Celeste Rita Baker: sunrise to sundown with an everlasting rainbow sprinkled with orange

 

Celeste Rita Baker

7/28/1958-10/30/2025

sunrise to sundown with an everlasting rainbow sprinkled with orange

by Cesi Davidson

 

 

FOR THE RECORD

Celeste Rita Baker was a Virgin Islander living in Charlotte, North Carolina. Baker's genres include fantasy, speculative fiction, and magical realism in which she writes in Caribbean dialect and standard English. Her first short story, The Dreamprice” a humorous piece and dialect about gossip and favors was published by the Caribbean writer. It gave her the courage to continue submitting her short stories for publication. She won the world fantasy short story award in 2021 for “Glass Bottle Dancer” a lighthearted story about finding that thing that puts a smile on your face. It was published in dialect by Lightspeed and landed her on the front page of the Virgin Islands Daily News. It was translated into Mandarin by the Chinese publisher, Science Fiction World. “Single Entry,” about Earth participating in a Carnival parade and Rock Feather Shell, about a little boy who was turned into a turtle, were very proud accomplishments given their publication in the Virgin Islands’ Moko Magazine. Celeste would say, “It was always nice to be recognized by your own.”

The short story “Dip and Roll” about seaside rocks experiencing an earthquake was narrated with eight different voices by voice actor, Derrick O’Neal for the publishers, Podcastle. Two versions of her story “Name Calling” were published by Abyss & Apex, one in full dialect, and one edited for “easy reading.” The story raised controversy in the science fiction community centered around authenticity versus clarity. Celeste called it watering down. She likened it to putting ice in her rum. Tobias Bucknell and Amal El-Mohar publicly came to her defense, further enhancing her determination not to limit herself to standard American English. She was proud to write as the story dictated. One of her most absurd satiric stories was written in standard English American English, “Pedestals, Proclivities and Perpetuities” and published in Fantasy and Science Fiction. Her work has been published by African Voices, NYU’s Calabash, Strange Horizons, Khoreo, Instant Noodles, Tree and Stone and Margins Magical Realism. Her work has also been included in the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021, People of Colo(u)r Destroy Fantasy, An Alphabet of Book of World Sci-fi 4. She was a graduate of Clarion West Science Fiction Writers Workshop and a proud member of Harlem Writers United. Back, Belly and Side, her book of short stories, is published by Aqueduct Press.

 

IN HER OWN WORDS

Inspirations

The first time I saw myself--A Black Caribbean Woman--in print was in Merle Collin’s novel Angel. I stood in the store holding the book to me chest, panting, tearing burning eyes me eyes. I was.

 I'm grateful for and loved the work of Octavia Butler. Ms. Butler brought me to a world of science where I was.

 

The Virgin Islands

My family is from the Virgin Islands, Saint Thomas and Saint John. I was born in New York City but “came to know meself” on Saint Thomas, learned to talk there and enjoyed my childhood. I returned to New York when I was twelve years old and that affected me and that I realized that I used to be and now I wasn't.

 

Harlem NYC

I moved back and forth from Saint Thomas to the States numerous times but lived in Harlem for almost 30 years. I loved it. I couldn't keep up with all the things to see, do, and learn. I especially learned that whatever you're into, you can find other people doing it too, and doing it in that trend-setting way that Harlem is known for. I found the incredible Sheree Renee Thomas, my writing teacher and mentor at Fred Hudson's Frederick Douglass Creative Art Center in Harlem.

 

FROM MY HEART

Everyone should be so fortunate to have at least one forever friend in their lifetime. Someone to walk down the street with as you talk and chat and chat and talk about everything and nothing. When Celeste and I did our walk talk chats across 125^th Street in Harlem she wore her favorite color orange. I wore my favorite color of the day. We took a breath and those steps. Me self you self is good.

The Pleasure of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2025, pt. 27: Arrate Hidalgo

 

One Book, One Videogame, One Band

by Arrate Hidalgo 

 

2025 has been a year. I find it impossible to summarize it in a way that may sufficiently acknowledge the horrors and the joys of it. But 2025 has been a year in which I have been alive and fortunate enough to enjoy books, videogames, music. Here are three samples.

 

One Book

Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane

“To celebrate the lexis of landscape is not nostalgic, but urgent,” says Macfarlane in the introduction to this rich, vibrating word-horde, in which he provides a loving journey through nature writing and the role that this —some would say very British— genre has had in shaping the imagination of landscape by humans and their relationship with it. Interspersed with these in-depth looks at works of literature, Macfarlane includes, divided into landscape families —e.g. waterlands, woodlands, edgelands—, glossaries with hundreds of words he has collected, either found, learned or gifted, in a variety of the languages and speeches of the British Isles, most of which share the quality of being incredibly evocative and lyrical, sometimes comical, in their precision. Just two examples, if you’re curious:

rionnach maoim: shadows cast on the moorland by clouds moving across the sky on a bright and windy day (Gaelic)

squatted, squat-up: splashed with mud by a passing vehicle (Kent, north Staffordshire)

Macfarlane argues, and I agree, that while being able to name does not mean to understand, to use language well is “a species of attention,” one that is key for us not to lose our sense of place and, in the process, of ourselves.

