The Ancillary Review of Books publishes reviews and essays with an emphasis on utopian impulses and systemic injustices. ARB seeks to build a community of radical thinkers writing about amazing, speculative, global writing. If you are interested in writing for ARB, please check out our Procedures & Style Guide, and pitch us using the form below!
ARB is always interested in critical essays on speculative fiction and related topics. We also invite pitches for guides: a brief introduction and a short annotated reading list for an author, topic, or subgenre. For reviews, here are some titles coming out in August that we’d be interested in covering:
Fiction
- Where Peace Is Lost by Valerie Valdes
- A Second Chance for Yesterday by R A Sinn
- Every Drop is a Man’s Nightmare by Megan Kamalei Kakimoto
- The Change by Kirsten Miller
- Kurdistan +100: Stories from a Future State edited by Orsola Casagrande and Mustafa Gündogdu
- In the Roses of Pieria by Anna Burke
- The Water Outlaws by S. L. Huang
- Fishing for the Little Pike by Juhani Karila, translated by Lola Rogers
- Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher
- Spin a Black Yarn by Josh Malerman
- Whalefall by Daniel Kraus
- Shark Heart by Emily Habeck
- Prophet by Helen Macdonald and Sin Blaché
- Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon by Wole Talabi
- The Apology by Jimin Han
- Wild Spaces by S. L. Coney
- Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas
- The Never-Ending End of the World by Ann Christy
- He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan
- Lessons in Birdwatching by Honey Watson
- The Handyman Method by Nick Cutter and Andrew F. Sullivan
- The Brill Pill by Akemi C. Brodsky
- The Lonely Lands by Ramsey Campbell
- Maladies of the Soul by Isa Kamari
- The Blue, Beautiful World by Karen Lord
- The Phoenix King by Aparna Verma
Non-Fiction
- The Cyborg Caribbean: Techno-Dominance in Twenty-First-Century Cuban, Dominican, and Puerto Rican Science Fiction by Samuel Ginsburg
- Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea by John Plotz
- All We Want is the Earth: Land, Labour and Movements Beyond Environmentalism by Patrick Bresnihan and Naomi Millner
- Understanding Margaret Atwood by Donna M. Bickford
- Resistance and Its Discontents in South Asian Women’s Fiction by Maryam Mirza
- Heaven, Hell and Paradise Lost by Ed Simon
- Snake Sisters and Ghost Daughters: Feminist Adaptations of Traditional Tales in Chinese Fantasy by Cathy Yue Wang
- Free Them All: A Feminist Call to Abolish the Prison System by Gwenola Ricordeau
Reissues
- The Night Land (abridged edition) by William Hope Hodgson
- Knight’s Wyrd by Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald
- The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon
- Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb
- Hunger by Lan Samantha Chang
Other Review and Essay Options:
- ARB is always broadly interested in pitches for essays about genre fiction, world literature, literature and media from below, cultural studies, and writing about systemic injustices and utopian impulses.
- If you’re interested in reviewing anything not on this list, please send us a pitch—we’re interested in a broad range of topics.
- We are accepting pitches for review and essay series, such as re-reads of an author.
- We welcome pitches for “Ancillary Guides” that introduce readers to an idea by way of a list of 5-10 books that are must-reads on a critical conversation, with brief commentary.
If you are interested in writing for ARB, please fill out the form below: let us know what you’d like to write about, and why you might be suited for it. While we welcome new writers, please point us towards any of your reviews or other writing if possible (personal blogs or Goodreads are fine). If there are multiple books for review that catch your eye, please list them in the order you’re interested in reviewing them. Please check out our Procedures & Style Guide to see how it works and what we’re looking for.
ARB is a BookShop.org affiliate and may receive a portion of book sales purchased through links on this page. Please visit our Support & Transparency page to learn more.