Terese Mason Pierre is the editor of As The Earth Dreams (House of Anansi Press), a ground-breaking anthology of haunting speculative stories by contemporary Black Canadian writers that explore growth, futurity, and joy.
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 woman attends her mother’s latest resurrection, only to encounter family she’s never met. A postdoc instructor navigates an almost-life in an Elsewhere realm of safety and comfort. After social collapse, a former sex worker leaves her precarious station, and her memories, behind. A woman isolating from a new virus starts hallucinating. In lyrical fragments, a young nanny accepts a job with a peculiar employer. 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 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.
Sarah Marie: Hi Terese. Thank you for being here today. I am excited to talk to you about this anthology. When did you start working on it?
Terese Mason Pierre: So, I started working on As The Earth Dreams almost 3 years ago. I was approached by Leslie, and then Shivaun and Shirarose at House of Anansi. Originally, they wanted to put together an anthology of Canadian Speculative Fiction. I had done work previously with Leslie at Augur Society. I was already doing editing there, and working with speculative fiction authors. So when House of Anansi was thinking about, you know, who should edit this, or who should we approach, my name had come up. We had a meeting in June of 2022 about what we thought this anthology could look like, then I wrote the proposal and sent it off, and then I signed a contract, and we talked about some of the writers we wanted to approach. We also talked about if it was gonna be short fiction or poetry, or both. Did we want originals, reprints, things like that.
SM: Did the idea for the anthology, or what it would be, evolve over time? You said you were approached about a Canadian speculative fiction anthology, and that you really wanted to do a Black canadian speculative fiction anthology. But, once that was decided, did it change shape? Or, does it look the way you thought it would when you started?
TMP: The title has stayed the same. The themes, the reasons why I wanted to do this anthology, have also stayed the same. What’s mostly changed is the contributors. You know, some of them who originally couldn’t participate, decided to contribute after all, including me. I thought maybe I would just write a foreword or something like that. But in the end I decided I would like to write a story. Oh! Also, the lengths of the stories. We were going back and forth on how long they would be, since the original submissions ranged from, you know, 3 000, 5 000, or even 7 000 words. But, like, the overall direction of the project has stayed the same over the three years. Though, the three years seems like such a blur.
SM: The contributors are not all situated in Canada, is that right?
TMP: Lou Palmer travels a lot, but they’re Canadian. The writers are either born in Canada, or live in Canada.
SM: Have you worked with these writers? Or, like, do you have some sort of professional relationship with everyone in the anthology?
TMP: Yeah, I had a relationship with all of them in some way. Whitney French and Chimedum Ohaegbu and I have worked together before. Some writers I knew in the community, and we’d done events together. I knew that they wrote speculative fiction, and I knew that their work was really amazing, so they were top on my list to approach.
SM: What was it like working with everyone for this project?
TMP: It was my first time editing an anthology of this type. The closest experience I’d had was managing different authors for an editorial for Auger, but this was the first time I was sort of responsible for 9 other writers and their stories. Working with the authors was really excellent. A lot of people’s work when they came in were almost there. Maybe, like, 90% there. A lot of the work was more discussing things like voice, and emotional beats, some stylistic changes, honestly, I’m really excited about. I appreciate how seriously everybody took this project. Communication was great, I really had a good time. I couldn’t have asked for a better experience for a first-time anthology.
SM: So, House of Anansi, you said you have worked with them before?
TMP: Yes. This is my second book with House of Anansi this year. My first one was Myth, my poetry collection. This anthology is a completely different editor, and a completely different process, though. They were very patient with me. They told me ahead of time, you know, anthologies are a lot of work, they take years, and I was like, that’s fine, but then when it eventually took years, I was like, oh my goodness. And they’re like, “Yes! We are professionals, and we know that this takes a while, and this is new for you, but it’s not new for us.” But it was great. Yeah, very patient, very kind, very professional, on top of everything. Like, I couldn’t have asked for a better team.
SM: Would you prefer to just do your own writing again? Or, would you do another anthology? I assume they were very different experiences.
TMP: I think the main difference between these two projects was that, in this case, as the editor, I had to do a lot of heavy lifting. Which, of course, House of Anansi warned me about before I signed on. I was responsible for approaching authors and coordinating everyone, which is something I hadn’t done, but something, you know, I could do, and I have, and I did!
SM: Yeah!
