Zuleyka’s Other Writing

On 5 September 2025, I was awarded second prize in the adult category of the Melton City Libraries Short Story Competition. The competition received over 300 entries. My story, ‘The Foreboding,’ is a speculative fiction set in the near future:

An onyx ring has appeared on the outer corners of Dalia Quispe’s eye. As the darkness spreads, Dalia must fight her job’s human resources automated system to seek medical treatment. Meanwhile, her work threatens to drain more than her sight.

The competition judge was the imitable Alice Pung OAM. It is a profound honour to receive Alice’s feedback. Her books about Chinese Cambodian women in the Western suburbs of Naarm, Melbourne, have been nourishing and inspiring. (Alice signed my copy of Unpolished Gem!) My work similarly focuses on migrant women of colour from working class backgrounds, on the west of Wurundjeri Country. I explore alternate futures of family, work, and the environment. Below is part of Alice’s comments about my story.

‘I loved this story for its slight speculative fiction bent, its inventiveness. I admire how it builds an alternate world that is just convincing enough to seem real, but that has a few details that are off-kilter enough to unsettle the reader. The premise is so ambitious, yet the subtlety and attention to detail is there, saving it from becoming an outlandish Black Mirror episode to a disquieting and powerful satire on work culture.’

This article was first published on Latino Rebels on 14 March 2017.

Inspired by the impact of the Women’s March, March for Science (MfS) emerged from a series of social media conversations. The ScienceMarchDC Twitter account was set up on January 24, and a Facebook page three days later. Their follower base ballooned from a couple of hundred people to thousands. At the time of writing, the Twitter account has 337,000 followers, the public Facebook page has more than 393,000 likes, and the private Facebook community has over 840,000 members. There are currently 360 satellite marches being organized in various American states and in many cities around the world.

The MfS organizers go to great pains to separate science from politics, and science from scientists, as if practice and policies are independent from practitioners. For example co-chair and biology postdoctoral fellow Dr Jonathan Berman says: “Yes, this is a protest, but it’s not a political protest.” Another co-chair, science writer Dr Caroline Weinberg, recently told The Chronicle: “This isn’t about scientists. It’s about science.” These sentiments strangely echo other highly publicized opposition to the march, and are being replicated in some of the local marches. The idea that a protest can be “not political” and that science can be separated from scientists are both political ideas. These notions privilege the status quo in science, by centring the politics, identities and values of White scientists, especially White cisgender, able-bodied men, who are less affected by changes to the aforementioned social policies.

The topic of diversity has dominated online conversations between many scientists across different nations who are interested in making MfS inclusive.

Even as the movement gained swift momentum, the leadership and mission were unclear in one key area: diversity.

Discussions over the march are important not just due to the planned demonstration. The debates matter because they reflect broader issues of diversity in science.

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