Sheree Renee Thomas presents “Ring Shout on Saturn” & “The Tongue I Dream In” in conversation w/B. Sharise Moore & Lawrence Brown

4:00 pm

Presented by Red Emma's

Ring Shout on Saturn: In Ring Shout on Saturn (Third Man Books | June), following last year’s Mojorhythm, Thomas delivers book two in her three book sequence of short stories,The Root and Sky Series. 

Prepare to be transported on a cosmic journey where ancient African Diasporic wisdom meets expansive Afrofuturist visions. From a prophet building a starship from salvaged dreams on a Martian farm to children breaking generational curses through powerful moonsongs, these tales explore themes of transformation, survival, and the enduring quest for liberation. Alien sisters navigate human complexities and river spirits offer profound wisdom, all set to an ancient beat that transcends time and space. 

Pulsing with Hoodoo, music, and myth, this collection resonates with the profound rhythms of existence, proving that true freedom knows no bounds—not even the cold void of space.

The Tongue I Dream In: This book of poems, stories, and essays draws together examples illustrating a mind immersed in Black legends and white myths, and in the growing realization of our place in the world and time, and in irresistible pull of the future: starships, floods, dancers twinned by crystal-filled caverns, and iridescent crops of living retribution. In her interview, Thomas explores the intricate intersections of poetry and activism and underscores the way she inhabits them. Taste with this book’s tongue the salty sweetness of her world.

Sheree Renee Thomas

Sheree Renée Thomas is an award-winning fiction writer, poet, and a twice Hugo Award nominated, Locus Award, and three-time World Fantasy Award-winning editor. Her work is widely anthologized and appears in The Big Book of Modern Fantasy.

The author of four collections, including Mojorhythm, Nine Bar Blues: Stories from an Ancient Future, Sleeping Under the Tree of Life, and Shotgun Lullabies, Sheree is a co-editor for Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction, Trouble the Waters: Tales of the Deep Blue, and is the editor of the groundbreaking Dark Matter speculative fiction anthologies. In 2023, she was honored with the Octavia E. Butler Award. She is the editor of The Magazine of Fantasy of Science Fiction and associate editor of Obsidian.

B. Sharise Moore

B. Sharise Moore is a multi-genre author, teaching artist, lecturer, workshop facilitator, and Poetry Editor for FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction. In 2021, MV Media released her YA Afrofuturist novel, Dr. Marvellus Djinn’s Odd Scholars and in 2022, she curated and edited Conjuring Worlds: An Afrofuturist Textbook for Middle and High School Students. Her debut picture book, A City Dream illustrated by Trudi-Ann Hemans, was released in October 2025 by Harper Collins. Moore’s forthcoming books include The Marvelous Magic of Ellen Armstrong (Penguin Random House/Kokila Spring 2027), Curious Creatures of African Folklore (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers Fall 2027), and Golden: A Story of Queen Mother Yaa Asantewaa (Harper Collins Summer 2028). She lives in Baltimore, MD with her husband and their two inquisitive children.

Lawrence Brown

Lawrence T. Brown is a game designer, curator, scholar, and urban Afrofuturist. Dr. Brown is the author of The Black Butterfly: The Harmful Politics of Race and Space in America. He works as a research scientist in the Center for Urban Health Equity at Morgan State University.

Additionally, he is the founder and director of the Black Butterfly Academy LLC, an educational consulting firm which creates hands-on learning tools and hosts Dream Lab workshops. The Academy partners with K-12 schools in Baltimore to install and display history exhibits.

Dr. Brown created the board game Urban Cipher and the Black Butterfly Dream Lab Kit. Both help unpack how governments created urban apartheid by design. Overall, this body of work reveals how we can build an equitable cities and make Black neighborhoods matter.