Justin Steele, in publication partnership with Sam Cowan, has revealed the cover art for the forthcoming Dim Shores anthology, Suffering the Other. The amazing design comes courtesy of RewX (Andrew S. Fuller).

Suffering the Other is a charity compilation benefitting the Transgender Law Center and the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES). After production costs, all proceeds will be split between the two organizations. I’m proud of not only the principles of this project, but of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with such a kaleidoscope of exceptional writers. Preorders should be available in December, ahead of an early-2026 release. And in sequence of appearance, here’s the roster of twenty-four writers along with our stories:

• Kurt Fawver, “The KnowQuest AI Chatbot Answers All Your Questions About Britemol C”
• A. J. Sharpe, “Sore Thumb”
• Marigold Rowell, “Salt Blossoms”
• A.C. Wise, “Sea Wives”
• Cheyenne Shaffer, “Ursula the Powerful”
• Bitter Karella, “The Divine Feminine”
• Clint Smith, “January Sick”
• David Peak, “Crawling Out of Black Sun”
• Erica Ruppert, “Nor Stone, Nor Earth, Nor Boundless Sea”
• Gwendolyn Kiste, “My Sister, The Abyss”
• Matthew Cheney, “Queer Horror, and Other Stories”
• Jeffrey Thomas, “Song of the Loved”
• J. J. Steinfeld, “The Suicide Inspector”
• Alexander Hay, “LEAD”
• Pamela Weis, “An Abomination”
• Jonathan Lees, “To Those That Have Lost Hope”
• Laura Mauro, “Ptichka”
• Bogi Takacs, “A Technical Term, Like Privilege”
• Lee Thomas, “Kisses from the Pain Chamber”
• Lisa Cai, “The Eighth Cigarette”
• Robin Rose Graves, “Her True Face”
• Nadia Bulkin, “Infested”
• Wen Wen Yang, “Ghost Festival in the Desert”
• Jennifer DeLeskie, “You Shall Love Your Crooked Neighbor with Your Crooked Heart”

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My first job in the foodservice industry was at a chain Mexican restaurant (technically Tex-Mex—R.I.P. Don Pablo’s and the erstwhile DF&R Restaurants). In terms of vocation and subsistence, I had no clue what I was doing. I was in my late-teens and functionally a fucking mess. (Soon, things would get messier before coherence kicked in.) I would have no prediction of it then, but eating, cooking, and maintaining close proximity to Latin-influenced cuisine would be one of the most formative experiences in my career—it would certainly be a valuable primer prior to attending culinary school in Chicago, where I’d go on to bond with eclectic culinarians from all over the world—cooks from Jamaica, India, Korea, Greece.

But it was that Tejano restaurant that served as my first experience interacting and forming work-based friendships with people who were living in the United States to enhance the quality of their, and their family’s, lives. As time elapsed and kitchen-work fostered some semblance of trust, anecdotes (guarded, of course) were shared about crossing the Rio Grande, about leaving loved ones and relatives (children, most lamentably), along with their identity, behind in Mexico. At one point, a veteran cook (living with a number of fellow employees in a cramped apartment that exceeded capacity) revealed that they pooled their paychecks and, in designated rotations, sent the accumulated funds back home to their families. He was describing their in-house routine of remittance—a critical monetary lifeline for, among others, the impoverished.

Because the circumstances didn’t directly affect me (my existence was, and is, culturally comfy compared to folks who, in this country, face overwhelming challenges and uncertainty on a daily basis); but it was the observable fear that bothered me most. In the mid-90s, the verbal tool (whether used in jest or with terrifying sobriety) employed as a compliance threat was the Immigration and Naturalization Services. INS was dissolved in 2003, but was re-sutured into three entities—one of the agencies being, as it presently exists in its paramilitary incarnation, ICE.

I was naive back then, but then again—before the daily deluge of nearly-undigestible news—a lot of us were. I was young, but that’s no excuse. As complicated as I believed my ethos to be, the suburban spectrum through which I viewed and judged the world was unbearably simplistic. Now, nearly thirty years later, we’re situated with an administration—along with its MAGA acolytes—glorifies fear and relishes its cruelty. And while not quite as damning, more than anything, they exalt in an unforgivable complicity and philosophical and political simplicity.

All right: that was a bit of a detour, but I need to revisit this compartment of commentary as a means of maintaining clarity—both in the fictive realm, and in a real world which grows, for me, more intolerable and unrecognizable. 

My contribution to Suffering the Other is a horror story titled “January Sick” that functions under two intents: as a device to examine the robust terror being gleefully deployed on not only immigrants, but, generally, people of color. But the story is also a distilled indictment on the legions who attended and exalted in the insurrection at the Capitol in January, 2021. I’m confident that the monsters in my story have always existed, but I’ll never be at ease with the celebrated spectacle of their heinous behavior—I’ll never be at peace with how comfortable these creatures have become in flaunting their hate.