If time is a construct and a tool, how might our relationships to it shape our pasts, presents, & futures?

Core Collaborators

Curator, Editor & Book Designer: Schessa Garbutt

Participating Artists & Writers: Eniafe Isis Adewale, Aaima Azhar, Amara Barnes, RrinMarie, Zariah Cameron, Phylizia Carrillo, Shaniya Carrington, Michelle Devlin, Lauren Dupps, Schessa Garbutt, Sarah Sao Mai Habib, Marvin James, Mo McMasters, Sergio Rivaldo, Nadia (Scoops), Samantha Vargas, Wimpy AF, Jason E.C. Wright, Mer Young

Printed at: TypeCraft in Pasadena, CA

Exhibitions

Reverberations: Lineages in Design History
Ford Foundation Gallery (New York, NY)
4 March – 3 May, 2025

About

Time and Its Travelers is an anthology of creative writing, essays, art and design, all around the themes of time and near-futurism—centering QT+BIPOC visions and voices. This book is being compiled and edited by Schessa Garbutt, a Los Angeles based designer and writer, along with the help of the 2022 cohort of Burntsienna Research Fellows. Artists and authors included in the book will receive a complimentary copy.

Message from the Editor

It has long been a dream of mine to see more queer, Black, and Latinx voices in sci-fi and in the future. Many of you know that I’ve been describing myself as a Near-futurist for a few of years now. I believe that it’s time for us to focus on how the world will inevitably change in the next 10-50 years, so that we can begin to shape change actively through radical imagination. Octavia E. Butler continues to be a major inspiration for my personal creative work. On the inspiration for her own science fiction writing, she has famously said,

“All I did was look around at the problems we’re neglecting now and give them about 30 years to grow into full-fledged disasters.” (2000 AD)

And that is a prompt which I write against in much of my work. On my first day of writing, I was walking past the Salt Eaters bookshop and noticed her name chalked on the ground below the quote: “You got to create your own worlds.” The cynic in me is strong, but my eyes swam with tears looking at this message that felt like a bendición over this book. Cynicism and critique are important—but they only get us so far. What can we radically imagine for ourselves that is GOOD? How can we return to right relationship with the Earth and each other? Much like the Tower card in tarot, apocalypse might just provide the building blocks for something new, something better. —Schessa Garbutt