Hello Friends,

This has been a dispiriting couple of weeks. We are facing a new political reality and now, I feel, there is an increased social, political, and creative urgency — something I’ve never felt before. To address this, me and a few local Bay Area creators have decided to launch AfroGeeks Unite! It is a small initiative that aims to get more POC youth (particularly black youth) involved in the speculative fiction (used as a catchall for SF, comics, horror, etc.) community.

Why speculative fiction? SpecFic helps us make sense of our world. It functions in much the same way mythology used to. It is an orientation device. Not only that, it is also a conduit for community building — something we will need more of in the coming months and years.

We’ll facilitate this by opening our homes the summer of 2017 to youth who want to write and read and critique SpecFic (my home), draw or design (another artist’s home), or create cosplay (another artist’s home).

We’ve launched a store on Threadless to help fund the project. 50% of all Threadless purchases will be directly passed through to the youth (and hopefully their parents) in the form of books, writing and drawing supplies, and cosplay materials.

If you can, please buy a shirt. If you cannot, please share this as widely as you can.

I thank you all for even considering to support.