Violet Lichen Books

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ECO: The Year’s Best Speculative Ecofiction, the first-ever annual showcase of the best nature-based science fiction and fantasy published around the world, presents a new collection of short stories by some of the finest writers in the field. 

Featuring both established names and rising stars, this series explores humanity’s deep relationships with other species and our communal fears, grief, and passion as we try to protect our natural world—all told through the lens of the fantastic. 

Crossing over with a range of other subgenres, from literary science fiction to fantasy and magical realism, each anthology forms a unique snapshot of how some of the most imaginative writers on the planet are engaging with this extraordinary time in Earth’s natural history. 

The finalists featured in ECO25 were selected by a team of passionate ecofiction judges who read hundreds of nominations from anthologies, magazines, and journals around the world to find only the very best. This second edition of the series showcases some of the most vibrant, emotionally impactful, and imaginative stories published about our living planet last year. 

ECO25 cover art by Marcela Bolívar. Cover design by Mikio Murakami

Table of Contents

“Antigone, But With Spiders” by Syr Hayati Beker, What a Fish Looks Like (Stelliform Press)

“When the Fox-Bells Ring” by Ally Wilkes, The Earth Bleeds At Night, edited by Holley Cornetto (Eerie River Press)

“Lolos Last Run” by E.M. Kerkman, Asimov’s Science Fiction

“A Hole Cut in the Wall of the World – 29” by Rebecca Campbell, The Other Shore (Stelliform Press)

“Kindling” by Somto Ihezue, Of Enchantment, Enigma, and the Infinite, eds. Jendia Gammon and Gareth L. Powell (Star and Stabers Publishing)

“Banded Iron” by T.K. Rex, The Sunday Morning Transport

“All the World is Fog” by DaVaun Sanders, Uncanny Magazine

“We Will Not Dream of Coral” by Mário Coelho, Reckoning

“MALO MALO MALO MALO” by Louis Inglis Hall, The Dark Magazine

“The Oneiromantic Sheep” by Frank Baird Hughes, Radon Journal

“Abatement” by Max Wheeler, Split Lip Magazine

“Invasive Species” by Mary Kuryla, Weird Horror Magazine

“Exhibition,” by Lu Xu, Saros Speculative Fiction

“greasy luck” by Samir Sirk Morató, Cosmic Horror Monthly

“The Iceberg” by Michael Capobianco, Analog

“Butterfly Pavilion” by G. Willow Wilson, Uncanny Magazine

“We Used to Wake to Song” by Leah Ning, Apex Magazine

“Herdhunters” by Mike Robinson, Zooscape Zine

“Mothership Comes to the Heart of the Ocean” by Gu Shi, translated by Ken Liu, Climate Imagination: Dispatches from Hopeful Futures, eds. Joey Eschrich and Ed Finn (MIT Press)

“The Piano Player Has Eight Arms” by Íde Hennessy, Reckoning

“Our Continuity, Each of Us Raindrops” by Parker M. O’Neill, Imagine 2200 (Grist)

“The Endstate of History” by Bernie Jean Schiebeling, The Commuter, Electric Literature

“The Order of Soil” by Tara Labovich, Tractor Beam

Meet the Judges!

Sasha Brown is a Stoker-nominated author whose work has been called “Creative! But in a bad way.” He’s in lit mags like Passages North and Split Lip, and in genre pubs like Bourbon Penn and Pseudopod. He knows three cool facts about frogs. He’s sashabrown on Bluesky and sashabrownwriter.com online.

R.L. Summerling (she/her) is a part-time fiction writer and full-time squirrel watcher from Southeast London. She has fiction in the Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, Volume 5, Interzone, Maudlin House, and Seize the Press. You can find her at www.rlsummerling.com..

Nichole Lightner is a weird writer and editor living in Ohio. She’s teasing out dark hymns from broken records when everyone in the house finally goes to sleep. She would love to talk to you about your niche hyperfocus, especially if it’s about abandoned places, ARGs or lost media. She would love to see pictures of your pets. She is the managing editor for Violet Lichen, an imprint of Apex Book Company. You can find more of her work in Maudlin House, 34 Orchard, Inner Worlds, and forthcoming in Cast of Wonders. She lurks at @nicholeon.bsky.social and nichole-l-lightner.neocities.org 

Guan Un is an Australian-Chinese writer of speculative fiction based in Sydney. His work has been featured in LeVar Burton Reads, Year’s Best Fantasy Vol 2, Strange Horizons and more. He works as a freelance editor and has now read so much ecofic, his eyeballs are growing slightly mossy. You can find him at @thisisguan.bsky.social or guanun.com.

Ende Mac (any pronouns) is a public defense attorney and slipstream author somewhere out in the Great Plains. You can find them at endewriting.wordpress.com or at their stuffed possum’s Instagram page, @ronanthepossum.

Colton Kekoa Neves is a gay, Native Hawaiian author who once believed his toy chest could fly him to new worlds and has been chasing that high ever since. By day he’s been a startup entrepreneur, tour guide, bank teller, caregiver, and game designer. By night he’s probably playing too much Magic the Gathering. In between, he writes. Colton is a graduate of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, class of 2024. He braves the winters in Cambridge, MA with his husband and their monstress-turned-kitty Amelia. Say aloha on Twitter @coltontheshaper.

Alana Perrin is originally from Los Angeles but now drifts from city to city across the US, somewhat like a haint. You can find her hiking with her dog or reading with her cat. She is a slush reader for Apex Magazine.

Series Editor

Marissa van Uden grew up in New Zealand and now lives in Vermont, in a little cabin in the woods. She is the EiC of Violet Lichen Books, series editor of ECO: The Year’s Best Speculative Ecofiction and editor of The Off-Season: An Anthology of Coastal New Weird. Her short stories have appeared in Vastarian Literary Journal, Dark Matter Magazine, Zero Dark Thirty, and Los Suelos. She loves wild things, night hikes, and eerie forests, and can sometimes be found on Bluesky @marissavu.bsky.social or IG @marissa.vu and @violetlichenbooks.

BOOKSELLERS & LIBRARIANS

Interested in stocking ECO25 or other Violet Lichen titles? Our books are distributed through Independent Publishers Group. Reach out to IPG at orders@ipgbook.com.

ISBN: 978-1-955765-52-7

MSRP Paperback: $21.95

MSRP Ebook: $9.99

Page Count: 354

Trim: 8.5 x 5.5

Rights: US & Canada

Distribution: Independent Book Publishers

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