FIYAH is going on indefinite hiatus
Issue #40 will be its last, for now
FIYAH, an award-winning speculative fiction magazine devoted to Black storytelling is going on "hiatus indefinitely," according to publisher DaVaun Sanders in a post on Bluesky.
In his post, Sanders explained that the publication "cannot continue running at a loss and needs time to reassess operations from top to bottom if a viable path forward is to be created." In April, the magazine released its Spring 2026 issue, #38, and its last issue (for the moment) will be #40, which will presumably be released later this year. The publication is also set to release a 10-year retrospective anthology, Forged in FIYAH: Celebrating Ten Years of Black Speculative Fiction, in September.
In a followup post, Lewis, an administrator for the Ignyte Awards, said that the magazine's hiatus "does not impact the operations of the Ignyte Awards (this year's shortlist is slated to be unveiled in early June) or a future convention," but noted that they do share some expenses, which could impact their operations and needs down the line.
Founded by Phenderson Djèlí Clark, Troy L Wiggins and Justina Ireland, it was inspired in part by an African American magazine published by Wallace Thurman in 1926 called Fire!!, as well as the findings from a series of reports from Fireside Magazine called the BlackSpecFic Review, which found that Black authors were widely underrepresented in the SF/F publishing world.
The first issue of FIYAH launched in January 2017 as a quarterly publication with a mission to highlight stories "to ask what it means to be Black and extraordinary." Along the way, it published such authors as Jennifer Marie Brissett, Maurice Broaddus, C. L. Clark, Nicky Drayden, T.L. Huchu, L.D. Lewis, Suyi Davies Okungbowa, Zin E. Rocklyn, Wole Talabi, Sheree Renée Thomas, Tade Thompson, and many others. It also helped incubate a number of side projects, including FIYAH Con in 2020, the IGNYTE Awards, and a special online anthology, Breathe FIYAH.
Over the course of its run, FIYAH earned a special non-professional World Fantasy Award in 2018, and was nominated for a Hugo Award seven times (winning in 2021.) It also frequently saw its stories landing on Locus Magazine's annual recommended reading lists.
Moreover, it served an important role in the SF/F publishing world by providing a space for Black speculative fiction authors to operate in, becoming an essential foothold for those working to break into the field. It was not only a space in which Black authors were invited; it was an outlet that specifically highlighted the lived experiences, concerns, and dreams from the community and larger diaspora. Given the state of the world we're currently living through, its closure feels particularly dire.
While we're living at a time when genre magazines are plentiful (just look at the Table of Contents listings), they are facing considerable challenges, chief amongst them funding. When I wrote about this back in 2024, money was one of the biggest concerns for those editors, thanks to changes in how Amazon sold periodicals, shortfalls in paying subscribers, and a splintering of attention between social media platforms.
Andrew Liptak
On its website, FIYAH said that it cost around $7500 each year to operate, making some of its income through selling issues, from donations and from sponsors. I reached out to Sanders via his website about what a reassessment looks like for the publication, but haven't heard back by publication. I'll update if I hear from him.
But one thing is clear to me: while the SF/F community places a high value on the short fiction that writers are producing, there isn't follow through to ensure that these stories are adequately funded. This is a difficult problem to solve: inflation, a scattered reading community, outlets that don't have a lot of professional fundraising or sales experience are all factors that figure into it.
Hopefully, the team behind FIYAH will figure out how to streamline their operations. In the meantime, they still have two more issues set for release this year – each an excellent opportunity for readers to show their support.