Fall sf work/shop
IN URSULA LE GUIN’s Always Coming Home, which takes place in what might be far future California, the people of the Valley tell stories about the “backward-heads.” These are people who literally have their heads on backward, and are said to lurk in the poisoned lands where human people can no longer live. Stories of backward-heads are among the most frightening and ghoulish ghost stories told in the Valley: a child would run screaming if they imagined seeing one, and an actor merely turning to look over their shoulder in a play would send a shiver through the crowd.
The unnamed editor of the book calls the backward-heads “the literalization of a metaphor” and connects them to the people who lived generations before—people who had caused vast desolation to the land and sea, whose waste continued to litter the world, causing sickness and death.
The people of the Valley did not conceive that such acts as they saw and felt much evidence of in their world…had not been deliberate. In their view, human beings did not do things accidentally. Accidents happened to people, but what people did they were responsible for. So these things human beings had done to the world must have been deliberate and conscious acts of evil, serving the purposes of wrong understanding, fear, and greed. The people who had done these things had done wrong mindfully. They had had their heads on wrong.
We seem to be surrounded by backward-heads: executives abandoning commitments to the climate and diversity, gleefully inking deals with the Department of War, sucking up to would-be emperors, eliminating jobs right and left and telling those that remain they have to work themselves to the bone. Those of us with our heads on straight can sometimes wonder if we’re the only ones left, if our only chance of survival is to twist our heads around and join them. But what kind of survival would that be?
We must look forward, even on the days when that future seems hazy and the horizon unclear, even when it seems like we cannot imagine next week let alone next year. That’s what this work/shop is for: to give you space to pause and look around, to fortify your imagination against the wrong-headedness and fear and greed, the incessant banging of the drums for war. To imagine a different future is to practice a different way of being in the present, to build muscle for seeing things as they really are (not as the backward-heads want them to be), to see where the seeds of that future are already planted, and to commit yourself to helping them grow.
Here is what we will do: we will write, using the practice of speculative fiction to shift our thinking out of the day-to-day, to give our imagination room to wander and explore. We will notice that writing, for ourselves and our comrades, notice what it is bringing up, what it surfaces and exposes, what fears, longings, and wisdom have been lurking out of sight. We will think together about these noticings, learning methods for working with them, understanding where we can shape them and where they shape us, how stories can be written and rewritten. We will draw from many liberatory practices and philosophies: abolitionist thinking and feminist economies, utopian demands and anti-work imaginaries, transformative justice, narrative strategies, and of course, speculative fiction modes and movements. You will learn strategies for expanding your attention, for relinquishing habits that keep your imagination bound and small, for bringing all those wanted and imagined futures closer to hand.
The backward-heads walk backwards into the future, but we practice our imagination by walking straight ahead, into a future that isn’t determined and isn’t inevitable, but is made step by step by—careful, curious, deliberate—step.
Applications are open
You can read all about the work/shop here. The next cohort will take place Wednesdays, 12:00 PM-1:15 PM EDT (UTC-4) from Sep 16–Oct 21, 2026. Applications are open now. The application is short, and is designed to provide just enough information for me to design a balanced cohort. As always, you must agree to abide by the code of conduct to be considered. Applications are due before noon EDT (UTC-4) on Thursday, July 30. Everyone who applies will hear from me the following week. If you have any questions at all, don’t hesitate to reach out.