The Seer’s Table, NOVEMBER 2025
Linda D. Addison, Member of the Diverse Works Inclusion Committee
You can see any of The Seers’ Table posts since inception (March 2016) by going to the HWA main page and selecting the menu item “HWA Publications / Blogs / Seers’ Table”.
Geneve Flynn recommends:
Joanne Anderton is an Australian author of speculative fiction, creative nonfiction, and children’s books. Her speculative fiction includes Pixerina, a haunted house novella set in the Australian suburbs (coming in 2026 from Bad Hand Books), the novels in the Veiled Worlds series – Debris, Suited and Guardian – and the short story collections The Art of Broken Things, Inanimates: Tales of Everyday Fear, and The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories. She has won multiple awards for her speculative fiction, including the Australian Shadows Award, Ditmar and Aurealis Awards.
Her children’s picture book, The Flying Optometrist, was published by the National Library of Australia and was a CBCA notable book. Her non-fiction has been published in Speculative Insight, Island Magazine, Meanjin and The Japan News, and she regularly writes reviews for outlets such as The Conversation and Locus.
Joanne has a PhD in Creative Writing from The University of Queensland, a MA in Creative Writing from UTS, and worked for many years in book publishing, sales, marketing and distribution.
Recommended Reading: Pixerina: A Haunting(Bad Hands Books, April 2026)
Excerpt from Pixerina:
The house at the top of the hill has been flirting with me and today I’m ready to answer.
Two stories of redbrick so dark they’re purple, paint-stripped railings around rotting verandas, grey roof tiles trapped in the act of falling like time, in that place, stands still. Looming from its peak and surrounded by a large yard of unkempt bush, it unsettles the sleek lines of modern suburbia like an ill-fitting puzzle piece.
The first time I walked past, it nudged me. Face in my phone, following the map around my newly adopted suburb, I wasn’t looking. Didn’t notice it so once-grand and still-proud. The tap on my shoulder was gentle, a tickle I took to be the wind. Sweet scented. The second time was stronger, a firm pressure like a body against mine and, startled, I tripped over my own feet, almost planted face-first into the concrete. Someone had pushed me, I knew it, I could still feel the residue of their hand like ice through my clothing…but the street was empty. No one, nothing, except the pointed shadow of a gable, stretched long enough to touch. Demanding my attention.
The house is caged by high fencing and “private property keep out” signs, but they aren’t strong enough to contain it. Abandoned, decrepit, it leaks a kind of wildness into the street. A feeling of resistance that instantly attracted me and now, three years later, I still admire. It will not submit to boxy flat roofs or adapt to lawns with tidy hedges. It will not be tamed by the expectations of others.
Every time I walk past, it calls to me.
I see you.
Its wordless voice wriggles free to whisper in my ear.
You see me.
For three years, it has beckoned me and for three years, I have let the barbed wire keep me away. No longer. Today I will respect no boundaries; today I will play by no rules.
Follow Joanne Anderton at:
Preorder link is here: Pixerina (Paperback with signed bookplate)
Facebook: joanne.anderton.16
Instagram: @joanneanderton
Bluesky: @joanneanderton.bsky.social
Website: joanneanderton.com
Author photo credit:Joanne Anderton
Kate Maruyama recommends:
Jordan Kurella is an author who grew up all over the world, including Moscow and Manhattan, and in his past lives was a radio DJ, photographer, and social worker.
Jordan’s work can be found in Reactor, Lightspeed, and Strange Horizons magazines.
His short fiction has been nominated for the Nebula Award and the Sturgeon Award. His work has appeard on the Locus Recommended List and has been on the British Science Fantasy Award longlist multiple times.
Jordan’s debut novella I Never Liked You Anyway (Lethe Press) was a Nebula Finalist and was longlisted for the BSFA award. It has been called “beautifully queer” by Publisher’s Weekly. Sarah Gailey called it, “an irresistible read.” SB Divya said it was “an absolute delight.”
His second novella The Death of Mountains (Lethe Press, March 2025) is out now and has been praised by Premee Mohamed, K. Tidbeck, and Publisher’s Weekly.
Recommended Reading:
Excerpt: from his novella, The Death of Mountains, out now:
On our hill, which is us, all things end. That is the way of things. We have seen this done over our crests and in our valleys. In the mines where people have scraped our walls for riches and died for worse. On our cliffs where lovers made their legacies and pushed others goodbye. We have seen the deaths of our sister mountains, and we have seen the Death of Mountains come for them. Sometimes , they were on time; sometimes they were late.
Now, they have come for us, and we will not have it. We have withstood death for far too long. Seen hundreds of our sisters felled by humanity and worse. We have seen people crlimb across our hillsides, die on them, kiss on them, feel things die inside us. We have heard so much birdsong, so much that we could not tell you all the songs’ names (so many of the melodies are gone now). We are, in effect, history.
Little is left of history but the land and the scars people have left upon it.
When the Death of Mountains came for us, we had been aching for a long time.
You can find Kurella online at BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/jordankurella.com; check out his newsletter: https://buttondown.com/kurellian
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