Caribbean Sky Islands

Creators & Roles

Celeste Rita Baker (Creator) is a Virgin Islander who currently resides on St. Thomas. She has published short stories in Lightspeed, The Caribbean Writer, Calabash, Margin’s Magical Realism, Moko Magazine, Abyss & Apex, Strange Horizons, and is included in the anthologies: The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021, People of Colo(u)r Destroy Fantasy, An Alphabet of Embers, Black Science Fiction Society’s Genesis, The Outcast Hours, The Apex Book of World SF 4, and other literary works. Celeste is a 2019 graduate of Clarion West. 2021 World Fantasy Award for Short Fiction for her story “Glass Bottle Dancer.”

Tonya ‘Tricia’ Liburd (Creator) speculative fiction writer from Trinidad and Tabago. She shares a birthday with Ray Bradbury and Simeon Daniel, which may tell you a little something about her. She is an Apex Magazine Reader’s Choice 2022 Fiction Winner, and is a 2017 and 2018 Rhysling Award nominee. Her fiction is used in Nisi Shawl’s Writing the Other course and Tananarive Due’s Black Horror course at UCLA (which has featured Jordan Peele as guest lecturer), as an example of “code switching”. She is also the recipient of a 2020 Ontario Arts Council writer’s grant in 2020, a 2021 Horror Writers Association Diversity Grant, and a 2023 Recommender’s Grant for writing. She is an Editor over at The Expanse Magazine. You can find her blogging at https://www.tonya.ca/, on Twitter at @somesillywowzer, or at Patreon at www.Patreon.com/TonyaLiburd

Fabrice Guerrier (Creator ) is a Haitian-American writer, producer and founder of Syllble, a pioneering science fiction and fantasy production house and publisher that creates fictional worlds by connecting diverse creative writers, visual artists and inspired creators from different countries, backgrounds, and cultures through artist collectives. His vision is to bring a new era of storytelling in Hollywood and the publishing world by building vibrant collectives of underrepresented creators producing together within unique fictional universes, publishing the best original work that emerges and growing these worlds through creative collaborations, content creation, and transmedia. He was selected as a 2022 PEN Emerging Voices fellow finalist and a PEN Haiti fellow by PEN America. He was inducted into Forbes 30 Under 30 list and named to Root magazine’s 100 most influential African-Americans.

Joanne C Hillhouse (Contributor), writer from Antigua and Barbuda. Joanne C. Hillhouse (b. January 5th 1973) is a writer from Ottos, Antigua-Barbuda in the Caribbean and was named the Anthony N. Sabga Awards for Caribbean Excellence arts and letters laureate in 2023. She is an international author, freelance content creator and copy editor, writing coach, course and workshop coordinator and facilitator, arts and culture advocate and commentator, and book blogger and vlogger. Her independent media products include the CREATIVE SPACE series, which runs in the Daily Observer by Newsco (extended edition with extras here on the blog and video on AntiguanWriter on YouTube), and the Blogger on Books (and #BookChat #unscripted video) series. Her lit arts development programmes include the Jhohadli Summer Youth Writing Project/Jhohadli Writing Project workshop series and the non-profit Wadadli Youth Pen Prize.

Creator goals

Write short stories in the world. Expand the world through visual art and collaboration with other Caribbean authors.

World summary/overview

All the Caribbean islands are able to levitate their entire lands into the sky and fit together like a puzzle. Together they become a land mass. They decide to go up together to escape hurricanes, to charge up from the sun’s energy or for carnival.

As a fantasy world the boundaries and rules of the world are determined by magic and its magical systems and limitations.

We focus mainly on the collective society of Black Caribbeans but they are not all Black, they’re Multi-ethnic Multi-racial. They have deep connections with the spiritual world which is inherent in the fact that they are Black Caribbeans.

Islands in the world that levitate: Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, The Barbados, Cuba. Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Saba, The Virgin Islands, Jamaica, Haiti, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago and more.

Inhabitants of the Islands have to create specific offerings of striving for the best of humanity. Through this they can harness and receive the specific energies of specific ancient Gods unique to Sky Island Pantheon. The Gods give altruistically. The ultimate goal of society is to live like that. Gods want good behavior. Two good deeds and the Gods give power. But as humans we still fail and this is where conflicts in this society is born.

Society

It is a Matriarchal Society, Relationships and Love: People make love to whoever they want (Free love) One person can get with another for a week, a month, two years, ten years or even 100 years. Three person couple (Polyamory) and anything is allowed.

Nature: is sacred to them in order to maintain order and be in balance and sustainability.

Education: is not done in a classroom. It’s scheduled for exposure

Food: The people eat songs to survive to a certain degree as well as food and the light of the sun to a certain percentage. A healer would have to determine when you are out of balance. You got too much songs, sun and too much green beans

Magic System

The closer they are to the sun the more they can use their Magic and connect to the plants and creatures

Energy of Islands Floating is Magical

The plants and the fauna collect the energy from the Sun. This is how the entire islands levitate. There’s an element in magic in everything throughout the islands

Magic only exists on the islands. Magic doesn’t work when they are off island

Bio-Magic Transmutation

People can make themselves merge their consciousness with a cat or other animals or plants. There are limitations, you work your way to mastery in borrowing consciousness, is the limit. There’s a taboo when you merge with the animal completely in becoming half human/half cats for example.

If you need to go far distances for which walking is difficult or possible, it takes a lot of skill and learning. But you can travel like a seed through the wind, borrow the consciousness of a bird to fly, or a fish to swim. You become the bird. They become that animal and reside in the animal. They are connected to the natural world in balance from the oceans, the estuaries, the wind, the forests. When an individual needs malleability, fluidity, speed, strength and power you can borrow the consciousness and power of an animal, a fish, a bird or even a tree.

God Pantheon in the Sky Island World

The Gods are shapeshifting forces that exist on a different vibrational frequency than the physical world, though they are part of the human world, aspect of their body life force is expressed through earth manifestations as their connections to create order.

Each was created for a process and has the power to manifest in all different types of species and organisms on earth.

Some chose to harbor specific forms. They are all altruistic Gods and lend their magic to the people of the Sky Islands. They harbor and maintain the order of this specific world. There are 10 Gods and the ancient ones.

Visual Art of Caribbean Sky Island

Painted By Fabrice Guerrier