Stranger Fiction: The Art of Speculative Fiction and World-Building
co-sponsored by the National Women's Book Assocation

Join the Women's National Book Association and Mechanics' Institute for a writers' panel on imagining new worlds and futures through fiction. As our home planet Earth grows ever hotter, crowded and more polluted, we look to other realms for new hope and relief from our terran concerns. Thankfully, brilliant minds and bold thinkers have already created places and spaces to which we can journey in books and take armchair travels to new worlds beyond our wildest imagining. These creative writers will discuss their craft and the art of world-building through fiction.

WNBA is a vibrant national organization that advocates for women’s literacy and for women’s role in the community of the book.There are chapters with individual Active Members in nine cities, individual Network Members across the country, numerous corporate Sustaining Members, and chapter Honorary Members in the world of books and beyond. WNBA is a broad-based non-profit organization with some 800 members across the country, three distinguished national awards, and a history of lively events in chapter cities and elsewhere.

Ellen McBarnette is a lifelong writer whose nonfiction work has been published as testimony, fact sheets, and opinion pieces for organizations that include the Sierra Club and the American Bar Association. A professional storyteller, she is a recent transplant from Washington, DC where she ran the Arlington Creative Nonfiction Writers Group. She now runs the Beta Readers and Writers Group and is an active participant in critique groups in the Bay. She lives in Hayward with her partner Ben and their cat Java.

Mary Mackey is the New York Times bestselling author of fourteen novels, including The Earthsong Series—four novels which describe how the peaceful Goddess-worshiping people of Prehistoric Europe fought off patriarchal nomad invaders (The Village of Bones, The Year The Horses Came, The Horses at the Gate, and The Fires of Spring). They have made the New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller Lists, been translated into twelve foreign languages, and sold over a million and a half copies. She has published several collections of poetry, including Sugar Zone and The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams. You can get the latest news about Mary’s books, public appearances, newsletter, and writing advice at marymackey.com.

Sheila Smith McKoy, PhD is an award-winning poet, fiction writer, and filmmaker. She is the recipient of the 2020 Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Prize in poetry. Her poetry collections include The Bones Beneath (Black Lawrence Press, 2024) One Window’s Light: A Haiku Collection, a collaboration of five Black poets; the collection won the 2017 Haiku Society of America’s Merit Book Award for best haiku anthology. In addition to her poetry and fiction, Smith McKoy has authored and edited numerous scholarly works. She focuses on vital conversations about equity, inclusion and the Black speculative. A native of Raleigh, NC, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Vanessa MacLaren-Wray writes science fiction and fantasy about people—human and otherwise—connecting in our complex universe. She’s the author of the Patchwork Universe series: All That Was Asked, Shadows of Insurrection, and Flames of Attrition. She also writes for the Truck Stop at the Center of the Galaxy shared-world series and guest-hosts for the podcast Small Publishing in a Big Universe. She’s an active member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, the California Writers Club, and (of course) the WNBA. When not arguing with her cats, she works on new stories, her email journal, Messages from the Oort Cloud, and her website, Cometary Tales.