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Community

Sirens is a community as much as it is a conference. Only through communal engagement, learning, and caretaking can we seek to build the blueprints for better worlds that progressive speculative fiction has dreamed. But communities are a shared experience—and shared experiences require care, work, and intentional, respectful engagement from all members.

At its best, Sirens will offer you space in which to learn and grow, and we very much hope that you engage with those opportunities. We must all acknowledge, however, that shared experiences are not always equal experiences; communities require that you give, sometimes more than you receive. We are providing you space in which to grow and presenters who will help you do so. But we simultaneously require that you respect others’ space—and their hope, joy, and respite. To help us all contribute thoughtfully to the Sirens community, we have created Community Guidelines. 

Even as Sirens is a more protected space for people of marginalized genders, we seek to create even more protected spaces for the following communities: BIPOC people, LGBTQIA+ people, and a coalition of disabled, neurodivergent, and chronically ill people. We have created affinity groups by and for these communities ahead of Sirens—you can join on our Discord—and we will have special programming by these communities for only these communities at Sirens.

Conference Faculty

Sirens will feature eight expert faculty: accomplished individuals in a variety of fields whom we invited to teach as part of our conference. Each faculty member will deliver a keynote presentation to the entire conference and participate in our programming in other ways. Many will also present as part of our affinity group-only programming for our BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and disabled, neurodivergent, and chronically ill communities.

Our faculty slate for 2026 features brilliant, dynamic speakers, and includes both those who dream of better worlds and those building them today. Collectively, their experience spans education, academia, criticism, publishing, editing, fandom, activism, community-building, and of course, writing nonfiction, essays, articles, poetry, plays, and speculative fiction.

Here is the first round of our 2026 faculty, with the remaining faculty to come:

 

Stephanie Burt, a Jewish woman with shoulder-length, curly hair that is medium brown with teal tips, in a head-and-shoulders photo. She is wearing dangle earrings, trans-flag glasses that fade from blue to white to pink, and a black top with cut-outs. She is smiling at the camera. Headshot of Stephanie Burt, who is wearing glasses and smiling.

Stephanie Burt

she/her

Dr. Stephanie Burt is a poet, literary critic, Guggenheim Fellow, and professor of numerous published books, including critical books on poetry and four poetry collections. Her essay collection Close Calls with Nonsense (Graywolf Press, 2009) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
 Her other works include Advice from the Lights: Poems; Don’t Read Poetry;  Parallel Play: Poems; ; We Are Mermaids;  and Super Gay Poems, among others.Burt grew up around Washington, DC, and received an AB from Harvard in 1994 and a PhD in English from Yale in 2000. She served as co-Poetry Editor for The Nation from 2017–2020. Currently, she is a professor of English at Harvard University.

Sarah Gailey, a white person with closely shaved hair on the sides and longer hair on top, gazes upward with their hands resting behind their head. They are partly lit by sunlight, showing a tattoo on their upper arm, against a dark leafy background. © Sarah Gailey

Sarah Gailey

they/them

Sarah Gailey is a Hugo Award and British Fantasy Award winning, bestselling author of speculative fiction, short stories, and essays. They have been a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards for multiple years running. Their bestselling adult novel debut, Magic For Liars, was published by Tor Books in 2019. Their most recent novel, Just Like Home, and most recent original comic book series with BOOM! Studios, Know Your Station, are available now. They have also written comics for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Steven Universe, Predator, White Widow, and more.Their shorter works and essays have been published in Mashable, The Boston Globe, Vice, Tor.com, and The Atlantic. Their work has been translated and published around the world. They are the editor and publisher of Stone Soup and Love Letters: Reasons To Be Alive.

Jewelle Gomez, a woman of Cabo Verdean, Wampanoag, and Ioway heritage, with short, white, curly hair. She is wearing cheetah-print sunglasses, a silver pendant, a silver gemstone bangle on her right wrist, a silver ring on her right ring finger, a black tank top, and a long-sleeved cheetah-print top. The black, green, and gold tattoo on her left breast is partly visible. Her right hand is holding her glasses partway down her nose, and she is looking saucily over them at the camera. A headshort of Jewelle Gomez, who is holding her sunglasses partway down her nose to look over them at the camera. © Irene Young 2013

Jewelle Gomez

she/her

Jewelle Gomez, (Cabo Verdean/Wampanoag/Ioway), is a novelist, essayist, poet, and playwright. Her eight books include four collections of poetry and the first Black Lesbian vampire novel, The Gilda Stories. In print for more than thirty years, it was recently optioned by Cheryl Dunye (“Lovecraft Country”) for a TV mini-series. The sequel, Gilda: Blood Relations, is forthcoming.
Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including Red Indian Road West, Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora, Stories for Skip: A Tribute to Samuel R Delany, Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia Butler, and the Oxford World Treasury of Love Stories.
 
Her plays, Waiting for Giovanni about James Baldwin, Leaving the Blues about Alberta Hunter, and Unpacking in P’town about retired audevillians were produced in San Francisco at New Conservative Theatre Center and in New York City by The Other Side of Silence (TOSOS) at the Flea Theater. Her play based on The Gilda Stories, commissioned by Urban Bush Women, toured thirteen US cities.
Her recent collection of poetry Still Water was published by BLF Press. Her new speculative fiction novella We Three was published by Rebel Satori Press.
 
