Excited to announce that my book of horror poetry “Dance of Necromance, Poetry Book of the Dead” is available for prerelease at Mocha Memoirs Press! Pick up your copy here!
“Dance of Necromance: Poetry Book of the Dead” is an Afrosurrealist book of dark speculative poetry embracing themes of death, rebirth, sacrifice, communication with the ancestors, the mysteries that lie beyond, and perseverance in cursed times.
“Powerful and profound, Saulson is a master of the craft, delivering a gut-wrenching feast of social commentary, personal trials, and raw emotion in DANCE OF NECROMANCE.”–Candace Nola, author of UNMASKED
“With DANCE OF NECROMANCE, poet Sumiko Saulson stakes their claim as one of the best poets of the horror world. Nuanced and beautiful, dark and dangerous…each poems whispers, shouts, or screams in its own unique voice. Highly recommended!” -Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of Red Empire and Ghosts of the Void
“In Dance of Necromance Sumiko Saulson choreographs a ballet of darkness, intimacy, and inspiration. This collection is not only visceral in its remarkable prose and timeliness, it is a courageous shout of fierce humanity in the face of rampant cruelty. A voice for the voiceless. This is a collection to be experienced with the heart, the mind, and the whole soul.”
— Jamal Hodge, Bram Stoker Award finalist and 3rd Place Winner of The Elgin Award for The Dark Between the Twilight
Sumiko is a two-time Bram Stoker Award® finalist for poetry, recognized for The Rat King (2022, Dooky Zines) and Melancholia (2024, Bludgeoned Girls Press). Their writing blends horror, Afrosurrealism, and speculative themes to explore grief, identity, and resilience. They are also an Elgin Award nominee and the recipient of the 2018 Afrosurrealist Writers Award and the 2021 Ladies of Horror Readers’ Choice Award.
Sumiko brings a distinct voice to speculative literature and poetry. Their presence at BayCon 42 reminds us that meaning can be found in metaphor, memory, and the magic of language.
Every year, BayCon welcomes creators, thinkers, and trailblazers whose work reshapes the way we imagine the universe and our place within it. In keeping with this year’s theme, “The Answer,” our Guests of Honor represent the voices asking bold questions, telling unforgettable stories, and guiding fandom toward deeper meaning, stranger worlds, and greater joy. Whether through words, art, performance, or scholarship, these individuals help us explore life, the universe, and everything; humor, heart, and brilliance. Join us in celebrating the people who make the questions worth asking, and the answer worth chasing!
Charlie Jane Anders
Award-winning Author, Podcaster, Reviewer, and a Founding Editor of io9
Award-winning Author, Journalist, Editor, and Founder of io9
Annalee Newitz writes science fiction and nonfiction. They are the author of four novels: Automatic Noodle, The Terraformers, The Future of Another Timeline, and Autonomous, which won the Lambda Literary Award. As a science journalist, they are the author of Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind, Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age and Scatter, Adapt and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction, which was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize in science. They are a writer for the New York Times and elsewhere, and have a monthly column in New Scientist. They have published in The Washington Post, Slate, Scientific American,Ars Technica, TheNew Yorker, and Technology Review, among others. They are the co-host of the Hugo Award-winning podcast Our Opinions Are Correct, and have contributed to the public radio shows Science Friday, On the Media, KQED Forum, and Here and Now. Previously, they were the founder of io9, and served as the editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.
Why wait for Black Friday and waste your $$ on a big corporation when you can waste your money on us? Whether the people in your life deserve a politically provoking poetry chapbook OR a big fat lump of doodoo in their stockings, Doodooality: Shots Fired from Uranus is the PERFECT stocking stuffer!
Only $6.969 (ahem: $6.97) per copy, what a bargain! $2 shipping and handling anywhere in the US!
“This pooptastic, antifascist romp is a must-have toilet tank topper and a laugh-filled remedy for 2025!” –Kate Maruyama, author of The Collective & Bleak Houses
“This isn’t shock for shock’s sake. It’s humor as rebellion. It’s community art that refuses to conform. It’s science fiction, satire, and scatology smashed together and set on fire.” –Angela Yuriko Smith, 2x Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Tortured Willows: Bent. Bowed. Unbroken
“Unlike anything you’ve ever read. Doodooality is a revolting-yet-playful speculative romp that belongs on every coffee table.” –Pedro Iniguez, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Mexicans on the Moon: Speculative Poetry from a Possible Future
The pooetry chapbook Doodooality: Shots Fired from Uranus is about The Fecalarity, an event where human excrement becomes sentient. Fed up with the hubris of mankind, the sophont turds resettle in Uranus. The work of San Francisco karaoke metal band NypSlyp, Doodooality is constructed as a parody of a concept metal album.
