You’re My Inspiration with Madi Giovina

One of the most common questions authors face is a deceptively difficult one to answer: “Where do you get your ideas?” Yet, the answers to that common question can be almost as interesting as the resulting story. Welcome to You’re My Inspiration, a column dedicated to discovering what inspires a particular author and their work. Whether it be a lifelong love of mythical creatures, a fascinating bit of history, or a trip to a new and exciting place, You’re My Inspiration is all about those special and sometimes dark things that spark ideas and result in great stories.

This week, we bring you Madi Giovina, editor (and author in) super / natural: art + fiction for the future, which is taking pre-orders for its second printing from Perennial Press.

Not So Fictional Futures

Whenever people ask me what my inspiration was for super / natural, I always come back to this quote from Walidah Imarisha:

“Whenever we envision a world without war, without violence, without prisons, without capitalism, we are engaging in speculative fiction. All organizing is science fiction.”

This quote, and the anthology it was printed in, Octavia’s Brood, propelled me into a near-obsession with science fiction.

I never knew science fiction was for me, or for women, or for anyone interested in political organizing. But reframing the idea of science fiction as to the visions we’re already having, discussing, moving towards… that was game-changing to me. Visionary fiction and feminist science fiction were these whole sub-genres I had never heard of before, and here were these revolutionary writers, years before I was born, writing about the kind of worlds I dream (or have nightmares) about.

Octavia’s Brood introduced me to “science fiction stories from social justice movements,” just as its tagline promised. My favorite story of the collection was “The River” by Adrienne Maree Brown, a powerful story against gentrification in Detroit.

In addition to the works anthologized in this collection, Octavia’s Brood also introduced me to the necessary work of novelist Octavia Butler, as the editors cite her as their inspiration in the introduction (and the title!).

One of Octavia’s works that informed much of super / natural was the Parable series. I quote Parable of the Sower in the introduction, and throughout the book. Each of the sections in super / natural is named after a quote from Earthseed, the religion in the text.

Reading Octavia Butler gave me even more reasons to seek out feminist science fiction, and in looking for a copy of Kindred, I ended up in a science fiction bookstore, where my out-of-place self asked the bookseller what I should buy (Kindred was sold out). Ursula K. Le Guin had just passed away, and the bookseller recommend The Dispossessed.

The Dispossessed was written in the early 70s, but feels ever-timely, as it is a commentary on anarchism, late capitalism, and even what happens post-capitalism. I don’t want to give too much of it away, but this is a classic/must-read for anyone into speculative fiction or science fiction. It feels like every day the need for speculative fiction gets more severe. As Le Guin said in 2014:

“We will need writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries — the realists of a larger reality.”

Lastly, the inspiration for one of my stories in the collection was Wild Milk by Sabrina Orah Mark, which I found at Alley Cat Books in San Francisco, thanks to a handwritten recommendation from one of the booksellers.

Orah Mark’s nonsensical poetic narratives struck me: I had never read anything like it before, and I wanted more. The narrators were childlike and wondrous, but also deeply complex and tormented. Wild Milk was everything I wanted writing to be.

So in short, my inspiration lies in books, feminist leaders, poetic literature, and a passion for justice. In super / natural, we showcase the work of 23 visionaries whose works are both of & beyond our experiences on earth. There are themes of apocalypse and drought, witchcraft and ancestry. It is only by envisioning what the future could be that we can radically transform the present. To repeat part of the super / natural intro: We need to see the future to be the future.

What future do you see?

Madi Giovina writes short stories and poems with a focus on the fantastical and a nod to more just futures. Her academic background is in Computer Science, but a quarter-life crisis and a desire to amplify emerging voices led her to independent publishing. She has work in Bewildering Stories, Down in the Dirt, Best Vegan Science Fiction & Fantasy 2019, Urban Galaxy’s Night Relics anthology, super / natural, and several zines. A collection of her short fiction is forthcoming on Martian Press.

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