Editor

Batya Weinbaum started her editing career with the Political Education and Action Pamphlets in Union for Radical Political Economics, founded and operated Angel Fish Press in VT in the 80s, and has been editing Femspec since the 90s. She has published numerous scholarly and creative works, including a novel, a collection of short stories, a monograph by University of Texas Press, two books by South End, and critical works in Science Fiction Studies, Extrapolation, Foundation, Journal of American Folklore and Journal of American Culture as well as Taboo, Multicultural Education, Journal of Interdisciplinary Thought, Frontiers, Women in Judaism, NWSA Journal, Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering, and MELUS.  She teaches online at American Public University System. She earned her doctorate in English and American Studies at University of Massachusetts at Amherst for her study, "Islands of Women and Amazons: Representations and Realities, " which has been published in two editions. Her first book, The Curious Courtship of Women's Liberation and Socialism, was translated into Spanish and published by Siglo XXI in Madrid. Try her course on Feminism in Popular Culture at UDEMY. Her book on Isla Mujeres, MX, Islands of Women and Amazons: Representations and Realities, is available on Amazon. She is also the founder, director, and developer, of Feminina Sube, a feminist art installation on Isla Mujeres, MX, which has been filmed and documented in books and media many times. She also operates a women's campsite in VA called Shaushkah's Delight. Her papers are archived at Duke University among other places. 

Founding Co-Editor

Robin Anne Reid is a professor in Literature and Languages department at Texas A&M University-Commerce. Her specializations include creative writing, new media, critical theory, and fantastic literatures, especially the work of J. R. R. Tolkien. Her stylistics publications include articles on The Lord of the Rings, both the novel and the film. Her peer-reviewed articles have appeared in Extrapolation, Style, and Tolkien Studies. She is serving as the co-editor of a Special Race, Ethnicity, and Fandom edition of an online peer-reviewed journal of fan studies, Transformative Works and Culture. She has published poetry, critical books on Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury, and edited the first encyclopedia on women in science fiction and fantasy (Greenwood 2008). She has been involved in a number of interdisciplinary activities on and off her campus. She regularly posts about her work online in an academic blog.

Past Associate Editor

Ritch Calvin earned his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, with a Graduate Certificate in Women's Studies. In his dissertation, entitled "A Feminism of Their Own: Escritoras mexicanas, Chicana Writers, and Autochthonous Feminisms," he examines the ways in which Mexicana and Latina writers are analyzed by means of interpretive frameworks that were developed for non-Latina writers. Instead, he argues for an interpretive framework that has been developed from the historical, political, and cultural context from which the writers hail. His work has appeared in Science Fiction Studies, Extrapolation, Femspec, Utopian Studies, The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Science Fiction Film and Television, The New York Review of Science Fiction, and the SFRA Review. He has edited volumes on the television series Gilmore Girls (McFarland 2008) , studying and teaching science fiction (2014), and the nonfiction of Judith Merril (Aqueduct Press 2016). His monograph, Feminist Science Fiction and Feminist Epistemology: Four Modes was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2016. He has served as the media reviews editor of the SFRA Review as well as the Vice President, President, and Past President of the Science Fiction Research Association.

Advisory Board

In her own words, Constance was born an artist. After studying education in Boston and then painting, writing, photographing, and teaching internationally across Europe, Asia, and the Americas, she attended graduate school at Starr King School to study contemporary myth, although she says she did so to become a better painter. Constance has taught a seminar in Art as Theology called "Creativity in Creation". After completing two years as Tertiary Care Chaplain at the UC Medical Center in San Francisco, she returned to Mexico where she was ordained in 1993. Her most recent work can be viewed here.