Doodooality: Shots Fired from Uranus contains steaming hot pooetry by the ass-tonishingly talented highly ass-steamed NypSlyp, comprised of Sumiko “Dooky” Saulson defecating on the microphone, Emily “Skunkheart” Flummox putting the stank on air guitar, and Mr. Backup (known for his creamy mudslides) crapping out the backup vocals. A juicy collection of limmershits, rectumic, iambic pootameter, haipoo, and loose stool pooetry, our splatterpoop hit Doodooality can be found in bathrooms everywhere.
Where to find me and Princess Chris Hughes at Clockwork Alchemy:
1) All Weekend in Author’s Alley at our table in Author’s Alley, Aster (1st Floor)
2) TTRPG: In Nomine, Presenter Wizard Lizard Friday, 1:00 pm–5:00 pm (4 hours) Peninsula 4 (2nd floor) IN NOMINE: Mad Science for the Hungry Soul Sacramento, 1851. As part of his quest to build an artificial God to replace the one in Heaven, Vapula (demon prince of Technology) plans to usurp the power of Lucifer himself.
3) TTRPG: Deadlands Classic Presenter Wizard Lizard DEADLANDS CLASSIC: There’s Something in the Lights San Francisco had gas lighting for 14 years before the Great Quake destroyed the city, leaving only rushing water and cliffs full of ghost rock in its place. Saturday (Friday?), 5:30 pm–9:00 pm (3.5 hours) Peninsula 4 (2nd floor)
3) Book signing by Sumiko Saulson Saturday, 11:00 am–Noon (1 hour) Aster (1st floor)
4) San Francisco By Gas Light Presenters: Sumiko Saulson, Emily Flummox Saturday, 1:30 pm–3:00 pm (1.5 hours) Peninsula 6 (2nd floor) A history of San Francisco in the era of gas light, which will include things like the gas fire during the 1906 quake, how gas light was used during prohibition, and gas light era San Francisco (Victorian Era through Prohibition Era).
6) The Fog of Time: LGBTQ Horror in the Age of Gas Light Presenters: Sumiko Saulson, Emily Flummox Saturday, 6:00 pm–7:30 pm (1.5 hours) Peninsula 6 (2nd floor) In honor of Civilization Stained These Young Things and Other Works by Emily Loretta Flummox, the author’s debut collection, we’ll be discussing LGBTQ horror of Victorian, Edwardian, and (American) Prohibition Eras, when gas light was big.
7) Book signing by all the authors Presenters: T..E. Mac Arthur., J. Scott Coatsworth, M.D. Neu, Lori Saltis, BJ Sikes, Shelley Adina, Dover Whitecliff, Sumiko Saulson, Emily Flummox, Michael Tierney, Erin Tierney, Anthony Francis Sunday, 9:00 am–10:00 am (1 hour) Aster (1st floor)
8) Patterns of Light and Shadow Presenters: Sumiko Saulson, Emily Flummox Sunday, 10:30 am–Noon (1.5 hours) Peninsula 6 (2nd floor) Gas lighting, both literal and figurative, plays a major role in Victorian Horror Literature.The Turn of the Screw and Carmilla include people questioning reality. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde uses gas lights in the streets of London as a metaphor for duality and the horrors of Mr. Hyde, and then Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus where not only gas lighting but electricity represent fear of the dangers of mankind’s hubris and “playing God” when making discoveries.
This is a FREE adult book Halloween themed book reading that I am participating in at KALW that is BIPOC-centering. Costumes optional! I will be reading horror erotica from my paranormal series The Metamorphoses of Flynn Keahi, and since they said event registration for Eventbrite is low, if you CAN come out, please get a FREE ticket on Eventbrite, thank you.
