As the Earth Dreams

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with editor, poet, and author, Terese Mason Pierre about As the Earth Dreams: Black Canadian Speculative Stories (Spiderline, 2025).

A ground-breaking anthology of haunting speculative stories by contemporary Black Canadian writers that explore growth, futurity, and joy.

Edited by esteemed poet Terese Mason Pierre, this bold and innovative anthology of speculative short fiction reveals and uplifts the spectacular imaginings, reveries, reflections, experiments, and hopes of Black writers in Canada. A masseuse attends her mother's fourth funeral, only to encounter family she's never met. A postdoc instructor navigates an almost-life in an Elsewhere realm of safety and comfort. After societal collapse, an immigrant leaves her precarious station, and her memories, behind. A woman isolating from a new virus starts hallucinating. A young nanny accepts a job with a peculiar employer in search of immortality. A medium is tasked with summoning a spirit that hits too close to home. And two teenagers test a friendship over magic carpet flying practice.

These ten breathtaking stories explore natural and urban landscapes, living and dead relationships, economic catastrophe, love, and desire--all while celebrating the persistent and ever-changing self, and envisioning beautiful Black futures.

Featuring stories by:

• Trynne Delaney
• francesca ekwuyasi
• Whitney French
• Aline-Mwezi Niyonsenga
• Chimedum Ohaegbu
• Suyi Davies Okungbowa
• Chinelo Onwualu
• Lue Palmer
• Terese Mason Pierre
• Zalika Reid-Benta

Terese Mason Pierre (she/her) is a writer, poet, and editor whose work has appeared in the Walrus, ROOM, Brick, Quill & Quire, Uncanny, and Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction. Her work has been nominated for the bpNichol Chapbook Award, Best of the Net, the Aurora Award, the Rhysling Award, and the Ignyte Award. She is one of ten winners of the Writers’ Trust Journey Prize and was named a Writers’ Trust Rising Star. Terese is the chief programming officer at Augur, a speculative arts nonprofit, and co-director of AugurCon, Augur’s biennial speculative arts conference. Terese lives in Toronto.