Coming into a discussion about Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit & Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction, I was not expecting to hear about a human and an AI rat falling in love. It set the tone for audience members to imagine a future in which Queer communities are thriving, no matter what unconventional forms that takes on.
The literary panel was co-presented by the Queer Arts Festival (QAF) and the Talking Stick Festival on June 18 at the Roundhouse Performance Centre. It was the first in-person launch of the anthology, which was published during the peak of the pandemic.
Queers in Space is the “campy, colourful, kaleidoscopic” theme for QAF 2023, as described by Artistic Director Mark Takeshi McGregor. But the phrase holds a double meaning — the works are not only cosmic in nature, they also revolve around what it means to reclaim space as a Queer person.
QAF allocated the day for events highlighting Two Spirit and Indigiqueer artistry, with Love After the End at the forefront. Editor Joshua Whitehead, as well as contributors jaye simpson, Nazbah Tom and Nathan Adler, read and discussed their respective works in this collection.
Whitehead’s focus in developing the anthology of futuristic stories was to move towards utopian narratives. He emphasized they did not want to write about trauma and pain, but centre joy and the role of Two Spirit and Indigiqueer communities in building a more hopeful horizon.
“As Indigenous people, and more specifically, with the intersection of Queerness, transness, and Two Spiritedness, we know apocalypse already,” said Whitehead. “We’ve been living in dystopias … surviving the end of times, again, and again and again.”
Whitehead describes the book as emerging “from ruin”; after the original publisher was shut down due to workplace sexual misconduct, he was unsure whether they could move forward with the project at all.
However, with simpson spearheading the search for a new publisher, the anthology was picked up by Arsenal Pulp Press. Since its release, it has gone on to win the Lambda Literary Award, which recognizes excellence in 2SLGBTQIA+ storytelling.
UBC MFA alum and Wrist author Adler saw this anthology as his opening to experiment with science fiction. In their short story “Abacus,” the titular character is an Ojibwe AI rat who falls in love with Anishinaabe human Dayan.
Adler said the story incorporates the ideas of Anishinaabe cosmology and “being home.” He wrote it around the time of his move to Vancouver, which was a significant change for someone who had never lived outside of Anishinaabe territory.
Somatic practitioner Tom read from “Nameless,” their story about the connection between a counsellor and an individual who travels between worlds. They encouraged the audience to listen from a perspective where “time [and] space don’t really matter.”
“I imagine my backbone is the Milky Way galaxy,” they said, with a hush falling over the room as each audience member slipped into whatever this mindset looked like for them.
it was never going to be okay author simpson presented an excerpt from their piece “The Ark of the Turtle’s Back” while sporting an incredible pair of fish skeleton earrings. Whitehead came forward to help them detangle the straps of their mask from the bones — a show of “solidarity,” simpson joked.
Her story depicts the destruction of Earth and the journey of life forms to a new habitable home. It questions how we would approach forming a relationship with an uncolonized planet.
simpson emphasized the inclusion of neopronouns, which go beyond the gender binary of pronouns typically used in English, in their work. This posed obstacles for her during the editing process, as academic language and traditional English grammatical rules caused some editors to judge or fumble her work.
“Do your own research about these pronouns, because I got this right,” simpson said.
Tom similarly mentioned they added asterisks next to all uses of they/them pronouns in their piece in order to bring extra attention to the words.
This care and attention to language carries throughout the entire collection, particularly in the terminology used to talk about sexuality and gender identity.
“I craft a theory of Indigiqueerness by rejecting queer and LGBT as signposts of my identity, instead relying on the sovereignty of traditional language, such as Two-Spirit, and terminology we craft for ourselves, Indigiqueer,” Whitehead wrote in the introduction.
Whitehead brought the panel to a close with an excerpt from his upcoming apocalyptic novel, which despite its subject matter, revolves around joy because “not all world endings are tragic.”
QAF is running events and exhibitions until June 28, with information and tickets available on their website. Love After the End can be purchased from various retailers, including Indigenous-owned bookstore Massy Books.