New Press Alert: Stars and Sabers

An Interview with Publisher Jendia Gammon

I’ve come back to the Site Formerly Known As Twitter lately, and I kept seeing amazing posts by new press Stars and Sabers, helmed by author Jendia Gammon. They have an anthology coming soon, Of Shadows, Stars, and Sabers, and the more contributing authors they announced, the more lit it looked—Gemma Amor, Cynthia Pelayo, Eugen Bacon, Laurel Hightower, Pedro Iniguez, Ai Jiang—a diverse cast of authors I love and admire.

I learned two things:

1. Jendia Gammon is a patient soul.

2. Stars and Sabers is just as lit as I hoped.

Stars and Sabers is an awesome name. Where's it come from? 

Stars and Sabers was a quick, easy, perfect name for an imprint that publishes science fiction, fantasy, and horror. We also will publish mysteries and thrillers. If those take off, we may add another imprint, but for now it's all Stars and Sabers.

You bring so much to the table as speculative fiction author—The Inn at the Amethyst Lantern was a finalist for the Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Readers, as well as the BSFA Award for younger fiction and longlisted for the British Fantasy Award for Fantasy Novel, among other things. And it's only the first of its series! 

Thank you! It was also longlisted for the Lodestar at the Hugo Awards and considered for the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize, which was amazing.

What are you excited to bring from your experience as an author to your publisher position at Stars and Sabers? 

I'm Editor-in-Chief and CEO of Stars and Sabers Publishing, an imprint of my production company, Roaring Spring Productions, LLC. As both a writer and artist, I hope to bring joy and understanding and support for my fellow writers and artists. Gareth L. Powell, my author husband, is Managing Editor. We both want to expand what speculative fiction is, and create a new playground for both established and up-and-coming authors. Bringing our collected knowledge of sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and thriller writing and publishing, we're excited to showcase new stories that can be loved forever.

 You also have a thriller coming out with Sley House and a campy horror novel coming out with Encyclopocalypse. There's enormous breadth in your body of work, from magical realism to space opera to thriller. How do you think that will affect your work as a publisher? Is there a genre you plan to concentrate on? 

I love to write what I love to read, and I want to publish what I love to write and read. We will publish sci-fi, fantasy, horror, mysteries/thrillers in various formats, and hope to add poetry and non-fiction eventually as well. If it is speculative fiction, it's what we live and breathe. I think our love and work in those fields makes us well-suited to become publishers.

You have an amazing anthology coming out soon (Of Shadows, Stars, and Sabers—support their Ko-Fi!). What did the process of compiling and editing look like? 

Our first anthology is Of Shadows, Stars, and Sabers, and you can see more of it here: https://www.starsandsabers.com/of-shadows-stars-and-sabers/. This is a cross-genre anthology featuring stellar authors both established and debut. 

Compiling and editing OSSAS has been a complete joy for us! We love it reading these special stories. True gems in a treasure box. The other anthologies will be themed; we have two more planned for 2025, so stay tuned for those.

You also have some fantastic novella and novelette deals signed in a variety of different genres, and with some very diverse authors. What can you tell us about your upcoming publications?

We are SO lucky! We get a short story from Eugen in our first anthology, and we are publishing her Sauútiverse SF & horror novella, The Nga’phandileh Whisperer. We are also publishing P.A. Cornell's SF romance novelette, Shoeshine Boy & Cigarette Girl. and Pedro Iniguez's Echoes and Embers SFF collection, as well as Ren Hutchings' SF novella The Legend Liminal 

[note: Gammon comped Hutching’s book to Donnie Darko, and as so-called Elder Millennial, I need it approximately yesterday].

Clearly, you value diverse voices at Stars and Sabers. How do you think the diversity of authorial experience—everything from race to gender to sexuality to disability to neurodivergence—has affected speculative fiction as a field? Who are your favorite diverse authors? 

I feel that doors to telling stories should always be thrown wide open, particularly to historically marginalized communities. Let's uplift speculative fiction and literature. We need each other more than ever. And stories make us essentially human. We all benefit by having more voices! My favorite diverse writers? Oh, I could take pages. In our first anthology, we have several whom I admire: Eugen Bacon, Ai Jiang, Renan Bernardo, Mya Duong, Greg van Eekhout, Dennis K.Crosby, Khan Wong, John Wiswell, T.L. Huchu... so many great voices, and you can see more here.

I also love Tananarive Due, Shelly. Ellis, L.R. Lam, Eric Larocca, Hailey Piper... again, I could go on and on.

What are your goals as a publisher? 

I want to make books that expand speculative fiction, that celebrate the power of story and the beauty of words. I want to uplift human-made writing and human-made art. Let's celebrate humanity's rich tapestry and true storytelling and art.

What are you looking forward to, both as an author and publisher? 

I look forward to getting all these books—mine and others' —out in the world to readers!

If you could publish anyone, living or dead, who would it be? Who's your dream author? 

I really wish I'd published Octavia Butler, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Ray Bradbury.

My dream author is my husband, Gareth L. Powell.

You have Atacama coming out with Sley House. What was it like to write a thriller after working in sci-fi for so long? And then you came to… campy horror? I have questions. Where did THAT come from? 

Well, Atacama is thriller, horror, and sci-fi—also academia. I related heavily to my academic science research days in that. It was a hard book to write, because my mother died during the process. And as much of it does take place in Tennessee at first, having to go back twice made things hard. But it was satisfying to write. John Carpenter's The Thing is one of my top 3 favorite films of all time. There's a nod to that. I felt like having a sort of X-Files meets The Thing meets evil corporation and something monstrous would be fun things to explore. Atacama was an offshoot of my short story, "The Scaffold," in my collection published by Trepidatio/JournalStone, The Shadow Galaxy (under my J. Dianne Dotson pen name). I wanted to tell what happened next in that cliffhanger story. So the story is now the prologue. Atacama is out May 2025 from Sley House Publishing.

Campy horror and 80s movies are catnip to me. I leaned into the 80s and 90s vibe of Heathers and Mean Girls meets Day of the Triffids and The Thing, as well as skewering our bizarre modern era of clout-chasing and mean teen queen pastiche for Doomflower, out April 2025 from Encyclopocalypse Publications.