Important Shipping Notice: Due to the ongoing Canada Post strike, delivery times may be longer than usual. Where possible, we’ll use alternative shipping methods to help get your order to you sooner. We appreciate your patience and understanding as your order makes its way to you.

A note to US-based customers: All Lit Up is pausing print orders to the USA until further notice. Read more

What a Fish Looks Like

By (author): Syr Beker

Illustrated by: Zeph Fishlyn

What are the stories we need to survive?

In ten days, the last spaceship is leaving for a new planet. Some of us will stay on Earth. How do we decide?

#TeamEarth. Once upon a time, the oceans were full of fish and the forests dark with brambles. Seb read about it in a book of fairy tales, and memory means hope.

#TeamShip. Adaptation means knowing when to walk away. Jay is ready. So their ex, Seb, shows up on the dance floor, T-minus-10. What’s the harm in one last dance?

What if the stories themselves are evolving?

Told in margin notes, posters, letters scrawled on napkins, and six retellings of classic fairy tales, What A Fish Looks Like gathers the stories of a queer community co-creating one another through the strange landscapes of climate change, wondering who is going to love us when there are not, in fact, plenty of fish in the sea.

And now this book belongs to you.

AUTHOR

Syr Beker

Syr Hayati Bekeris a queer nonbinary white Turkish-American writer, immersive experience creator, horror nerd, and art top in search of the queer love language of climate change. They are a graduate of Clarion West, SFSU’s MFA, Lambda’s Emerging Writers Fellowship, and a Tin House scholarship recipient, as well as residencies from OSU and Writing X Writers. Their work appears in Joyland, Michigan Quarterly Review, Fairy Tale Review, Spunk, Foglifter, Gigantic Sequins, Home is Where you Queer Your Heart (Foglifter Press, 2021) and more.


Reviews

Lyrical resonant weirdly wonderful wildly inventive Karen Joy Fowler NYT Bestselling author ofBooth

Kaleidoscopic and fearlessly innovativeWhat a Fish Looks Likeshatters the boundaries of climate fiction Its a fierce tender testament to the power of love memory and chosen community in the face of collapse The book invents a new language for what it feels like to grieve a dying world and to imagine something radically different in its place Kate Folk author ofSky DaddyandOut There

From the dedication to the last word this book is unexpected and brilliant a deeply queer and riotously joyful lament for our world so wildly creative original and unrestrained it makes the care and artistry with which its been weaved seem effortlessWhat a Fish Looks Likeis one of the most special and memorable short story collections I have ever read Natalia Theodoridou Nebula and World Fantasy Award winning author ofSour Cherry

Bekers writing has a beautifully caustic energy to it a rapidfire delivery that brings a hint of humor with an edge We can never get enoughThe Racket

Delightfully oddLocus Magazine


Awards

There are no awards found for this book.
Excerpts & Samples ×
There are no other resources for this book.

Reader Reviews

Details

Dimensions:

222 Pages
9in * 6in * 0.5in
0.6lb

Published:

September 04, 2025

Publisher:

Stelliform Press

ISBN:

9781738316557

Language:

eng

Related Blog Posts

There are no posts with this book.