Thank you all for the birthday wishes yesterday! Four years into this and so much has been accomplished. But since we had a Hugo host that provided us with a long night full of terrors and endless waxing on about "history", we figured a history lesson of our own might be prudent.

Four years ago, the very *existence* of Black SFF authors in the numbers that we see today was argued against by voices in the short fiction market. Which was quite the surprise to the founding staff of the magazine which was in a Slack full of Black SFF writers!

(maybe not the right kind but we'll get to that in a bit)

Now to have your very existence argued against is a hell of a thing. So maybe getting our name mispronounced at an awards ceremony is a step up from then. *cue internal screaming*

But, like Black folks are often forced to do, we decided, fueled by ambition and spite, to make our own magazine. Mind you, we were all writers in varying stages of our careers by this point. So taking this on was exciting, but we knew the expectations.

And we have blown the door off of them as far we're concerned. These four years have been a phenomenal testament to the fact we do indeed exist. We not only exist, but we're beyond talented. Beyond hardworking. The problem wasn't our existence. It was our treatment.

We have received message after message from Black writers who had given up, thought they were unpublishable and that there wasn't space for them because of how SFF treated them. It's so sinister to act like a demographic isn't there after turning their dreams to ashes.

But the deeper we got into this game, the more holes we realized needed to be filled. Black books weren't getting reviews from Black people. So we started doing those and this is where our little point about "not the right kind of Black writers" comes in.

How?! HOW?! How you can possibly say Black SFF writers weren't out there when the YA and MG field are FULL of some of the best and most interesting SFF PERIOD out there today. Four years ago, there was no excuse for the claim Black writers didn't exist.

They just weren't the ones you respected. They weren't the ones you cared enough to reach out to for that solicitation. They weren't important enough to try and figure out their names and understand their work.

But our reviews have shown consistently how great they are.

And now with this pronunciation debacle not just for us, but for the first Black woman editor to win a Hugo @ChimedumOhaegbu , we have been forced into a position yet again of having to be fueled by ambition and spite. We're forced again to prove we have value and worth.

And just like four years ago, we're here to put our foot on necks. We see the disrespect leveled at so many people who didn't deserve it and we're going to create a space where you get to be appreciated exactly as you should be.

#FIYAHCON2020 is coming loves.

And that's our bit of history. Now we gotta get back to work on making some more of it.