Press Release: ECO24 The Year's Best Speculative Ecofiction

Press Release: ECO24 The Year's Best Speculative Ecofiction

RELEASE IMMEDIATELY

Violet Lichen, an imprint of Apex Book Company, is proud to announce the launch of a new annual anthology, ECO: The Year’s Best Speculative Ecofiction, edited by Marissa van Uden. This anthology showcases some of the most vivid, thought-provoking, and emotionally affecting ecofiction published in the previous calendar year.

Speculative ecofiction is defined as stories that explore our place in the natural world and our relationships to non-human life (e.g. focused on themes related to ecology, nature, the environment, climate, conservation, wildlife and animal rights) and that also fall into speculative genres, such as science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, anthropomorphic fantasy, Weird horror and New Weird.

Ecofiction engages with some of the most urgent issues facing us today and also looks ahead to the possibilities of the future. Even when dealing with dark or tragic themes, these stories are expressions of our human connection to the most beautiful planet we know, and to all of earthlife.  

Marissa van Uden, EiC of Violet Lichen Books, is a lifelong nature lover who grew up in New Zealand and now lives in a cabin in the woods of Vermont. She is a writer, anthologist, and freelance editor with more than fifteen years experience in publishing. Her anthologies include Apex Magazine’s Strange Microfiction series (Strange Libations, Strange Machines, and Strange Locations) and The Off-Season: An Anthology of Coastal New Weird (2024). Her fiction has appeared in Vastarian, Dark Matter Magazine, Zero Dark Thirty, and Los Suelos. She is also an associate editor and the staff interviewer for Apex Magazine.

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