How does one begin to source the origin of The Cookout?
Looking for the origins of the practice- poring through history book after history book after archeology article after religious text – it seemed the very ancients considered the tradition ancient, even in their time. Could it be that since the beginning of humanity, in the cradle of the world, where two or more were gathered in the name of food, medicine, love, and community, there one may have found The Cookout?
Across the African Diaspora, with the fluctuations of ancestral knowledge and cultural root, in wealth and happiness, in sickness and danger, in celebration and faith and fierce resistance, in every nook and cranny of the world, “The Cookout” calls to something in our blood that unites us in love and community. And when the world began to digitize itself, this impulse found a foothold in the social media sphere, in the new and mischievous colloquial use of “The Cookout” as well as such innovations as pandemic-style remote feasts with family and friends. As a force, “The Cookout” is unstoppable! So we decided to see just how far it can go.
Can it reach the depths of the ocean? Can we put picnic tables in the stars? Gather round the grill in another dimension? Source our seasonings in the furthest realms of our imaginations?
Let’s see, shall we?
OUR TEAM
Erin Brown is a poet and author of horror, fabulist, and fantasy short fiction. She has been published in FIYAH Magazine, Nightmare Magazine, Midnight and Indigo, The Deadlands, Eastover Press Rural Writers Anthology, the Escape Pod, and And One Day We Will Die: Neutral Milk Hotel anthology, Fantasy Magazine, Baffling Magazine, and many others, with a debut novelette “Garden of the Bloodpotter” through Psychopomp Press publishing in Summer 2025.
Erin is currently in an MFA program for Creative Writing at Mount St Mary’s University.
You can find her published works at https://ebrownwrites.com.
Emmalia Harrington is a disabled QBIPOC with a deep love of speculative fiction. This passion has led them to Codex and SFWA memberships, as well as the inaugural Voodoonauts program. Their short stories can be found at FIYAH, Abyss and Apex, Flame Tree Press, and other venues. Their first novel, Walk on Grey Ruins, is available at most bookstores.
When they aren’t reading or writing, they are usually crafting or busy in the kitchen.
P.C. Verrone’s work has appeared in FIYAH, Nightmare, PodCastle, and numerous anthologies. His fiction has received the Otherwise Award, a Tin House Residency, and won the WNDB Black Creatives Revisions Workshop. His plays have been developed, produced, and published across the U.S. He graduated from Harvard College and holds an MFA in creative writing from Rutgers University–Newark. His debut novel Rabbit, Fox, Tar is forthcoming from Catapult in 2026. He lives with his husband and their LabraDane, Apollo. Find him at pcverrone.com.
Tonya R. Moore writes and edits speculative fiction part time. She has written professionally for companies such as the Paidia Gaming platform and Publishers Weekly. She is a member of SFWA, Codex, and the Speculative Literature Foundation, and is the founder of the fledgling book publishing company, Fairy Dust and Fire Press.
She is the Poetry Editor at Solarpunk Magazine and a Poetry Acquiring Editor at the Hugo Award-winning and nominated FIYAH Literary Magazine. She was a Vodoonauts 2022 Fellow and a finalist for Analog Science Fiction & Fact’s 2022 Award for Emerging Black Writers. She is also an Associate Writer for the Hugo-nominated science fiction fan blog, Galactic Journey.