She has taught fiction, poetry, and popular culture at several institutions, including San Francisco State University and Hunter College of the City University of New York. In addition to two Lambda Literary Awards she was the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from Horror Writers of America, a Poetry Fellowship from the National Endowment on the Arts, and a Writer-in-Residence award from the California Arts Council.

Layla Azmi Goushey, a Palestinian-American woman with long, black hair parted in the center, in a head-and-shoulders photo. She is wearing black glasses, red-and-black dangle earrings, and a black top with an embroidery-style red design across the front. She is looking off in the distance with a slight smile. A headshot of Layla Azmi Goushey, who is looking off into the distance with a slight smile.

Layla Azmi Goushey

she/her

Dr. Layla Azmi Goushey is a literacy educator, poet, writer, and editor. She holds a PhD in Adult Education: Teaching and Learning Theory, an MFA in creative writing, and an MA in history. Her poetry has been published in literary magazines such as FIYAH and Strange Horizons and in anthologies such as Ask the Night for a Dream: Palestinian Writing from the Diaspora and Heaven Looks Like Us: Palestinian Poetry. Her short stories have recently been published in Thyme Travellers: An Anthology of Palestinian Speculative Fiction and in Arabian Nightmares: An Arab Horror Anthology.  Her academic research and writing focuses on the literatures and cultures of the Southwest Asia North Africa (SWANA) region. She is the editor of Baladi Magazine, a publication focused on exploring the past, engaging the present, and imagining the future.

Micaiah Johnson

she/her

Dr. Micaiah Johnson is a Brooklyn-based author and scholar. She received her BA in creative writing from the University of California, Riverside, and her MFA in fiction from Rutgers-Camden. She received her doctorate at Vanderbilt university. On her mother’s side, she is a first-generation traditional high school graduate. Her debut novel The Space Between Worlds won the Compton Crook Award and was an Editors’ Choice at The New York Times. Both her debut and its follow-up, Those Beyond the Wall, were named among NPR’s best books of the year, with The Space Between Worlds also being named one of the best science fiction books of the last decade. In her academic work she is concerned with questions at the intersection of race and technology, particularly as revealed in Nineteenth Century America, a time punctuated by spectacular shifts in both. She also works on the necropolitical implications of preservation, both in centuries past and in our present moment of the Sixth Great Extinction.

Diana Pho, a Vietnamese-American person with straight, chin-length brown hair, in a head-and-shoulders photo. She is wearing silver glasses, silver hoop earrings, a black top, and a purple blazer. She is looking at the camera with a half-smile. A headshot of Diano Pho, who is looking at the camera with a half smile.

Diana M. Pho

she/her

Diana M. Pho is a queer Vietnamese-American independent scholar, playwright, and Hugo Award-winning fiction editor. She has over fifteen years of experience in traditional, Big Five publishing, including Tor Books, Tor.com Publishing, and the Science Fiction Book Club. Presently, she is Editorial Director at Erewhon Books, acquiring and editing genre-bending and game-changing fiction. Additionally, she has a double Bachelor’s degree in English and Russian Literature from Mount Holyoke College and a Master’s in Performance Studies from New York University. Diana’s academic work includes critical analysis of the role of race in fashion, performance, and the media, in addition to pieces focusing on fan studies and fan communities.
 
Books she has edited have won the Thriller Award, the American Library Association’s Alex Award, the Nebula Award, and a Kirkus Best Book of the Year Selection. Several of her books earned Junior Library Guild Selections, multiple starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, School Library Journal, Shelf Awareness, and Kirkus, and are finalists for the Nebula Award, Lambda Literary Award, Shirley Jackson Award, and Andre Norton Award for Young Adult. Diana herself is a two-time finalist for the Ignyte Award, a finalist for the Locus Award, and a two-time Hugo Award recipient for Best Editor, Long-Form, one of the most prestigious honors in the field of speculative fiction.  In the steampunk community, she is best-known for running Beyond Victoriana, an award-winning, US-based blog on multicultural steampunk.

Teach at Sirens

Every Sirens attendee is a reader of speculative fiction—whether your love is science fiction, fantasy, horror, dystopia, fabulism, or something else—and every Sirens attendee’s voice, as a reader, is a valid and valuable part of our community. Many attendees are also accomplished in other relevant fields, such as academia, criticism, education, library science, publishing, bookselling, activism, community-building, creative writing, fandom, cosplay, and crafts, among other arenas.

The Sirens community is a deliberately egalitarian gathering of lifelong learners with common interests—and we save space at Sirens for our attendees to teach the community as well. You might present on your insights as a reader; data gathered as an educator, librarian, academic, or bookseller; or practical tools that you’ve used to build progressive communities. We do hope that, whether you are new to Sirens, new to your field, or even new to speculative fiction, that you believe that your thoughts are a worthy addition to the Sirens community—and consider applying to teach at Sirens. Please go here to learn more about how to do so:

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