdisciplinary feminist journal dedicated to science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, surrealism, myth, folklore, and other supernatural genres.
FEMSPEC is a collectively-produced peer-reviewed journal run primarily by women. As such, we believe in a non-hierarchical community and work to make our space one of cooperation. All members are valued, listened to, and respected without regards to age, experience, or professional position. We encourage all voices to contribute to our cause through non-violent communication.
Editors
Editor:
Merry Byrd
Book and Film Review Editor:
Merry Byrd
Peer Review Coordinator and Webmistress
Barbara Bennett
Social Media Editor
Merry Byrd
Production Editor
Lucia Bausela Buccianti
Subscription Editor
Esther Odukomaiya
Peer Reviewer, Digital Distributor, and Newsletter Editor
Nolan Boyd
Onboarding Review Editor
Monique Attrux
Creative Writing Editor and Queen of Production
Anna Walters
Batya Weinbaum edited Femspec from the 1990s till her death in 2026.
Nolan Boyd is currently Visiting Instructor of English at the University of South Florida. He graduated with a PhD in English Literature and a Graduate Certificate in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Miami University in 2020. His scholarship analyzes the cultural work performed by cinema and contemporary literature, and particularly by representations of queerness and disability. He also serves as a peer reviewer for the journal.
Barbara Bennett is a Professor of English at North Carolina State University. She is the author of five books, many articles, and a variety of reviews. Her area of study is Women's Literature, American Literature, and Contemporary Literature of the World. She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina with her slightly insane Bernedoodle Clara.
Omotoyosi Odukomaiya specializes in Black science fiction and women’s literature. At Hope College, she teaches courses on American ethnic literature, Black speculative fiction, and women’s literature. Her research explores how Black science fiction authors address historical trauma, envision future possibilities, and depict the experiences of Black people across global diasporas. She also studies marginalized groups and investigates how dominant power structures influence, restrict, and occasionally transform their experiences.
Merry Byrd is Full Professor of English at Virginia State University. She teaches general education and literature courses, environmental humanities, and film. Her original areas of research were women’s studies and memoir; however, she cultivated additional research interests in dystopian, fantasy, and sci-fi genres after Hurricane Katrina and the levee break. She has contributed to FEMSPEC since 2015 and has served as book review editor since 2018.
Monique Attrux is currently a Ph.D candidate in English literature at York University in Toronto, Canada. Her doctoral project, Writing Chinese, generously funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), examines the literary multilingual practices of Chinese Canadian prose fiction writers in their depictions of the Chinese Canadian identity entangled between the national frameworks of homeland and new home country. Her official academic research areas are Canadian literature, Asian Canadian studies, postcolonial studies, and prose narrative. Her interest in speculative fiction comes from her academic work in studying how dominant racist frameworks have historically dehumanized Asian (im)migrants by rendering them discursively as prosthetic, machine-like individuals; speculative fiction, she believes, is an important realm to understand and contest existing boundaries of humanity. She has also served as a book review editor for Great Lakes Review since 2024.
Anna Walters is a creative writer working toward a Ph.D. in Multicultural Women’s and Gender Studies at Texas Woman’s University, where she studies systems of power, intersectional representation and resistance, social justice, and feminist/womanist interventions through creative and spiritual activism. Her research investigates transformative practices of creative writing and other artistic forms of expression. She works as a graduate instructor and has taught composition, introductory literature, and women’s and gender studies courses to undergraduate level students. Besides writing and teaching, she is also a multimodal artist with a background in music and photography.