Beast Crawl readers for Afrofuturism Salon:
Sumiko Saulson, Trey Keeve. Kevin Dublin and Nazelah Jamison
Saturday April 18 at BAM HOUSE in Oakland 4-5:30
Afrosurrealist Writers at Hayward LitHop!
•April 4, 2026 • Leave a Comment
Afrosurreal Writers’ Workshop to read from 5 pm to 6 pm on Saturday, April 25th at Stray Cap
Theme: When Evil is Eternal, Justice Seekers Learn to Time Travel
Ancestral warnings, visitors from uncertain futures beckoning us to change intervene on their behalf or change our ways before it’s too late, and voices from parallel dimensions or across the void
Featuring readings by
Audrey T. Williams
Khalifa Mitchell
Wandra Williams
Sumiko Saulson
Dera R Jones Williams
Here’s the Hayward LitHop Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1276706891047243/
Here’s the Hayward LitHop Eventbrite link: https://www.eventbrite.com/…/hayward-lit-hop-2026..
“Missing” by R.L. Merrill, Excerpt from Manor of Frights
•March 5, 2026 • Leave a CommentHorrorAddicts.net Presents:
Manor of Frights
Imagine a Victorian house where every room is cursed with a frightful existence. Are monsters in the halls? Ghosts left to fester in the library? Or are the rooms themselves enchanted with malevolent energy? What was summoned long ago and what doorways were left open? Manor of Frights is a collection of tales all set in different rooms of the same house.
With authors: Judith Pancoast, Daphne Strasert, Loren Rhoads, Mark Orr, Michael Fassbender, R.L. Merrill, Sumiko Saulson, Ollie Fox, Barend Nieuwstraten III, Rosetta Yorke, Amanda Leslie, Lesley Warren, BF Vega, DW Milton, D.J. Pitsiladis, Jason Fischer, and Emerian Rich.
**********
An excerpt from Manor of Frights
Missing
by R.L. Merrill
Scullery, 1980
Kristy sat fidgeting in the front seat of her sister Tammy’s Pontiac Firebird and dreading her community service outing obligation.
“Don’t wander off inside that house. Remember what happened to Dawn.”
Kristy rolled her eyes and reached for the handle, swinging the heavy door open. Tammy’s best friend Dawn swore she had a run-in with a specter in the manor when she volunteered for the annual festival, and ever since, Dawn refused to even drive by the house.
Nestled in a suburban neighborhood, the Holmes Manor stood tall and proud surrounded by giant pine trees. The grounds had been restored with walking paths, botanical gardens, and displays of the antique farm equipment used when the manor was the center of a large fruit orchard.
“Yeah, whatever. Pick me up at eight? I want to get to the football game by halftime,” Kristy said.
Tammy waved and drove off. Kristy was only two years younger than her sister, but she hadn’t prioritized getting her driver’s license, so she had to rely on Tammy for rides despite the fact she was now a senior and about to turn eighteen.
Kristy climbed the steps to the mansion. She gazed up past the tower to the overcast afternoon sky, shivering as she reached the top step. She winced at the creaking sound the porch made as she stepped across. The ornate door was open and Kristy saw her classmates inside that were also part of the manor’s High School Historical Society. Their task was to perform the roles played by servants and the family members of the Victorian-era mansion for the 100th-anniversary celebration held that afternoon. They’d been practicing for weeks to guide members of the community through the stuffy old house in groups to see what life was like when the Holmes family moved in during the fall of 1880.
Kristy had begged her history teacher to make her a docent, but since she was also in cooking class, Mrs. Hensley had assigned Kristy to the scullery. That meant for the six-hour event, she’d have to be stuck in the creepy room, chopping vegetables, and peeling potatoes. After the cooks prepared the food for the tour groups, she’d have to wash the dishes. And all the chores had to be done in period costume.
“There you are, Kristy.” Mrs. Lam handed her a uniform. “You can change in the room at the back of the stairs and then head straight to your post. Our first tour group will be arriving shortly.”
Kristy knew where to go and how to dress—in theory—but the bulky material in her arms was heavy. Doing any housework dressed like that would be a chore in itself.
She entered the room and her breath caught. Miranda Glenn was fussing with the buttons at the back of her dress. Kristy’s cheeks burned as she watched the pretty girl attempt to fasten them herself. In a huff, Miranda tossed her dark brown curls over her shoulder and her eyes brightened when she saw Kristy.
“Oh! Can you give me a hand? Then I can help you with yours. I can’t believe how heavy these dresses are.”
Kristy never spoke without sounding like a dork in front of Miranda. She was so pretty. Kristy made quick work of fastening the buttons. She wished she could linger, allowing her knuckles to run over the curve of Miranda’s back. Instead, she finished and then turned to toss the dress over her head.
“Whoa,” Miranda chuckled. “I think yours is heavier than mine. Let me help.”
Kristy could barely breathe as Miranda straightened out the layers of fabric and then buttoned up the back. All Kristy could do was smile so wide her cheeks hurt.
“Thanks,” she said. “I, uh, better go.”
“I wish you were working in the kitchen with me,” Miranda pouted. “You’re so much better at cooking than I am.”
Kristy flushed at the compliment. “I got stuck in the scullery.”
Miranda frowned. “That room gives me the creeps.”
“What do you mean?” Kristy asked.
“I don’t know. When they took us in there, it just seemed like my hair stood on end. It was probably nothing. It doesn’t seem so bad now. Anyway, are you going to the football game after? Maybe we could sit together.” Miranda waved as she left the room, leaving Kristy to gawk.
To read more, go to: Manor of Frights
“Dance of Necromance, Poetry Book of the Dead” is available for prerelease at Mocha Memoirs Press!
•February 21, 2026 • Leave a Comment
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
BayCon 42: The Answer Guest of Honor
•February 15, 2026 • Leave a Comment
BayCon 42 is proud and privileged to welcome Sumiko Saulson as this year’s Poet-in-Residence.
For more information and tickets go here: https://baycon.org/
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.
Their most recent novel, Somnalia: The Metamorphoses of Flynn Keahi (Mocha Memoirs Press), is a powerful journey of transformation set in a surreal, mythic landscape.
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
Charlie Jane Anders is the author of Lessons in Magic and Disaster, available now from Tor Books. Her other novels include All the Birds in the Sky, The City in the Middle of the Night and the young-adult Unstoppable trilogy. She’s also the author of the short story collection Even Greater Mistakes, and Never Say You Can’t Survive, a book about how to use creative writing to get through hard times. She’s won the Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, Lambda Literary, Crawford and Locus Awards. She co-created Escapade, a transgender superhero, for Marvel Comics and wrote her into the long-running New Mutants comic. And she’s currently the science fiction and fantasy book reviewer for the Washington Post. With Annalee Newitz, she co-hosts the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct.
Annalee Newitz
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, The New 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.
Pick up some Doodooality for your stocking!
•December 2, 2025 • Leave a Comment
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!
https://dookyzines.square.site/product/doodooality-shots-from-uranus/RUZP27X3W3R6T46HRMX7WRST
“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 Us at Clockwork Alchemy!
•October 21, 2025 • Leave a Comment
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.
Join us at Sights and Sounds After Dark!
•October 21, 2025 • Leave a CommentThis 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.
My Year in Prose Fiction
•October 20, 2025 • Leave a Comment
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.
Why is Poop Political?
•October 20, 2025 • Leave a Comment
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.
Sumiko Saulson 