I am currently seeking representation for my 75,000-word speculative fiction novel JUNEAUVERSE: STORIES. This multi-POV interconnected short story collection starts in 2057 in Southeast Alaska. 

In this alternative near future, a nationwide Executive Order limits purchases to two nonessential items per week. Most residents are on consistent doses of appetite suppressants, wiping out caffeine. Tourism has dwindled due to climate change and overdevelopment, leaving Juneau a semi-ghost town. Stories dip into horror and magic with body-swapping, time-stopping, looming shadow figures, and haunted landscapes. Characters face grief, guilt, alcoholism, overwork, aging, isolation, and unfit partners. Main characters include Seymour, a burnt-out freelancer working to hide the fact that she can stop time, Wilma, a professional home-organizer in a very cluttered world, and Jean, an elderly widow and aunt to her alcoholic niece, Bobbie.

JUNEAUVERSE is for fans of the disastrous near future told through interconnected stories in HOW HIGH WE GO IN THE DARK by Sequoia Nagamatsu, the haunted female voices in THE BODY FARM: STORIES by Abby Geni, and the humorous peculiarities of Alaska as written by Leigh Newman in NOBODY GETS OUT ALIVE: STORIES.

A bit about me: I’m the communications manager for Audubon Alaska, a program of the National Audubon Society, where I write stories that focus on habitat conservation on public lands and Important Bird Areas throughout Alaska. I also teach media and gender studies at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and am a fellow in the BookEnds’ 2025-2026 Fellowship at Stony Brook University. Previously, I worked as an editor and journalist in Arizona for more than 15 years, covering culture, food, music, refugee resettlement, and sustainability, mostly for Phoenix New Times. I live in Anchorage on Dena’ina Ełnena and enjoy cycling, birding, doing Alaska stuff with my fiancé, and singing to my pets.

The full manuscript is available upon request at mscusimano@gmail.com.

(I also enjoy writing about horror and created a place for takes on horror content at @horren_cusimano.)