Two writers spin original science fiction, and one musician underscores the readings with complementary auditory landscapes.

A live reading series featuring new science fiction from Cole and special guest writers, underscored with futurist soundscapes by accomplished musicians. Two writers spin original science fiction, and one musician underscores the readings with complementary auditory landscapes. We focus on Science Fiction because we need to be thinking of the future as a society, for a multitude of reasons: we need to be seeing and talking about ourselves and each other in new ways- seeing people of color, women, queer folks, and immigrants in the future- showing folks in positions of power, showing different ways of leading, etc. Society also needs to think about the effects of continuing to mistreat the planet, humans, plants, and animals; but also to envision new ways of doing things (or imagining old ways of doing things in the future).

July 3, 2026 featuring:

Lyda Morehouse (she/her) leads a double life. By day she’s a mild mannered science fiction author of such works as the Shamus Award winner and Locus Award Nominated Archangel Protocol (2001) and Apocalypse Array, the Philip K. Dick Citation of Excellence winner (2004).  By night, she dons her secret identity as Tate Hallaway, best selling paranormal romance author. Her most recent novel, Welcome to Boy. Net, was published by Wizard Tower Press in April of 2024. Between the two identities, Lyda has published sixteen novels and is currently working on her seventeenth.  She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, with her wife of nearly forty years. Thanks to her unique name you can easily find her on bluesky and a few other social media sites.

Caly McMorrow (she/her) is a musician, artist, and software engineer based in St. Paul, MN, where she lives with her partner, dog, and collections of synthesizers and saxophones. Her work explores the merging of old and new, live and recorded, organic and electronic, and creator and audience. Her work has been supported by Jerome Foundation, The Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, and the Minnesota State Arts Board.

April 5, 2026 featuring:

Martin Law is a Minneapolis-based musician and scholar. Over the past three decades he has contributed sounds to a variety of projects for film, radio, podcasts, art installations, live performances, psychoacoustic research, and, by the end of the night, for an esteemed local SciFi Reading Hour. Martin owes his academic career to Yanni (yes, THAT Yanni), to Jodi, and to accidentally insulting his boss’s taste in music that one time— an incident which can be recounted only in the form of a shaggy dog story. He has taught courses on speech, rhetoric, ethics, and cultural studies at colleges and universities across the country. His current scholarship on Blackness and disability highlights the power of fugitive speech to rescue radical futures.

Cesar Montufar has spent decades fighting for a better world, first as a teacher and social activist, then as a political organizer, and finally as a labor organizer. In all of those scenarios, his goal has been to help people overcome the learned helplessness imposed by the media and educational system. We are far more powerful than our corporate overlords want us to know.  
In the classroom he helped students by both preparing them to do well in college and by honing their critical thinking so they could make sense of a world full of lies. In various protest movements he helped people know their history and their strengths, and in the labor unions, he helped people stand in solidarity with each other, feel their power, fight the bosses, and win strong contracts. Most recently, he’s turned to writing and his love of storytelling, where he also hopes to, someday, affect change. 

March 1, 2026, featuring:

Martin Law is a Minneapolis-based musician and scholar. Over the past three decades he has contributed sounds to a variety of projects for film, radio, podcasts, art installations, live performances, psychoacoustic research, and, by the end of the night, for an esteemed local SciFi Reading Hour. Martin owes his academic career to Yanni (yes, THAT Yanni), to Jodi, and to accidentally insulting his boss’s taste in music that one time— an incident which can be recounted only in the form of a shaggy dog story. He has taught courses on speech, rhetoric, ethics, and cultural studies at colleges and universities across the country. His current scholarship on Blackness and disability highlights the power of fugitive speech to rescue radical futures.

Mankwe Ndosi is a Minneapolis-based vocal improviser and composer whose work draws from Black Creative Music, Hip hop, Afro-indigenous sound traditions, and liberation singing. She’s currently a Resident Community Engaged Artist at Pillsbury House and Theatre, a member of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), and the Give Get Sistet – a sisterhood of Black Griot Singers and Improvisers. She’s performed with Nicole Mitchell, Douglas Ewart, Mike Ladd, and Atmosphere, and has been commissioned by Zeitgeist (MN), Ananya Dance Theatre(MN), Pillsbury House & Theatre (MN), and Maria Bauman Dance (NYC). Her practice weaves Black Women’s Ritual performance with the liberatory sonic explorations of the AACM. Her unique sound blends genre-stretching vocal techniques with message and magic.

Dameun Strange is a sound explorer, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and sound designer whose conceptual electronic and improvised electro-acoustic works focus on stories and themes of the African diaspora, often using surrealist and afro-futurist aesthetics. He is currently a graduate student in Composition at the University of Minnesota School of Music and lives in the Frogtown Community of Saint Paul, MN with his wife, Corina, and their inquisitive daughter, Ezra.

(February 2026 paused for community action)

January 3, 2026, featuring:

Martin Law is a Minneapolis-based musician and scholar. Over the past three decades he has contributed sounds to a variety of projects for film, radio, podcasts, art installations, live performances, psychoacoustic research, and, by the end of the night, for an esteemed local SciFi Reading Hour. Martin owes his academic career to Yanni (yes, THAT Yanni), to Jodi, and to accidentally insulting his boss’s taste in music that one time— an incident which can be recounted only in the form of a shaggy dog story. He has taught courses on speech, rhetoric, ethics, and cultural studies at colleges and universities across the country. His current scholarship on Blackness and disability highlights the power of fugitive speech to rescue radical futures.

