Ayana Cotton

Ayana Zaire Cotton is a cultural worker from Prince George’s County, Maryland. During a biotechnology residency at Ginkgo Bioworks, she wrote the non-linear speculative fiction novella Cykofa: The Seeda Origin Story in collaboration with creative writing software she engineered at the Recurse Center. Ayana is the founder and steward of Seeda School, named after Seeda, the non-binary biotechnologist living in Cykofa: an abolitionist community seeded by Black feminist ancestors. Seeda School supports a community of practice for Black feminist worldbuilding and Erotic Engineering. Through Seeda School, they publish a weekly newsletter and podcast, For the Worldbuilders. Inside the ecosystem of their speculative practice, Cotton braids pedagogy, publishing, and painting to engage our collective imagination around the worlds we need in the future we desire.