Event: First Nations Speculative Fiction

This seminar introduces First Nations speculative fiction as an exciting field of literature that began small and slow in 1990 but has exploded exponentially in recent years. Writing into speculative genres but drawing on ancestral storytelling sensibilities and techniques, First Nations writers are finding fresh ways to tell interesting stories about who we are, where we have come from and where we are going, and readers and scholars from other cultures are increasingly engaging with our work too. This paper surveys seven main subgenres of First Nations spec fic as contemporary extensions of traditional cultural storytelling: climate stories, science fiction, futurism, fantasy, horror, ghost stories and the gothic, and weird fiction. Two exemplary spec fic texts experiment with most or all of these subgenres: the very first published First Nations spec fic novel, The Kadaitcha Sung by Sam Watson (Munanjali and Birri Gubba), and a recent short story collection Firelight by John Morrissey (Kalkadoon). These texts, and many others, showcase the unique contributions of First Nations spec fic to understanding literatures of the Global South, particularly the way that our cultural storytelling traditions accumulate like time.

Mykaela Saunders is a Koori/Goori and Lebanese writer, critic and editor. Her speculative fiction collection, Always Will Be (2024), won the David Unaipon Award, was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award (Fiction) and NSW Literary Awards Indigenous Writers’ Prize, longlisted for the Stella Prize and Highly commended for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Indigenous Writing. She is a postdoctoral research fellow at Macquarie University researching First Nations speculative fiction. Mykaela worked in Aboriginal education in various capacities from 2003 to 2023 and has been teaching at the tertiary level since 2012. Her research explores her people’s past, present and future.