The James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award Council has selected two new Tiptree Fellows: H. Pueyo and Ineke Chen-Meyer.

The Tiptree Award celebrates voices that have always been talking — but haven’t always been heard by the wider science fiction community. Now in its third year, the Tiptree Fellowship program seeks out creators who are striving to complete new works, particularly creators from communities that have been historically underrepresented in the science fiction and fantasy genre and those who are working in media other than traditional fiction.

H. Pueyo, a South American writer and occasional comic artist, focuses on bringing Latin American culture and realities to a broader, international audience through speculative and sometimes literary fiction.

Pueyo writes that her “ambitions with writing genre fiction are mostly focused on bringing Latin American culture and realities to a broader, international audience inside the speculative (and sometimes literary) fiction market.” She notes that her writing themes vary, “but usually include subjects close to home, such as multiculturalism in Latin America, uncomfortably violent things, multiracial backgrounds, and her family’s spiritual beliefs”. Her work has been published in several comic anthologies, and magazines such as Mad Scientist Journal, Luna Station Quarterly, FLAPPERHOUSE, and Bourbon Penn, among others. Her fellowship will support improvements to her workspace, which will improve her quality of life and ability to freelance and write.

Ineke Chen-Meyer, an Australian by way of Malaysia and New Zealand, writes genderbending historical fiction about Chinese emperors, Mongol warriors, and tormented eunuch generals. And sometimes she writes about lesbians in space.

An Australian by way of Malaysia and New Zealand, Chen-Meyer is currently finishing her first novel, She Who Became the Sun, which she describes as “a genderbending alt-history that takes male-centered, male-authored Chinese imperial history and makes it defiantly queer.” She writes:

First and foremost, I wrote this book for myself and people like me. It is a story for members of the English-speaking Chinese diaspora who so rarely see respectful portrayals of themselves in Western-published speculative fiction. It is for queer audiences who have been denied queerness in the global phenomenon of East Asian TV dramas. And it is for Western audiences who might only have experienced the Asian crossdressing trope in Disney’s Mulan, but are compelled by the thought of the epic rise to power of a queer protagonist.

Chen-Meyer will use her fellowship to access formal language studies to gain a strong understanding of Chinese grammar to inform the dialogue in her work.

The Fellowship Committee also awarded honorable mentions to Julian K. Jarboe and Lilliam Rivera.

Each Fellow receives $500 to help in their efforts. The work produced as a result of this support will be recognized and promoted by the Tiptree Award. Over time, the Fellowship program will create a network of Fellows who can build connections, provide mutual support, and find opportunities for collaboration. This effort will complement the on-going work of the Award — that is, the celebration of speculative fiction that expands and explores gender roles in thought-provoking, imaginative, and occasionally infuriating ways.

The members of the 2017 Tiptree Fellowships selection committee were Mia Sereno, Porpentine Charity Heartscape, Pat Schmatz, and Gretchen Treu. For more on the work of the latest Tiptree Fellows (and on the work of past fellows), visit the Tiptree website.