 

One Videogame

The Longing by Anselm Pyta and Studio Seufz

Inspired by a German legend about a king that sleeps underground for thousands of years and the dwarf that must check on him once every century, The Longing is an exploration of solitude, empathy, and the passage of time. In it, we will follow the Shade, a lonely creature born to serve an ancient king, who goes to sleep with the order of being woken after 400 days have passed. These 400 days are actual, real-life days, which will begin passing the moment you start the game and will not pause even when you close it to get on with your real-world duties. You may choose to let the Shade wait it out and wake the king after a bit over a year, or you may decide to let the Shade wander and explore the underground land in which they must wait, and, in that way, bring some variety into their life. This will lead the Shade to discover the tunnels surrounding them and even find trinkets with which to decorate their otherwise bare little cave-room. The pace is such that, in my case, I ended up developing a sort of quiet companionship with the Shade. They would sit in their armchair reading —actual books! such as Moby Dick (you can read the whole thing, and many others, within the game)—, and I would do my work, translating, sending invoices, or whatnot, while the Shade would sometimes muse about boredom and the possibility of a world beyond. The art, the melancholy dungeon synth soundtrack, the writing — it all contributes to a wistful, intimate experience I have rarely found in any other medium.

 

One Band

Castle Rat

Often described as “a Dungeons & Dragons fever dream,” Brooklyn-based Castle Rat provide traditional doom and heavy metal sounds and visuals of a quality and earnestness that are absolutely disarming. Chain-mail bikinis, Conan-coded swords, plague-doctor masks — Castle Rat has it all, combined with skull-rattling doom riffs and powerful vocals —by frontwoman and “Rat Queen” Riley Pinkerton—, which must be experienced live. The band not only has created an entire epic sword and sorcery narrative that they perform between songs —which at times will have the audience pointing and possibly yelling “It’s behind you!” (picture a medieval-themed fantasy play with a mosh pit)—, but also they just sound really good. Try “Cry for Me” for a power ballad “for grave side regrets and moonlight laments,” according to the band, with an accompanying video filmed entirely in VHS.

 

  

 

Among other things,  Arrate Hidalgo is Associate Editor at Aqueduct Press. She is also an English to Spanish translator, a founder and organizer of a feminist sf con, and an amateur singer. Visit her website at arratehidalgo.com. Her English-language translation of the Basque science fiction classic, Memories of Tomorrow, by Mayi Pelot, was released by Aqueduct Press in 2022 as a volume in Aqueduct's Heirloom Book series.

The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2025, pt. 26: Tamara K. Sellman

 

PODCASTS FROM THE SHADOWS: for those of us who like to explore the dark places

 

by Tamara Kaye Sellman

  2025 was a year of alternative media consumption for me as a kind of self-defense against the downward spiral that is US global politics and the rise of fascism and useful idiocracy. I found a great many podcasts worth listening to in particular that I’d like to shout out and share here. Most are not popular, chart-topping shows and none of them are led by “bros.” And because I like things dark, these aren’t going to be “feel-good” shows, but provocative series (most of them limited) that explore our understanding of each other and ourselves through the lens of some pretty uncomfortable, bizarre, or fringe perspectives.

 

·        BLINK

The Binge, Corinne Vien/Jake Haendel

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/blink-jake-haendels-story/id1779813806

Jacob Haendel wasn’t supposed to live through a terminal brain disease and coma, but he did. He is co-host, guided by podcaster Corinne Vien, who helps him plot not only his journey, but also the journeys of his family and ex-wife. Here’s the thing: you may at first want to withhold sympathy for Haendel; he wasn’t exactly a model citizen before this all happened. But there’s a hidden medical mystery inside his story that will make you rethink your judgment. You can follow him in Instagram while he continues to recover.

 

·        THE DEVIL YOU KNOW

CBC podcasts, Sarah Marshall

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/2054-the-devil-you-know-with-sarah-marshall

 

Fear, indeed, is the mind-killer, and host Sarah Marshall is the bomb. It takes a great CBC podcast to more honestly unravel the history of the US Satanic Panic of the 1970s, which lingers even today. But this podcast doesn’t stop there; it draws a literal crime map connecting the history of patriarchy, homophobia, misogyny, and moral conservatism via Old School fire-and-brimstone Christianity to illustrate how these controlling factions continue to build a playbook for the fascist New World Order.