Advisory Board

Born in Manhattan, New York, Suzy McKee Charnas was educated at Barnard College and New York University. She served in the Peace Corps 1961-62, got her MAT upon returning home, and taught high school until moving to New Mexico with her husband and turning to writing full-time. Her work includes Science Fiction, YA fantasy, mainstream fiction, and non-fiction books and stories, and a stage play based on her novel The Vampire Tapestry, a cult-classic. She was awarded the Nebula Award, Mythopoetic Society Award for a best children's book, and a Gilgamesh Award for best fantasy story. Her short story "Boobs" won the Hugo Award for best short SF in 1989. Her books include: Walk to the End of the World (Ballantine 1974), Motherlines (Berkeley, 1978), The Conqueror's Child (Tor 1999), The Furies (Tor Books 1994), which together make up a futurist, feminist epic, currently available from Tor Books; the complete series won the Tiptree Literary Award; Dorothea Dreams (Arbor House 1986), reissued by Aqueduct Press in 2010. Her current work can be found here: http://www.suzymckeecharnas.com/ 

Advisory Board

Gloria Orenstein is Prof. Emerita of Comparative Literature and Gender Studies from the University of S. California. Her research focuses on Surrealism the women of Surrealism in particular. She has also published extensively on women artists in contemporary literature, art, and culture, and was a pioneer in creating one of the first conferences on Ecofeminism at USC in 1987. Her studies have ranged from Surrealism to Shamanism,  studying with a Sami Shaman in Samiland, to the civilization of The Great Goddess, to Jewish women artists, and more recently to other newly uncovered women artists who were affiliated with Surrealism but omitted from its history. Orenstein was the 2018 winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award from The Women’s Caucus for Art of the CAA, and also the first prize winner of the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award, from the Marquis Who’s Who Publication Board. More recently, a film entitled “Gloria’s Call” was made by a group of artists from The Woman’s Building of L.A. on Prof. Orenstein’s quest for the women of Surrealism. Today, Gloria Orenstein continues to pursue her studies in the many fields she has written about, and she hopes to fill in the ongoing absences of important creative women in the arts, and write them back into their rightful place in art and literary history.

Advisory Board

Sargent sold her first published story as a senior in college at the State University of New York/Binghamton University, where she earned a B.A. and M.A. in philosophy and also studied ancient history and Greek. Her short fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies including The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s SF Magazine, New Worlds, World Literature Today, Amazing Stories, Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone Magazine, Universe, Nature, and Polyphony, and in her collections Starshadows, The Best of Pamela Sargent, The Mountain Cage and Other Stories, Behind the Eyes of Dreamers and Other Short Novels, Eye of Flame, Thumbprints, Dream of Venus and Other Science Fiction Stories, and most recently in Puss in D.C. and Other Stories, published by The Borgo Press/Wildside Press in 2015. Pamela Sargent has won the Nebula and Locus Awards, been a finalist for the Hugo Award, Theodore Sturgeon Award, and Sidewise Award, and was honored in 2012 with the SFRA Award for Lifetime Contributions to Science Fiction and Fantasy Scholarship (previously the Pilgrim Award) by the Science Fiction Research Association.

Contributing Editor

Marleen S. Barr is known for her pioneering work in feminist science fiction. She has won the Science Fiction Research Association Pilgrim Award for lifetime achievement in science fiction criticism. Barr is the author of Alien to Femininity: Speculative Fiction and Feminist Theory, Lost in Space: Probing Feminist Science Fiction and Beyond, Feminist Fabulation: Space/Postmodern Fiction, Genre Fission: A New Discouse Practice for Cultural Studies, and Oy Pioneer!: A Novel. Barr has edited many anthologies and co-edited the special science fiction issue of PMLA.

Contributing Editor

Samuel Delany, born in New York, attended the City College in New York, 1960, and 1962-63. As a writer, he won the Nebula and Hugo Awards. Samuel Delany is also a noted author of scripts, a director, and an editor for two short films. His best novel is Babel-17, a winner of the Science Fiction Writers of America Award in 1966. His other books include The Bridge of Lost Desire (Arbor House 1987), Dhalgren (University Press of New England 1996), Atlantis: Three Tales (Wesleyan University Press 1995), The Star Pits (Tor Books 1989), and Equinox  (Masquerade 1994).

