We’re delighted to announce that we’ll be publishing a new sci-fi novella Bright Phaedra by Felicia Martínez! 🎉
Bright Phaedra reimagines the Greek myth of Phaedra and Hippolytus with neurodiverse and asexual characters, set in a near-future multiverse with sentient artificial intelligences.
Coming Summer 2026!
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Bright Phaedra is a fascinating story, with many layers. Since it’s Ace Week, we asked author Felicia Martínez to tell us more about her ideas on asexuality as reflected in her book.
Bright Phaedra explores the unboundedness of love, including an intense love between Hippolytus who is asexual, and Phaedra who is not. What inspired this idea?
The short answer is, I wanted to transcend simple assumptions about what's possible in Ace relationships with my asexual-allosexual take on the myth of Phaedra and Hippolytus. But I also encountered the deeply troubling source material long ago, and both dramas (Racine's Phèdre and Euripides' Hippolytus), insist upon an unresolvable tension between erotic love or desire, and life without sexual desire, presenting the latter as simply a cold and unfeeling choice.
Far before I could put words to my own sexuality, I knew these characterizations did not align with my own experience. I nevertheless felt drawn to both characters, seeing something thrilling and sometimes dangerous in Phaedra's driving passions, and something true and important in Hippolytus' worship of the chaste goddess, Artemis. I ultimately let Phaedra and Hippolytus be their unique, seemingly utterly incompatible selves, and the result is two characters who are truly, deeply, "head-over-heels" in love!
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About the Author
Felicia Martínez is a writer and artist from Eastern New Mexico, though the San Francisco Bay Area is now home. She is the author of the novelette The Other Lives of Allagracia Sanchez. Felicia has been guest poetry editor at The Deadlands, was a Dream Foundry Contest For Emerging Writers Finalist, was the 2024 Elgin Awards Chair, and is a 2025 Rhysling Award finalist. You can contact her at feliciamartinez.com