I feel super excited about how well things are going in my career as a horror poet, but at the same time I feel like I don’t want people to forget that I also write prose fiction. My poetry seems to be quickly overtaking and usurping my prose fiction career, but I also had three short stories out in the past year: “Blind Pig Shakedown” in The Green Hornet and Kato: Detriot Noir City, “Poppies for Andris” in A Crack in the Code (Mocha Memoirs Press), and “Red is the Color” in the final issue of Sirens Call Magazine. I had an essay in FumpTruck “An Open Letter to Your White Savior Complex.” There is a fourth 2025 short story acceptance that I can’t announce yet. I also had several works of flash fiction in Weird Fiction Quarterly: “Carcass,” “The Incubus Paramore”, “Journey to Midnight,” “Spiral into Madness,” and “Showdown at the Uncanny Valley Mall.”
And of course the third book in the Metamorphoses of Flynnn Keahi series, Insatiable (Mocha Memoirs Press) is in editing and should be coming out later this year or sometime next year.
On Saturday, President Trump posted an AI generated video of himself in a fighter jet wearing crown dumping shit onto the No Kings protestors. Around the same time, something was cooking in my brain about sentient poop. The feces, having become sentient, was in rebellion against humanity and seeking autonomy. And so I wrote this poem (which you will find in the soon-to-be released “Doodoodality: Shots Fired From Uranus”)
Once the turds gained sentience They expressed great resentment At comparison to a certain President Who was often called orange excrement
“What an insult that is to fecal matter, For even the most petite shit splatter Nourishes plants, and gives insects food Which is why we consider it incredibly rude To compare us to such a self-centered dude.”
Now, some of you may be wondering why I’m writing about the fecalarity, an event where fecal matter becomes sentient, and writing a freaking poetry chapbook about it with my karaoke metal band NypSlyp.
Well, the fact is, poop is political… 46% of the global population lacks access to safely managed sanitation, and 1/3rd lack access to safe drinking water. The stillsuits Fremen wore in Frank Herbert’s Dune pressed the 75% of water out of solid waste, although that’s often glossed over in movies based on the book, which tend to focus on sweat and urine, because a lot of people think poop is gross.
When Pooet Laureate Anton Cancre – the editor of Haipoo: Poospectives in Pooetry, invited me to participate in his upcoming multiauthor haipoo collection Haipoo: 2 Poo 2 Furious, I was delighted. Scatalogical humor is hilarious, juvenile, liberating, and a fertile territory for politcal humor, which is why there are so many jokes about the orange turd in office.
I asked if my karaoke metal band NypSlyp could collaborate, and as the sometimes horrified staff of the Mint Karaoke Lounge will tell you, all three members of NypSlyp are obsessed with feces and love talking about crap. As a matter of fact, that’s part of why and how our original commitment to create 10 haipoo grew into an additional chapbook filled with limmershits and other forms of pooetry focusing on the fecalarity – the sentience of poop.
My dear wifey Skunkheart Chris Hughes literally worships a shit goddess and wrote this pithy haipoo about the actual value of something people think of as having no worth:
Question: what else grows Our food and our flowers, if Not our holy shit?
Feces is the basis of food-growing fertilizer, a renewable source energy (biofuel, and methane gas), and even certain life-saving medical technology like Fecal Microbiota Transplants (FMT). Trace metals are extracted from feces. There are many examples of human and animal feces being used to create bricks, or silt to bind bricks together, in construction. Raising infants and toddlers means being comforable with feces, as does having most kinds of pets.
The third member of NypSlyp, the mysterious Backup, known for his creamy mudslides, has deep thoughts on the sentience of feces:
Tao of Poop If a turd gets cut in half, does it turn into two sentient turds, like an earthworm? What if a little splatter of shit goes on one side of the toilet? Is it alive?
Learn more about NypSlyp and The Fecalarity this Halloween, when Doodooality: Shots from Uranus debuts in bookstores and bathrooms near you. And look our 10 haipoo excretion into Anton’s amazing and long-awaited, star-studded volume of pooetry, Haipoo: 2 Poo 2 Furious in Spring of 2026!
*** photo is of a 3D printed poop emoji (printed by Backup), lounging atop a cocktail glass at The Mint Karaoke Lounge. Photo was taken by Sumiko Saulson.
This is perhaps a controversial opinion, but I think that enjoying your life is a subversive act when you’re part of intersectional groups that are under attack by the government.
