T-60 is an immersive apocalyptic book party. In 60 minutes, the last spaceship is leaving for a brand new planet. Will you stay here on ravaged Earth or take your chances on the ship? What are the stories we need to decide? Some of Bay Area’s most exciting queer speculative writers and performers will make the case for #Team Earth and #Team Ship and then we will decide.

What will we choose?

Will we get on the spaceship or open the doors and let the monsters in? Come find out! Save the date. Bring a date. Bring two! It’s the end of the world as we know it, and we look fiiiiine.

T-Minus 60 is an immersive launch party for Syr Beker’s Book, What A Fish Looks Like, available September 4th from Stelliform Press, and features some of the Bay Area’s most exciting queer speculative writers and performers.

  • Portrait of the writer Syr Hayati Beker, a queer person with long black hair, half smiling, half scowling, having crawled out from the ocean.

    Syr Hayati Beker

    (THEY/THEM)

    Syr Hayati Beker is a nonbinary Turkish-French-USian writer, immersive experience creator, and horror nerd in search of the queer love language of climate change. You can preorder their book What A Fish Looks Like, from your favorite queer bookstore (Fabulosa!).

  • Portrait of the writer MM Olivas, a trans, first generation Chicana with shoulder-length black hair, lipstick, and gold glasses. She stands in front of a mural.

    M.M. Olivas

    (SHE/HER)

    M. M. Olivas is an alumna of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop, the Lambda Literary Workshop, and has an MFA in creative writing and English literature from San Jose State University. An Ignyte finalist and featured on the Stoker’s longlist, Olivas’ fiction has appeared to critical acclaim in Uncanny, Apex, Weird Horror, and Bourbon Penn Magazine. As a trans, first-generation Chicana, she explores the intersection of queer and diasporic experiences in her fiction. Her debut novel, Sundown in San Ojuela, portrays how Mexico’s indigenous and colonial pasts haunt the present. Olivas currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and in her free time, collects transforming robots.

    More information at olivasthewriter.wtf. 

  • KaiKai Bee Michaels

    (THEY/SHE/HE)

    Bay Area Drag and Cosplay Legend KaiKai Bee MIchaels is a member of Bay Area Super Heroes, and the 2023 High Prinx Pageant. Find them @Nostalgiajunki3

  • T.K. Rex

    (SHE/THEY)

    T. K. Rex is a science fiction and fantasy author from the western states, whose stories can be read in more than forty publications, including their debut collection, The Wildcraft Drones, coming fall 2026 from Stelliform Press. They’re an alumni of the Clarion, Taos Toolbox and Futurescapes workshops; a member of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association, the Authors Guild, and the Writers Grotto; and the co-host of Stir, a reading series at Cafe Suspiro on Folsom—next one October 2nd! T. K.'s stories, socials, and newsletter can be found at tkrex.wtf.

  • Jewelle Gomez

    Jewelle Gomez, (Cabo Verdean/Wampanoag/Ioway; she/her), is a novelist, poet, essayist and playwright. Her eleven books include five collections of poetry and the first Black Lesbian vampire novel, THE GILDA STORIES. In print for  more than 30 years, a new UK edition was launched by Vintage/Random House in  2023. The novel was recently optioned by Cheryl Dunye (“Lovecraft Country”) for a TV mini-series. Her latest collection of poetry, “Still Water,” is from BLF Press.


    Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies including: “Red Indian Road West,” “Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora,” “Oxford Treasury of Love Stories,” “Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia Butler,” and “Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany.”

    She was the recipient of a Bram Stoker Legacy Award from the Horror Writers of America.

    Gomez was playwright in residence (2011-2023) at New Conservatory Theatre Center (San Francisco) which commissioned and produced her last three plays.


    Connect with her on TWITTER & Instagram: @VampyreVamp.

  • Cy Berspace

    (HE/THEY)

    Cy Berspace is a trans conceptual artist, technologist, and Drag performer based in the Bay Area. Through sculpture, installation, and performance he gives form to semiotic and social boundaries meant to govern our identity, sense of worth, and communal relations. His practice explores cultural movements occurring in Virtual Reality and mixed reality mediums as a safe space for trans people to explore identity, embodiment, and community building. Find him @Cy_Berspace

  • What A Fish Looks Like

    What A Fish Looks Like

    THE BOOK

    In ten days, the last spaceship is leaving for a new planet. Some of us will stay on Earth. How do we decide? Told in margin notes, posters, letters scrawled on napkins, and six retellings of classic fairy tales, What A Fish Looks Like gathers the stories of a queer community co-creating one another through the strange landscapes of climate change, wondering who is going to love us when there are not, in fact, plenty of fish in the sea. Order HERE!