 

·        GURU: THE DARK SIDE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

Wondery, Matt Stroud

https://wondery.com/shows/guru/season/1/

I remember hearing about the sweat lodge deaths in Arizona a few years ago and wondered how that could happen. It’s easy to imagine how gullible, undereducated people with access to money might fall for this kind of ruse, but in this case, the people who participated were educated, sensible, and yet manipulated by self-help cult figure, James Arthur Ray. You’ll learn about his personal history, how he crept to such heights as a guru, and get (macabre) first-person accounts from survivors at the scene.

 

·        HYSTERICAL

Wondery, Dan Taberski

https://wondery.com/shows/hysterical/

This story takes gaslighting to multiple dimensions. Fifteen years ago, high school girls in New York state experienced an outbreak of “conversion disorder.” This series examines the incident’s progression as it enters local media, where its clunky exploration prompts important sociopolitical discussions about collective confusion/ fear of the unknown, the implicit biases we all hold about female illness, how we link—or fail to link—outbreaks to the environment, and why this story isn’t about gender at all.

 

·        NOBLE

Wavland, Shaun Raviv

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/noble/id1757686789

Not for the faint of heart. This serial investigates the 23-year-old story of Noble, a town in Georgia, where the local crematorium is, in a phrase, “behind schedule.” Despite its grim subject matter, this isn’t a lurid, sensationalized true-crime show, but a thoughtful retelling of a sad moment in this small town’s history. The host’s intelligent overarching question, which informs the podcast, is an important one: “What do we owe the dead?” Even if the show doesn’t resolve that question, it will make you think.

 

·        SCAM FACTORY

Wondery, Denise Chan

https://wondery.com/shows/scam-factory/

I’m willing to bet you think you wouldn’t fall for a scam, and yet, this podcast shows you that there are literal “scam factories” in “scam cities” in parts of southeast Asia, wherein powerful high-tech fraud operators abduct and force people to work in various ways to scam you online… because scamming works. This particular podcast focuses on a perfectly intelligent, loving woman who was simply trying to help her brother find a job and ended up having to participate in the fraud in order to free her family.

 

·        SOMETHING WAS WRONG

Broken Cycle Media, Tiffany Reese

https://somethingwaswrong.com/

I’ve listened for three years now. Such a feat of pursuant justice! The ongoing docuseries’  intrepid, award-winning host, Tiffany Reese, brings rough but necessary activism/journalism to support survivors of trauma, stalking, and abuse. This is another show not for the faint of heart. If you start at the beginning and work your way through, you’ll more deeply understand why victims struggle to come forward, how legal systems continue to fail us all, and why gender assumptions re: villain vs victim need a makeover.

 

·        TELEPATHY TAPES

Yellow Wing Productions, Ky Dickens

https://thetelepathytapes.com/

Do not listen unless you want to get sucked in. This podcast will make you question everything you think you know about autism, our educational system, our science community, and, yes, telepathy. Are you a nonbeliever? I dare you to listen and not come away reconsidering what you think you know about the human mind and collective consciousness. Great commentary on the conflicted interests of systems and individuals. They’re now making a movie based on this compelling story and honestly, I’m here for it. 

 

·        WITCH

BBC Radio 4, India Rakusen

https://open.spotify.com/show/5G8G4pBD93IqpZgRj2p1MN

I’m fascinated with occult topics, but this one resonates for me. The host is a woman who is witch-curious, and that’s a plus because—in case you didn’t already know this—there’s tremendous bias/contempt worldwide about (mostly) women practicing spirituality unsanctioned by organized religion. Witch gives a global history of witchcraft while weaving in contemporary stories about relevant issues, like land access, human rights, and feminism. You may be surprised by what you learn from this exploration.

 

 

 Tamara Kaye Sellman's  published works (poetry, fiction, journalism, and essays) have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize or have earned other awards or distinctions. Some places where you can find her work include Crab Creek Review, Gargoyle, Literary Mama, Lowestoft Chronicle, The Nervous Breakdown, NonBinary Review, North American Review, Quarterly West, Rosebud, Spoon River Poetry Review, Terrain, and Weber: The Contemporary West. Her first book, Intention Tremor (MoonPath Press, 2021), collects poetry and prose forms documenting her life following her multiple sclerosis diagnosis in 2013. She is currently at work transforming the pieces from this book into experimental films to expand their accessibility to the hearing and vision impaired. (And because it’s fun.) Aqueduct Press released her collection Cul de Sac Stories, a volume in the Conversation Pieces series in 2024. A new work, Rain Shadows, appeared in 2025.