TMP: So, yeah, navigating all of that communication was a lot, that’s probably what took the longest. It was approaching writers and inviting them to participate, letting them know the contract details and deadlines, how I would be supporting them with their drafts, this type of work.
SM: Right.
TMP: I was a middle person between the authors and the editors, and the production team at House of Anansi, whereas, when it was just my book, it was just me and I was just working with, my editor, Kevin Connolly, and, my own book did not take 3 years!
SM: [laughing] I guess that makes a lot of sense.
TMP: Right?! But yeah, I got a lot of one-on-one attention when I was the only writer, and that was really nice. But, I will say that it was also nice to give that sort of experience to other writers.
SM: So, you also teach writing classes sometimes, is that right?
TMP: Yes.
SM: Do you feel like that experience helped with this anthology project? Or, would you say that those are very different skill sets?
TMP: I feel like the administration and communication with multiple writers is something that working with House of Anansi and these authors prepared me for, when it came to teaching. I started the anthology before I started teaching genre writing classes. Working with multiple authors and having to manage timelines, manage writers’ individual needs, and responding to questions from everyone. Also like, working with all of these writing styles and communication styles. Managing all that was helpful for me overall. I took those skills that I had to learn, and I brought that with me into teaching. I had a class of 21 students, and they were all very different, and wanted to write different things. It was sort of my responsibility to guide them through the parts of genre writing for publication. Or, sorry, writing genre fiction for publication. Even though I learned a lot from that teaching experience, and it was quite challenging, I didn’t feel like I was starting from zero, because I had that experience I gained from this anthology.
SM: Yes. I guess I didn’t appreciate that the book came first since it is so new. But, you did start working on it three years ago.
TMP: Yeah, I think, like, one difference between helping writers as an editor or as a teacher, is that the writers for the anthology and the team at House of Anansi are all professional writers and editors, who have some experience with getting something published. The students, in some cases, were in their first writing class, and they have no idea what to expect. So, I had to wear different hats, but I think that some of the skills were transferable, for sure.
SM: Can you talk a bit about your experience marketing books so far?
TMP: Yes! So I have seen some of the contributors to As The Earth Dreams share the fact that they’re in the book on their social media, which is lovely. Right now I’m working on getting a launch set up in Toronto, hopefully in November. The book is out sooner, but I am busy travelling for other book events. Also, a lot of the contributors are in different parts of the country, so we will see who will be able to come. I’m thinking of maybe doing something, like, a virtual thing, I’m not really sure, so more people can join us. But then I have to thank the amazing marketing and publicity team at House of Anansi for taking on so much of the marketing on my behalf. I’m working with Emma Rhodes, who’s my publicist for this anthology and for my poetry collection as well. She’s handling a lot of that, which is something I have never had in my life before, I’ve never had a publicist, actually. I was very surprised when I wasn’t the one who had to field so many emails. I didn’t even really know how much that would mean for being able to get the book out there.
SM: I guess that would definitely change how you would navigate book publicity, if you have someone to do the emails. There are always so many.
TMP: Yeah, I think that’s the extent to which I’m involved in marketing and publicity. Hopefully I’ll have more opportunities to talk about the book. I hope to do some more festivals. I’d love more experience being an author at a festival. I had this one time at VerseFest in Hamilton and the volunteers were really excited to be helping me. That was very different.
SM: As you start to do more publicity for this book, what kind of questions are you hoping people will ask you?
TMP: I hope people ask about emotional beats, and relationships between characters.
SM: Can you tell me a bit about the community engagement with the book, so far? Since I started asking this question, I have come to learn that CanLit and CanSpec are in each other’s orbit, but are more generally treated as separate communities. I am not really part of these communities myself, so I just assumed all of the writers everywhere in Canada knew each other.
TMP: I get it, for sure. I can still talk about community. I also feel similarly when I meet writers, because I’ve met a lot of writers, and a lot of editors in this space, and I also assume that people know each other, and like each other, and, like, probably hang out. I learn every week in a new way that this is not the case. But, yes, community. When I was talking with House of Anansi about the people we wanted to approach for the anthology, we decided not to do an open submission. We were gonna solicit writers to write original stories for this anthology. I wanted to make sure we balanced people who were more known in speculative literature spaces with people who were more known in the traditional Canadian literature spaces, and some people who are in both. So we have authors like francesca ekwuyasi and Zalika Reid-Benta, who are more so known in Canadian literature spaces, even though Zalika has written a fantasy book. But then we have Suyi Davies Okungbowa and Chinelo Onwualu, who are more speculative in their style. Because, we’re all in literature, right? I wanted to make sure we could come together in this way. It seems like people who know about the anthology are excited about it. Part of me feels like it’s a bit too early to tell. Like, everyone really loves Chinelo’s story, and it is getting a lot of great feedback.
