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Welcome back to the Reckoning Press Podcast. Today, I, Michael J. DeLuca, am going to read you Oyedotun Damilola Muees' PEN Robert J. Dau Prize Winning and Utopia-nominated story, "All We Have Left Is Ourselves" from Reckoning 5. I going to need to ask you to bear with me. This heartbreaking story about living with the consequences of corporate environmental exploitation is written in a culture and an English vernacular far from my own. I've had help, I've been practicing for this, psyching myself up. Oyedotun says my pronunciation's not bad, it doesn't have to be perfect. All my time reading Nigerian twitter at 5AM instead of writing is about to pay off!

Voting for the Utopia Awards is open now through August 21st. We've been podcasting the nominated work over the past few episodes, and next week if all goes well I'll have Remi Skytterstad's nominated novelette, "A Song Born". Please go vote; you can find the link at reckoning.press or on twitter.

Our fundraiser is still on, we are oh so close to being able to raise payrates to 10c/word, $50/page for poetry, and I have been out in the woods and fields collecting blackberry prickers in my hands so I can offer Patreon supporters some delicious wild preserves. Don't let my suffering have been in vain! Just kidding, I love it. Anyway, you can read about the fundraiser at reckoning.press/support-us.

[Bio below.]

All We Have Left Is Ourselves by Oyedotun Damilola Muees