Contributing Editor

Darko Suvin was a professor of English and Comparative Literature at McGill University in Montreal until his retirement. He serves Femspec as a Contributing Editor and a noted author. His books include the ground breaking Russian Science Fiction 1956-1974 (1976), Metamorphoses of Science Fiction (1979, translated into six languages), Victorian Science Fiction in the UK: The Discourses of Knowledge and Power (1983), Positions and Presuppositions in Science Fiction (1988), and 13 other books on Brecht and drama or political epistemology; the latest one is Defined by a Hollow (2010). In 1973-81 he also edited Science Fiction Studies.

Book Review Editor

Merry Lynn Byrd's field is American Studies—women’s autobiography, digital humanities, and environmental literature, and she enjoys working at the intersections of academia and broader communities. Merry serves as Book Review Editor for Femspec and reviews regularly for the journal. She also edits the digital ‘zine NOLA DIASPORA, and is currently revising a manuscript on twentieth century women’s memoirs, Sustainable Selves. Currently, she teaches at Virginia State University where she is P.I. on a three-year NEH grant, "Re-visioning Central Virginia Fore-mothers through Narrative," called “Her-stories," for short, and is delighted to highlight the lives, legacies, and legends of central Virginia women of color Pearl Bailey, Sally Hemings, Elizabeth Keckley, Pocahontas, and Anne Spencer through the grant's programs.

Editorial Board

Jan Bogstad is a professor and Head of Technical Services at University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Library. Previously, she worked with the Women's, Gender and Sexualities department from 1990 to spring of 2019. Bogstad teaches and works with students on their research and previously taught and designed beginning- and research-level Women's Studies courses on such topics as Introduction to Feminist Theory & Research Methods, directed and served on MA committees, and supervised independent-studies students. She teaches Honors courses on SF & Fantasy: Media and Textual studies, (Octavia Butler. J.R.R. Martin & Tolkien) and has published the edited collection Picturing Tolkien (McFarland, 2011). She reviews for six journals.

Editorial Board

Kimberly Nichele Brown, Ph.D., is an associate professor at Virginia Commonwealth University specializing in contemporary African American women’s literature and culture, black feminist theory, Africana film, and twentieth century American and Africana literatures.  After receiving her degree in English from the University of Maryland, College Park, Brown went on to become one of the founding members and a director of the Africana Studies Program at Texas A & M University.  Brown has published articles dealing with race and representation: i.e., black agency and self-actualization, black subjectivity, the black body, as well as questions of audience and spectatorship. In her book, Writing the Revolutionary Diva: Black Women’s Subjectivity and the Decolonized Text (Indiana University Press, August 2010) Brown examines how African American women since the 1970s have found ways to move beyond the “double consciousness” of what she labels “colonized texts” to develop a subjectivities that combat or move beyond racist expectations of mainstream media.  Brown traces the emergence of this new consciousness from its roots in the Black Aesthetic Movement through important milestones such as the anthology The Black Woman and Essence magazine to the writings of Angela Davis, Toni Cade Bambara, and Jayne Cortez.

Editorial Board

Bill Clemente taught at Peru State College in southeastern Nebraska from 1992 until his retirement, where he was a Professor and Chair of English. He regularly taught a variety of courses, including Non-Western Literature, Film Studies, Creative Writing, and World Literature, as well as a course he introduced that focuses on Science Fiction.  A reader of sf for nearly forty years, Bill has been a fan and a student of feminist sf for the past decade and some change.  He was also a judge for the James Tiptree Award, which honors gender-bending Speculative Fiction. His publications in that area include essays on James Tiptree, Jr. and Suzy Charnas. Bill and his wife, Linda, are also the authors of a biography of one of Canada's premier authors: Gabrielle Roy: Creation and Memory. In addition, Bill is an avid bird watcher and the editor of The Nebraska Bird Review.

Editorial Board

Joan Gordon is an Associate Professor of English at Nassau Community College. She is an editor of Science Fiction Studies and has co-edited two volumes of scholarly essays for UPenn with Veronica Hollinger, Blood Read: The Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture (1987) and Edging Into the Future: Science Fiction as Contemporary Cultural Transformation.

