WHEN MOTHERS DREAM: STORIES

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BRENDA COOPER
  • August, 2025  978-1-958880-35-7
  • trade paperback, 5.5 x 8.5​​
  • Preorder copies below; ebook available from these dealers. 
  • Artwork by Rachel Byler

Award-winning writer Brenda Cooper celebrates the strength of the female in many guises: mother, daughter, engineer, biologist, and more. From a young dreamer who fights to protect the endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales to two older women whose grandchildren are being raised by AIs to a future scientist who tries to keep the world safe from bioengineered creatures, When Mothers Dream explores the edges of what can be possible if we celebrate the strength of women. 

The collection mixes new and previously published speculative work. The bouquet of science fiction, fantasy, and poetry is tied together with a thread of hope and colored with a touch of anger. It includes the voices of whales. It is a book for our times.

When Mothers Dream is about fighting for our future. Women can save us all.

Also available by Brenda Cooper:
Cracking the Sky
"To read Brenda Cooper’s work is to experience the natural world in your bones: sea, sky, river, forest, and the miraculous creatures that inhabit our land and waters. Despite the beauty of the surroundings, Cooper respects her readers enough not to serve up easy answers to the ecological perils we humans have created. Her stories grapple with the consequences through various lenses—personal to political to technical to magical—as her characters come to terms with our impact on the planet."
     — Tara Campbell, author of 2025 Philip K Dick Award finalist City of Dancing Gargoyles

"Distinctive characterizations, well-limned interrelationships, and the vividly realized Fremont contribute to an exciting coming-of-age story with a strong message about the evils of prejudice."
     — Booklist on The Silver Ship and the Sea

"Brenda Cooper gives [the multigenerational starship] scenario a thorough, intelligent shaking and reworking, hewing to lots of the glorious old props while infusing a new strain of social justice and semi-YA, Hunger Games vitality into the milieu."
     — Locus on The Creative Fire

"Playing God is dangerous . . . an intelligent, thoughtful look at what it might mean to coexist with superior AIs that we ourselves have created.  Brenda Cooper’s universe is detailed, inventive, and ultimately dazzling." 
     — Nancy Kress on Edge of Dark

"Blends environmentalism, futurism, and science fiction for an engaging story with important messages about humanity’s relationship with the world around it."
     — Foreword Reviews on Wilders


  • ​ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brenda Cooper is a writer, a technology professional, and a futurist. Two of her novels, The Silver Ship and the Sea and Edge of Dark, have won the Endeavour Award for the best science fiction or fantasy book written by a Pacific Northwest. Brenda’s most recent novels include a climate fiction duology set in the Pacific Northwest (Wilders and Keepers) and the tenth-anniversary re-drafted release of her Fremont’s Children series. Her love of technology, science, and science fiction drives her interest in the future. She is particularly interested in robotics, climate change, and the social change that must go hand in hand with fixing the human relationship to the natural world. Brenda lives in Washington State with her wife, Toni, and their multiple border collies, some of whom actually get to herd sheep. She loves to exercise, garden, read, and talk with friends.