Fables and Spells by adrienne maree brown

(AK Press, 2022)

Reviewed by Susan Peak

adrienne maree brown (she doesn’t capitalise her name) is a Black American woman writer who has attended a Clarion workshop. She is active in healing (social and sexual) and restorative justice work in the US, is a doula, and has written several books. These are mainly related to her activist work, e.g., Emergent Strategy, a sequence of books about sustainable social change where adrienne’s view is that social change should be pleasurable and not solely work (this emphasis on a different approach to social issues has faint echoes of New Wave science fiction). She has combined speculative fiction, where she has been described as an Afrofuturist writer, with her activism, e.g., when co-editing Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements. Combining these concerns and interests is very evident in Fables and Spells, one of the Emergent Strategy sequence, which contains a mixture of short stories and poems.

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Review from BSFA Review 21 - Download your copy here.