Aiesha Little is a professional writer and editor, the founder of the Midwest Black Speculative Fiction Alliance, and, in a whimsical twist, the ‘mechanic’ of the steampunk-focused cosplay group Airship Ashanti. Before I met her, I suspected she was creative and fun – and those suspicions proved wholly accurate in the course of our interview. I walked away thinking how crucial it is to find and make spaces for joy in our lives.

Over a Zoom conversation in January, we talked about her entry to cosplay, her creative interests, and the ways she’s made space for them. Photos were taken at Tillie’s Lounge in Northside.

Interview by Suzanne Wilder. Photography by Angie Lipscomb.

Are you from Cincinnati? Or how did you get here?

I’m not [from here]. I’m actually from Michigan. I came here to go to grad school at Xavier, more than 20 years ago now. While I was in grad school, I did an internship with Cincinnati Magazine, and that got me started in the magazine realm. Before that, I was a newspaper reporter. I went from being a newspaper reporter to being in graduate school and really liking magazine-style writing, so I committed to doing more of that in my career. That was in 2000.

You’ve stayed here. What kept you here?

I moved away for a couple of years, but I came back. I really like Cincinnati. It’s a fairly inexpensive city compared to Chicago or some other places. It’s got all the stuff that I want. I like to go to the symphony. I like to go to the opera. I like to do art kinds of things. A lot of the things you get in a larger city – you can get them here. I can’t go back to Michigan winters.

What are words your friends and family might use to describe you?

Blunt, very to the point. My friends and family would probably say silly. (Laughs)

How do you want people to describe you?

As a person who likes to have a good time but takes no shit.

You said blunt very quickly. Why was that the first thing that came to mind?

I’m a boundary person. I make it very clear when people are about to cross my boundaries or when they have crossed my boundaries. There are times when people take the bubbliness, the me-as-a-person-that-likes-to-have-fun – they can take that too far. Especially if it’s people that I don’t know. With social media, it’s really easy for people to see something you say, or see a funny video, and interact with you and they take that as they know everything about you. I like to say, here are my boundaries, don’t cross them, and we’ll be fine.

I’m always in a place where I’m trying to make space for myself. A lot of the things I’m involved in come from this place of wanting to create space for myself. I created Midwest Black Speculative Fiction Alliance (Midwest BSFA on Instagram or Facebook) with that in mind. I got into costuming and steampunk with that in mind … I thought I was too old to do any of that. Dressing up and going to conventions? Who are these people? What are they doing? This is so fascinating to me! It wasn’t until I was in my early 30s that I was like, ‘This would be cool to do, to try something new’.

What made you shift from ‘Who are these people?’ to ‘I want to do this.’?

For a while, I was really curious and fascinated. I occasionally went to a convention, but I always felt like a parent. Probably around 2012, professionally and personally, things were not going the way I wanted them to. I wanted some whimsy in my life. I found these outlets where I could just be creative.

“I think that when you start growing up, all of the childlike wonder that you have starts to get beaten out of you.”

The older you get, the harder it is to make friends. Everyone is starting to get married and they have children and they’ve got all these other priorities. You have to work really hard to keep these friendships going. Sometimes it’s worth it, and sometimes it’s not.

I was doing a story for a local outlet about costuming and cosplay, and I ended up going to a steampunk salon. When I walked in, it was a bunch of people dressed in Victorian clothing and all the women had on corsets, and it was like, ‘What is happening here and how long has this been happening in Cincinnati?’ They were all around my age. Some conventions can feel like everyone is a lot younger, depending on what genre it is, what fandom it is. Steampunk is the other way. It skews a lot older. Going to a salon, I was probably one of the younger people there. The fashion is what drew me in.

The following year, I went to my first steampunk event dressed up in a costume. I’ve been doing it ever since. While it does skew older, it is very white. So for me to be there, what kind of space am I creating? I was thinking about myself but also about other people who might see me at an event or someone who searches for steampunk Cincinnati online, and they’re also a person of color. What kind of space can I carve out in this genre for myself?

Steampunk is kind of shorthand for Victorian science fiction, but the Victorian period is just what it was called in England. It was a period of time that happened everywhere. What would it look like in other places? So I started expanding on what would steampunk look like if it was coming from an African country? I started to build this backstory, a character backstory, of what my character would look like coming from a West African country. It was a way to be creative.