And even though I haven’t seen it stated this way by others, I’m pretty sure that I’m not the only one feeling it.
Me and Princess had a big fairy wedding, and I noticed that over the last week another couple in our community had a big fairy wedding. I feel like big queer fairy weddings are pretty much flipping the middle finger at Trump and all of his bullshit. Like we’re out here experiencing queer joy and y’all can’t stop it.
My fellow by BIPOC horror poets are out there killing it right now and every time I see one of them winning I feel like it is joy and resistance in the same package. Like we’re out here living our best life while the government’s trying to stop us out of existence. All of my LGBTQ and BIPOC authors out there doing their thing, the artists, the cartoonists, the zine makers. Making art as a form of resistance like the hippies did it and the punk rockers did it in days of lore, days I’m old enough to remember in the case of punk rock, like rappers did it selling mixtapes out of the trunk of their car.
Every single one of my three sweeties in my polycule is out there getting gender reassignment surgery and I feel like that’s people living their best life and pretty much doing it despite the fact that the government is mounting up its forces to oppress us. Like we’re doing what we do and people feel like an urgency to do it now before the government tries to stop us, but even with that urgency there is a pure joy in living authentically.
I think that the open threats against our way of life is part of why people are really feeling more than ever motivated to hold on to whatever joy we can.
And that doesn’t mean that we aren’t out there protesting. That doesn’t mean we are out there voting. That doesn’t mean that we aren’t actively resisting in other ways like making political zines and stickers and disseminating subversive literature. It just means that we’re keeping up our strength for the fight by making sure that we center our happiness in difficult times.
—
The photo from Princess and Sumiko’s wedding was taken by Tiffany Eilat
Here is a round of the collections, anthologies, and magazines I’ve had poetry published in over the past year (it includes two December 2024 publications and the rest are 2025 to date). Proud to have had the opportunity to work with so many wonderful editors and to be a part of so many important, amazing, creative, fun and relevant works. Here are what they are and where to find them:
“Heal Me With Your Purr,” in Black Cat Tales: An Anthology of Black Cats, Black Cat Publishing, June 2025 edited by Francesca Maria and Mark S Causey https://geni.us/blackcattales
Art was frightening, so scary that I some passers-by were afraid to enter, ^even in broad daylight. But three neighborhood artists, Mars, Saito, and Sumiko Saulson weren’t about to settle for simply hanging some paintings on the walls. They completely transformed the 509 Cultural Center on Ellis Street into a live museum in the group show, “A Haunting Collection of Art Overshadowed by the Macabre.”
These three Hospitality House art students set the mood for their September 20 exhibition with ghostly music. On a small stage, each artist had designed what resembled an altar. Watched over by a faceless mannequin in a black dress, the altars included candles, incense, brass goblets, and chains. Saito’s altar, entitled “Isabella’s Hair,” even included what appeared to be real human hair.
Saulson’s altar was entitled “The Altar of the Fickle Worshipper,” and Mars’ was called “Past, Present and Future in a Roundabout Way.”
However dramatic the overall presentation of the show, some of the paintings succeeded in their own right. Saito’s “Gates to the Beyond” is a stunning rainbow of pastels blending water, sky and crescent moon in a series of three panels.
My favorite piece was Saito’s “Isabella Sands,” a beautiful, realistic pastel on a par with the work of well known Tenderloin artist Rose Linda. According to Saito, “Isabella Sands was a woman who in 1735 was accused of being a witch, but the truth of that matter was the family was very poor. So in order that their daughter be able to show herself worthy in society, she learned from old manuscripts she had found.”
Other outstanding pieces included “Face,” “Victim,” “Paisley Hell,” and “Jesus in the Infrared Garden,” by Sumiko Saulson, and “Phoenix Enigma,” by Mars.
Poet Laureate at BayCon42 / Westercon 78: The Answer! July 3, 2026 – July 6, 2026
BayCon 42 is proud and privileged to welcome Sumiko Saulson as this year’s Poet-in-Residence. Sumiko brings a distinct voice to speculative literature and poetry. Their presence at BayCon 42 reminds us that meaning can be found in metaphor, memory, and the magic of language. Every year, BayCon welcomes creators, thinkers, and trailblazers whose work reshapes the way…
Sumiko Saulson 