Leading independent Canadian publisher House of Anansi Press is set to publish As the Earth Dreams, a groundbreaking anthology of Black Canadian speculative short fiction, on October 14, 2025. Edited by poet and speculative fiction writer Terese Mason Pierre, the collection brings together ten imaginative, genre-bending stories.

All ten contributors to As the Earth Dreams are Black writers based in Canada, with several identifying as African or African-Canadian, including francesca ekwuyasi (Nigeria, Montreal), Aline-Mwezi Niyonsenga (Rwanda, Toronto), Suyi Davies Okungbowa (Nigeria, Ottawa), and Chinelo Onwalu (Nigeria, Toronto). The anthology also features work from Trynne Delaney (Toronto), Whitney French (Vancouver), Chimedum Ohaegbu (Calgary), Lue Palmer (New Orleans, with Canadian ties), Zalika Reid-Benta (Toronto), and editor Terese Mason Pierre herself (Toronto).

Each story in the collection offers a innovations speculative storytelling, featuring post-collapse landscapes and magical rites to haunted futures and metaphysical encounters. Among the narratives: a masseuse attends her mother’s fourth funeral only to discover family she never knew; two teenagers test the limits of friendship with flying carpets; and a young nanny is hired by a client in search of immortality. These stories center Black protagonists and envision “beautiful Black futures.”

According to House of Anansi, As the Earth Dreams is “a groundbreaking anthology of haunting speculative stories by contemporary Black Canadian writers that explore growth, futurity, and joy.” The book arrives at a moment when interest in speculative fiction by underrepresented writers is growing, yet Black Canadian voices remain underpublished in the genre.

Editor Terese Mason Pierre is an influential figure in Canada’s speculative fiction community. She is a Writers’ Trust Rising Star, co-director of the speculative arts conference AugurCon, and chief programming officer at Augur, a nonprofit dedicated to speculative literature. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Uncanny, ROOM, The Walrus, and Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction. Her most recent poetry collection, Myth, was published by House of Anansi in 2025.

By centering Black voices in speculative storytelling, As the Earth Dreams challenges the status quo of Canadian SFF and invites readers to imagine radical new futures.

Preorder your copy here!