Some real-world hopepunk: The winter Olympics in Milan are ongoing, and today the Superbowl is happening. Admittedly, we are not sportsball people. Or sporty generally. But in honor of Black History Month (and all the sportsing), let’s recognize and share some of the excellent Black athletes that have transformed their sports. Read about them here!
January recap (and a little of February)
To kick the year off we promptly started editorial and design work on The Sins of the Father and Light & Earth & Marrow, our two stories that are releasing in Fall 2026. It’s exciting to dig into the narrative and help authors refine and hone their stories to be exactly what they want them to be.
In mid-January we reached a big milestone—we revealed our first cover!
We commissioned Stephan Martiniere for this stunning depiction of the Climasphere, the incredible setting of Accelerated Growth Environment.
In mid-January we participated in our second SmallPitch. It’s incredibly fun (and exhausting) to read through hundreds of pitches for a huge variety of stories. Ultimately, we requested 35 pitches, 21 submissions, and we’re pursuing a few of those for publication! Fingers crossed!
Behind the scenes we’ve been doing a lot of infrastructure updates so that we can also do direct sales. We’ll be updating our website soon so you can order your stories straight from Shiraki Press!
January was simultaneously the longest and shortest month that we’ve had in a while… and February is on track to speed by in a similar manner. Just last week we were able to reveal our second cover!
This gorgeous filigreed cover for Wine for Roses was completely designed by Lisa Marie Pompilio of Von Brooklyn Design.
And finally, we are delighted to share…
Cover reveal: The Color of Time
This beautiful illustration was done by Alyssa Winans. The title and byline treatment were designed in-house by Josh Sutphin.
If you just can’t wait to read and review them, each of these stories are currently available to request on NetGalley:
The hopepunk reading list
We’ve been curating a hopepunk reading list on Bookshop.org for the past few months:
Authors: this list is deliberately representative of the types of things Shiraki Press is looking to publish.
Readers: this list is full of hopepunk books we really enjoyed, and we think you will too!
We’ve also been curating a list of books about the art and craft of writing, which you can find here.
Upcoming events
We’re attending RadCon February 13-15. And we’re excited to announce that we’ll be presenting a session on how the first year has gone for Shiraki Press on Saturday February 14, at 1 PM.
Later this month we’ll be celebrating the launch of Accelerated Growth Environment on Feb 22, 2026 from 7-9 PM at Nook & Cranny. To join us, please RSVP here.
We’ll also be attending Emerald City Comic Con and Norwescon. If you want to meet up, let us know!
Support Shiraki Press
Would you like to support our mission to bring more hopeful adult fiction into the world?
If so, the best ways you can help today are:
- Share our call for submissions anywhere you think it might resonate with readers or authors
- Follow and boost us on Instagram and BlueSky
- Buy one of these hopepunk books we admire from Bookshop.org. (Shiraki Press makes a small commission on these sales.)