Pat Harrigan is the author of the novel Lost Clusters (2005), and the short story collections Thin Times and Thin Places (2012), The Lecture Tour (2019) and On Tour Forever (2022). He is the co-editor of several MIT Press books concerning games and new media: Zones of Control: Perspectives on Wargaming (2016), with Matthew Kirschenbaum; and the series First Person, Second Person and Third Person (2004-2009), with Noah Wardrip-Fruin. Other work of his has been published with Camden House, Fantasy Flight Games, Chaosium, Arc Dream Publishing, Gameplaywright, and ETC Press. His series of horror microfictions, “The Sunday Scaries,” appears weekly at Ghoulishdelights.com. He lives in Minneapolis.

December 7, 2025 featuring:

Abra Staffin-Wiebe (she/her) loves optimistic science fiction, cheerful horror, and dark fantasy. Dozens of her short stories have appeared at publications including Tor.com, F&SF, Escape Pod, and Odyssey Magazine. She is also a professional narrator for Escape Artists Inc, speaks regularly at writing/SF conventions, and edits Aswiebe’s Market List, a resource for writers. She lives in Minneapolis, where she wrangles her children, pets, and the mad scientist she keeps in the attic. When not writing or wrangling, she collects folk tales and photographs whatever stands still long enough to allow it.

Caly McMorrow (she/her) is a musician, artist, and software engineer based in St. Paul, MN, where she lives with her partner, dog, and collections of synthesizers and saxophones. Her work explores the merging of old and new, live and recorded, organic and electronic, and creator and audience. Her work has been supported by Jerome Foundation, The Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, and the Minnesota State Arts Board.

November 2, 2025 featuring:

Lyda Morehouse (she/her) leads a double life. By day she’s a mild mannered science fiction author of such works as the Shamus Award winner and Locus Award Nominated Archangel Protocol (2001) and Apocalypse Array, the Philip K. Dick Citation of Excellence winner (2004).  By night, she dons her secret identity as Tate Hallaway, best selling paranormal romance author. Her most recent novel, Welcome to Boy. Net, was published by Wizard Tower Press in April of 2024. Between the two identities, Lyda has published sixteen novels and is currently working on her seventeenth.  She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, with her wife of nearly forty years. Thanks to her unique name you can easily find her on bluesky and a few other social media sites.

Scott Keever (he/they) is an award-winning guitarist and composer from Minneapolis. He has specialized in solo guitar, primarily fingerstyle, utilizing resophonic, classical, jazz and folk guitar sounds in his explorations while also focusing on Celtic and Eastern European styles. His stylistic range can be heard on his solo albums  “Solo Guitar: Vol. 1” (2018) and “Solo Guitar: Vol. 2” (2022) (both available on Spotify and Apple Music)  As well as being a solo performer, Scott plays guitar, Bulgarian tambura and oud for Orkestar Bez Ime (OBI), an award-winning Twin Cities band that specializes in Balkan dance music. He is also currently a member of chamber pop group Follow The Firefly and has recently worked with Ukrainian Village Band. He has been a long-time musician and performer in the local Minnesota theater scene and has appeared in productions with Brave New Workshop, Flying Foot Forum, Walking Shadow Theater, Ethnic Dance Theater, O’Shea Irish Dance and Table Salt Productions. He has also composed music for short films, documentaries, theater, radio and podcasts. 

October 5, 2025 featuring:

Dameun Strange (he/him) is a sound explorer, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and sound designer whose conceptual electronic and improvised electro-acoustic works focus on stories and themes of the African diaspora, often using surrealist and afro-futurist aesthetics. He is currently a graduate student in Composition at the University of Minnesota School of Music and lives in the Frogtown Community of Saint Paul, MN with his wife, Corina, and their inquisitive daughter, Ezra.

Cole Sarar (she/they) is a writer, photographer, and tech-artist. She creates public, interactive literary pieces in collaboration with local writers, using phone technology and simple physical design. She’s the creator of Cole Sarar’s Sci-Fi Reading Hour, a live reading series featuring new science fiction from Cole and special guest writers, underscored with futurist soundscapes by accomplished musicians. 
Cole’s creative work envisions possible futures and alternate presents, employing under-represented characters and situations to imagine ourselves existing in the future, having roles, and doing things other than what has been written for us in the past. Their work falls along the intersection of technology and literature. They might use code and tech behind the scenes, or simple physical items like paper, flags, and our cell phones to create surprising, interactive fiction in physical space. Cole served on the board of Art Shanty Projects, and moonlights for various arts organizations. They are first generation Turkish-American.

I host every show, and will be performing at most of them, too! Past featured writers and musicians have included Kyle Tran Myhre (aka Guante), Naomi Kritzer, Khary Jackson, Kai Stewart, Dameun Strange, Jasmine (Jazz) Castañeda, John Heimbuch, Abra Staffin-Wiebe, Caly McMorrow, Ben San Del, Duck Washington, and Dissociate.