Editorial Board

Veronica Hollinger is Professor Emerita of Cultural Studies at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario. She is co-editor of the journal Science Fiction Studies and has published many articles on science fiction and speculative literature, especially queer, feminist, and postmodern fantastic fiction. She has co-edited several scholarly collections: Blood Read: The Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture (U of Pennsylvania P, 1997), Edging into the Future: Science Fiction and Contemporary Cultural Transformation (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), and Queer Universes: Sexualities in Science Fiction (Liverpool UP, 2008). With her colleagues at SFS, she is also co-editor of The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction (Wesleyan UP, 2010).

Editorial Board

Sylvia Kelso is currently an adjunct lecturer at James Cook University in Townsville, North Queensland, Australia. She has taught English there since 1985 and is currently teaching a semester course in Creative Writing. She has published poetry, including a contribution to an Australian Women's Anthology, short stories, in Antipodes: A North American Journal of Australian and New Zealand Literature, and Australian and US anthologies, and five fantasy novels, with two more novels forthcoming. Two of her novels were finalists for best fantasy novel of the year in the Australian Aurealis genre fiction awards. Her critical essays have appeared in Science-Fiction Studies, Foundation, the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Paradoxa: Studies in World Literature, and The New York Review of Science Fiction. She guest edited a volume of new work on Ursula K. Le Guin for Paradoxa in 2008, and a collection of her critical work, Three Observations and a Dialogue: Around and About SF was released in 2009. She is currently a consulting board member for Paradoxa. She has a Ph.D. on the interaction of feminism with modern Gothic and science fiction, and an MA in Creative Writing.

Editorial Board

Lysa Rivera teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Chicano/a and African American literature and culture. Her current research interests center on the science fiction of multicultural America, specifically as it emerges within Chicano/a and African American contexts. Her work has appeared in MELUS: Journal for the Study of Multiethnic Literature, Aztlán: Journal of Chicano Studies, and Science Fiction Studies. She is the recipient of the 2013 Pioneer Award, which recognizes outstanding critical scholarship in the field of science fiction studies.

Editorial Board

Jennifer Wagner-Lawlor received her PhD at Yale University. She specializes in utopian literature and theory from the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries. Her most recent monograph is Postmodern Utopias and Feminist Fictions (Cambridge UP, 2013). She has published dozens of articles, in Feminist Studies, Utopian Studies, Contemporary Women's Writing, Nineteenth-Century Literature,The Journal for French and Francophone Philosophy,  and others.

Newsletter Editor

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. 

Blog Poster and Social Media Manager

Tolulope Adeusi holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Literary Studies. She is currently pursuing a master’s in Liberal Studies with a concentration in Gender and Diversity Studies at East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, TN. She is currently a graduate assistant working with the Diversity Educators program and Division of Cross-Disciplinary Studies at East Tennessee State University. She volunteers as an editor and social media manager for the journal in her spare time.

Website Manager

Paula Barba Guerrero is Assistant Professor of American literature in the English Department at Universidad de Salamanca (Spain). In 2021, she completed a PhD in English with honors at Universidad de Salamanca. Her research focuses on contemporary ethnic American literature, with particular interests in African American speculative fiction, zombie studies, space and memory theory, and representations of hospitality and homeness in American SF.

Creative Editor

Kim Horner is author of Probably Someday Cancer: Genetic Risk and Preventative Mastectomy (University of North Texas Press, 2019). Her creative nonfiction, fiction and poetry has appeared in Seventeen, Typehouse, Tangled Locks, Minnow Literary Magazine, 805, and Parhelion. She has an MFA in creative writing from The University of Arkansas at Monticello and a master’s degree in humanities from The University of Texas at Dallas. She worked as a journalist for 21 years at newspapers including The Dallas Morning News, where she covered issues including poverty, homelessness, child welfare and mental health. She teaches as an adjunct professor and serves as a volunteer reader for Reservoir Road Literary Review.