I am somewhat familiar with speculative fiction, but can you give a nutshell description?

To me, speculative fiction covers all of the genres that are beneath it: science fiction, cyberpunk, steampunk, fantasy. All of those genres fall under the umbrella of speculative fiction. You can take it from a historical angle – what if this country was not overthrown, but that country was? What would that look like? Or you’re extrapolating to the future. If we keep going on this path into the future, what is the dystopian world waiting for us? There are so many ways you can dig into speculative fiction.

With Midwest BSFA, again, I’m trying to create space. I wanted to have a local group where like-minded people could talk about the works of black authors, filmmakers, and creators who are making their work under that label of speculative fiction. Probably a year and a half into doing steampunk I started thinking about Afrofuturism. How do I find people here in Cincinnati who are also into these things? I ended up founding a group – finding some people I knew from other scenes – and asking them to join. We talk through what’s happening in the world of Black speculative fiction. It’s been slow-going the last couple of years because with the pandemic you can’t really get out and meet face-to-face. We have done virtual events, and it’s still going!

You have the speculative fiction group and a steampunk group you’re part of. You went from being curious to going to the salons, to helping to facilitate a group that’s organizing things.

There’s a steampunk symposium that happens, a three-day event, that was maybe three or four months after I started going to salons. That’s how I met people from the region and throughout the Midwest. There’s a wider network out there. In the summer of 2014, I met the person who was organizing Airship Ashanti. A lot of steampunk groups are organized around airships, so you have a bunch of people and they decide what they want to do – a captain, a vice-admiral, a sergeant at arms, a doctor. I’m a mechanic (on the airship). That’s mostly because I wanted to wear an outfit that didn’t require a corset. I wear them for other outfits, but for this, I wanted a casual, I-don’t-have-to-have-a-corset-on look.

I met these two people who were organizing an airship around a kind of West African narrative. Initially, it was the three of us, then that three became five, then six core members by the end of 2014. It was really important for me to find them and how they were approaching steampunk. It was similar to how I was approaching steampunk.

There’s a philanthropic element to it as well?

Aside from the diversity and multiculturalism in steampunk being one of our objectives, philanthropy is another objective for us. Making sure we’re giving back to the community in some way. Doing a 5k, making fleece blankets to donate to shelters, canned food drives, clothing drives, a blood drive. If you show up dressed in steampunk gear, people are going to ask, “What’s going on here?” And you can hopefully get them to help out with your charitable event.

I am turning 45 next month, and this is the most fun I’ve had since I was a kid. Getting to dress up, go to events, be creative, and let your imagination run wild. I love it.

I sometimes ask people the question, ‘What brings you joy?’ But so much of what you’ve been talking about have been the things that bring you joy. I love that you’ve created the spaces for these things in your life.

I think life can be a drag sometimes. Especially living through this [pandemic]. But even in the ‘before times.’ Work, family, all the things that are going on around you at any given moment. If you aren’t finding ways to fit in some fun, what are you doing for yourself? I want to be remembered, at the end of the day, as the person who had a good time while I was here.

Tell us about an influential woman in your life.

As it relates to geeky stuff, I would say my grandmother. She was the person who introduced me to sci-fi. I watched a lot of Star Trek with her. She loved James T. Kirk! (Laughs)

When the reboot came out a few years back, I watched it (the first film in the reboot) seven times in the theater. It was OK, but I was thinking about my grandmother. I wanted to know, would she have liked it. We bonded over it when I was way younger. There were so many questions, and that was why I kept going back to it. Embracing imagination and being creative – she was definitely influential on me.

Also, my mother taught me to be the person I am. To be able to come into a space, and say ‘Hey, I don’t see any space for me, so I’m going to move you out of the way and you out of the way, and I’m going to be right here.’ I definitely get that from my mother. She’s a social butterfly, she’s an extrovert. When I was younger I was an introverted, wallflower kid. To go from that to ‘I’m going to dress up in costume, and go through self-checkout at the grocery store in costume’. That is some of her influence.

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Aiesha Little: Making Space for Whimsy