SM: Yeah! That one is still haunting me, if I am being honest. I am not even sure I am going to be able to sleep with a physical copy of the book in my house. I’ve tried to explain the story to two people, and I couldn’t stop crying.
TMP: It’s beautiful. Each story in the collection has a different emotional level or experience. But yeah, I think that’s kind of all I can say about community engagement with the book, so far. It’s mostly been positive. I hope to attend more events so that I can hear what people are saying.
SM: You’ve got some reviews on Goodreads so far, is that right?
TMP: Yeah. So, people who have been given advanced review copies of the book, mostly digital, go on Goodreads to say whether or not they liked it. Folks are mostly talking about how the collection has a lot of range in terms of style and themes. You know, the different types of relationships, like friendships or romance or family, things like that. It also spans a diversity of time. Like, some stories are more future-focused, some take place in an alternate reality, and some take place in Canada, specifically.
SM: I see.
TMP: So that is what I’m seeing so far. Someone mentioned that it’s a kind of anthology where you’re never in one place, or one situation, or one point of view long enough to get bored, and that it imagines Black experiences all over the map. I thought that was great. You know, that’s what I hoped for. I wanted this collection to be very wide-ranging.
SM: I mean, none of these stories are really like each other.
TMP: What I value most about, even though the stories are different, a lot of them, as I mentioned, are relationship-focused. I’m thinking about Whitney French’s story about, like, the cousins, who are able to move back and forth, or communicate through the power of family and ancestry. Or Aline-Mwezi Niyonsenga’s story about these two girls who are trying to make friends by learning to fly on a magic carpet. I value those relationships in stories, potentially to my detriment as a writer. It’s as if I only care about these characters and how they relate. People will ask me, like, where the story is located, but it doesn’t matter to me. These characters are friends, and that’s all you need to know about. So I’m really happy that I could see that, at least that through line, in the stories, because that’s what I love to read, and that’s what I hope people really love.
SM: Would you say that some stories in As The Earth Dreams stayed with you more than others?
TMP: One of the stories that I feel like stayed with me is the story I mentioned earlier, Aline-Mwezi Niyonsenga’s story, because I definitely relate to trying to make friends, being in a new space, and feeling awkward, but still yearning for that connection. But, truthfully, I love all the stories.
SM: Do you recommend that we read the stories in order?
TMP: I don’t feel as strongly about reading in order as I did for my poetry collection. I’m not as attached to that with the anthology. I’m fine with it if people don’t read it in order, which is not how I feel about my poetry book. I insist people read that in the order I put it in. But, with the anthology, I think all the stories are strong enough that they don’t rely on each other that way.
SM: Did you pick the cover art for this, or did you work with somebody, or was that the press, or?
TMP: I didn’t have much input on the cover, to be honest. I think, like, the type of bug they decided to use has changed. I think some people in the production team were like, what bug do we use? One of the stories has earwigs, so we thought maybe we would do an earwig. But, like, earwigs are a little jarring.
SM: Right.
TMP: I’m most interested in the colours for the cover. It’s neon, weird and funky. I love that.
SM: I think Spec Fic should be neon because someone else said it once and it made sense. I don’t have a good reason.
TMP: I agree, we’re the same.
SM: Are you reading any Canadian books right now that you’d like to tell everyone about?
TMP: Yes, I am reading Natasha Ramoutar’s Baby Cerebus (Wolsak and Wynn). It’s a collection of poetry. A lot of the poems are kind of dreamy, and otherworldly, and also kind of hilarious.
SM: Thank you again for taking the time to talk with me today.
TMP: Thank you for having me.
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.
Publisher: House of Anansi Press (October 14, 2025)
Paperback 5.5″ x 8″ | 288 pages
ISBN: 9781487012663
Sarah Marie is a perfectly unqualified, no-talent, lit/poetry enthusiast.A~literal nobody~ on social media, you may recognize her from commenting on your posts as if you sent them to her personally. She isvery impressedby your dedication to your work and to each other, and she believes in you.
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