Dominion II Wants to Pay Pro Rates for Your Wildest Black Speculative Fiction

If you’re an African or diaspora writer with a story that traditional publishing houses might deem “too strange,” “highly political,” or too “out there,” this is your call.

If you’ve been sitting on a cyberpunk rebellion story or an alternate history where the Underground Railroad built its own sovereign nation, now’s the time to pull it out of your drafts. 

Crowne Books, the Black-woman-owned indie publisher behind the award-winning Dominion anthology, has officially opened submissions for its sequel.  

Dominion II: Speculative Stories of Black Resistance from Africa and the African Diaspora is the follow-up to 2020’s Dominion. The anthology asked the crucial question of what the legacy and future of Africa and the diaspora looked like. 

Seven years later, editors Olivia Nightingale and Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki are back with a sharper question: how do you fight for the future without letting go of the past?

Expect the anthology to live somewhere between Sword & Soul epics, eco-punk romance, Gullah Geechee alt-history, and cyberpunk espionage. Think of it as an unapologetic Black speculative fiction that isn’t trying to make itself smaller for anybody.

What They’re Looking For

The call is wide open on genre, as long as it’s rooted in resistance and imagination. 

Sub-genres they’re explicitly hunting for include:

• Afrofuturism & Africanfuturism
• Afropantheology & Afrocosmology
• Afrofantasy & Blacktastic
• Horror Noire & Black Horror
• Sword and Soul
• Rococoa, Steamfunk, Dieselfunk & Cyberfunk
• Black Cli-fi & Black-tech
• Blaxploitation

There’s a particular pull toward stories that engage the climate crisis, so if your speculative fiction has been circling that theme, this is your moment.

The Details That Actually Matter

• Submission window: August 1, 2026 – February 28, 2027, 11:59 PM EST
• Original fiction: $0.08/word (that’s SFWA pro rate) for stories up to 17,500 words
• Poetry: Flat $50
• Reprints: $0.01/word for fiction, $25 flat for poems
• Format: Standard Shunn manuscript format, submitted as a Word .docx
• Where to send it: hello@crownebooks.com
• Payment: PayPal, Wise, Stripe, or Western Union only

Submission Rules to Note

No AI-generated or AI-assisted work will be accepted. 

Grammarly-style spell-checking is fine. Anything past that will be flagged.

Who’s Behind the Project

Olivia Nightingale isn’t new to this. She’s an award-winning editor across Locus, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy circles, and co-edited both the original Dominion and Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction, the latter of which picked up an NAACP Image Award nomination in 2023.

Her co-editor, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, is arguably the most decorated African-born writer working in SFF right now. He’s won the Nebula, Locus, Otherwise, Nommo, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy awards; plus Hugo and NAACP Image shortlists. He’s also recognized at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture for his contributions to Afrofuturism and Black literature.

Between the two of them, this isn’t a vanity project. Dominion II is a continuation of some of the most important curatorial work happening in Black speculative fiction right now.

Bottom Line

If you’re an African or diaspora writer with a story that traditional publishing houses might deem “too strange,” “highly political,” or too “out there” for the usual markets — this is exactly the kind of call built for that story. 

Submissions close February 28, 2027, so there’s ample time to write something worth sending.