I’m once again sharing my year-end round-up of things I wrote, created, and loved in 2025. If you enjoyed anything I wrote, I would love consideration for awards that you might be nominating in!

The Speculative Poetry Initiative

And on the subject of awards, I’m delighted to say that I was a part of SFF award history this year. In 2025, we celebrated the first speculative poetry Hugo Award. Early in the year, myself and a group of speculative poets formed the Speculative Poetry Initiative. We organized and I’m happy to say, the goal of having a permanent Hugo for poetry passed its first round. We still need another vote in two years, so stay tuned, but I wanted to reflect a bit on it.

In SFF, awards have always left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. I am often baffled by the works that make major award lists because they are the same names, over and over again, and the works that are there are often not ones I would have chosen. But awards matter, to the authors who are nominated for them, and to the people who run them.

I think our award system in SFF could be A LOT better. Having a poetry Hugo is just one step toward that. There are other goals I would like to see accomplished in the future, like more award coverage for underrepresented genres like poetry, nonfiction, and flash fiction. One day, I may even get to be involved in widening the field even more.

For now, I thank everyone who supported SPI. It has meant a great deal to see poetry get more wider recognition in SFF.

No small part of why this matters to me is it’s an accomplishment. It’s so rare to be able to say I did something these days. I’m constantly struggling to get projects done. So to see this achieved meant a lot.

Publications by Holly Lyn Walrath in 2025

• Short Story: “Every Son a Reaver”—A deliciously dark Morgana Le Fay story retelling the Death of Arthur from Morgana’s point of view. Published in Flame Tree Publishing’s Anthology Morgana Le Fay: New & Ancient Arthurian Tales

• Short Story: “Paper Dolls”—A little girl finds comfort in her collection of paper dolls, but as they become increasingly unhinged, she starts to question her own existence. Published in A Crack in the Code Anthology by Mocha Memoirs Press.

• Poem: “Climate Change Is a Poem”—a longer poem about how climate change impacts our world and our selves, from my experience living on the Gulf Coast. Published in Reckoning 9.

• Poem: “Ghost in the Shell”—a prose poem about my teenage self, who sometimes comes back to haunt me at the worst times. Queer af. Published in Radon Journal Issue 9.

• Nonfiction Essay: “Seven Lessons for My Past Self: On Running a Small Press”—An essay on what it’s like to run Interstellar Flight Press and how, in the end, I simply wouldn’t be able to do this without my volunteer crew. Published in the SFWA Blog Speculative Poetics series. (BTW, This series is open to pitches!)

• Nonfiction Essay: “Setting Is the Character: Writing Compelling Settings in Short Fiction.” Published by Writing Workshops.

• Nonfiction Essay: “The First Hugo for Poetry: An Interview with Marie Brennan”. Published in the SFWA Blog Speculative Poetics series. (BTW, This series is open to pitches!)

Works Edited by Holly Lyn Walrath in 2025:

• Novella: Club Magritte by Nicola Lombardi. Published by Interstellar Flight Press. 

• Short Story Collection: The House of Illusionists and Other Stories by Vanessa Fogg. Published by Interstellar Flight Press. Includes the first year of publication story “Sweetest”.

• Poetry Chapbook: Listen: A Poetic Creature by Griffin Rockwell. Published by Interstellar Flight Press.

• Short Nonfiction: You can find all the essays I edited over at Interstellar Flight Magazine.

Blog Posts and Articles by and About Holly Lyn Walrath in 2025

What I Loved in 2025: A Photo Essay

1. My animals. This year, our house has been under renovation and our dogs have been sick about six times. It’s been a rough time, but my animals continue to be the one thing that I don’t hate in the world. Animals are always worth the time you put into them, unlike humans.

2. Zines. In November, I got to attend Zinefest. One of the Zines I premiered was this messy cut-up poem from the 2015 SNAP Benefit Guidelines. So many people came up to me and told me their stories of being on SNAP and why it mattered to them, and how they appreciated me making a zine about it. It was honestly so emotional, I never expected this little zine to have that impact.

3. Nature: I still love the natural world around me. Here is a little lizard who has been hanging out on our rotting pumpkin. I buy fresh pumpkins every year for decoration. Sometimes they rot out, and I add them to my garden for the critters and the plants to thrive on. Sometimes they survive, and I make dog treats out of them. This year, one rotted early, and the second I stuck it in the garden, here came this little dude.

4. Poetry. Oh, poems, I love you still. I’ll probably love you till the day I die. In fact, read a poem at my funeral. Read only poems. Make a poem out of my life, won’t you? (Below is an erasure poem I painted out of Charles’ Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Fun fact, the gingerbread house is modeled off of Charles Dickens’ writing house, The Swiss Chalet. It was a gift from a writer friend and arrived in 94 separate boxes on Christmas Eve. Dickens put it in his garden and built a tunnel under the road to access it. He died in it.)

5. The Moon. As a poet, I can safely say I never get tired of looking at the moon.

6. Publishing Books. It is an honor to get to work with all of the writers I do. It’s magic that they accept my feedback and make their work better because of it. It’s a frigging wonder that anything gets published in today’s world. Small press publishing matters a great deal to me, and I love it. Shout-out to everyone who came to the Interstellar Flight Press reading in Seattle!

7. Art. This summer I went to Worldcon in Seattle and got to visit the Chihuly Museum of glass art. Below is a self-portrait of me in one of the glass globes in the garden, with a bit of the Space Needle too! I also got to visit Paris, France, and the town where Van Gogh lived before he died. Art continues to inspire me and keep me alive. When I’m sad, I create something and then I feel better.

8. Hope. I’m endlessly hopeful. It’s hard to feel hope these days, but I’m constantly surprised by my own inner well of hope.

9. Silly things. Being silly continues to spark joy for me. What is the point of anything if you can’t have fun? There are a lot of fun-suckers in the world. My advice? Surround yourself with un-serious people.

10. Writing. Although I haven’t been able to write as much this year, writing remains something I love. I love the feeling of creating, of being surprised by my own brain. I love the writing community, and I love being around other writers.

11. Activism. It isn’t the right word to say I love having to organize around causes that matter to me. Activism doesn’t say what I love about it. Below is an erasure I made early in the year of Trump’s Presidential order on pronouns, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” In it, the pronoun “she” is not mentioned once. Art is how I respond to the world, and my art will always be political.

12. My Chaotic Life. This year, Chaos definitely reigned over my life. We spent most of the year renovating our house, a dusty, messy, stressful, costly mess of an experience. I also had COVID (again.) and major brain fog as a result, which I’m still recovering from. My good friend Chaos was back in top form. But IDK, maybe the older I get, the better I am at embracing her.

That’s what I loved and created this year. I wish you the very best for the new year—hope, joy, and light.

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