The Interchange fits neatly in the sub-genre of humanist science fiction. Its character driven plot and progression of contemporary issues (e.g., gender parity, feminism, maternal attachment, surrogacy, scientific apotheosis, climate upheaval, and social order) encourage readers to envision how facets of life today might evolve in the future.

THE INTERCHANGE

In New America, 2095, the future is engineered, but can the heart be controlled? 

When Manx Aureole Agnor—a national hero and symbol of progress—meets a woman defying the law by conceiving naturally, her perfect life unravels. Drawn to the forbidden, Aureole risks everything to experience motherhood herself.

Will she choose the path of rebellion or allegiance to her nation’s ideals? Dive into The Interchange by John Steven Welch, where science and humanity collide in an unmissable tale of love, freedom, and survival.

“Watching them pleased young eyes. I loved their complexions and freckles, the fullness and weight of their hair and its different colors—its flow when quick hands pushed it off their foreheads, or fingers combed it effortlessly—their eyes whose colors were hypnotic, and the freshness of their shirts or suits even at the end of long days.”

The One Who's Gonna See You Through

The One Who’s Gonna See You Through is a work that bridges the commercial/literary divide.

The gay interracial theme here is seldom explored and the absent mother/loving father configuration brings a different lens to this work. The approach to the story in The One Who’s Gonna See You Through sets the more familiar trope of the angry, Black, homophobic father aside and abandons the more well-trodden storyline of steadfast single Black motherhood. By the story’s end, GJ recognizes that his father’s early and invaluable acceptance of difference laid the foundations for the happiness and realization he has experienced as a gay man throughout life. He resolves within himself that he must finally accept his legitimacy as both a Black man and an upper-middle-class one.

"The One Who's Gonna See You Through"
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“Our very own pint-size version of Liz Taylor in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf materialized in the midst of an otherwise mundane family evening.”

The quest over many years was to unearth my dream and allow its pursuit to nourish a longing soul. 

Author John Steven Welch

John Steven Welch loves writing and has pursued different forms of it throughout his life. Welch holds a doctorate in art history from Princeton University with his dissertation on nineteenth-century British photographer, Roger Fenton. He also holds a master’s from Princeton and a bachelor’s from Columbia University (GS). Welch has authored numerous articles and served as assistant editor and author for a special issue of on the State of Black Museums, The Public Historian, August 2018.

An art historian with 15+ years of museum experience including positions as: Director of Education, Program Manager, and Administrator. His work as a Museum Educator focused on strategic planning, community outreach, K-12 program development, museum volunteer (docent) training and management, and audience engagement.

Turning now to fiction, Welch has produced a debut novel which charts an urban black Youth’s coming of age in Washington, D.C., during the 1960s and 70s. It blurs the line between literary and commercial fiction, written from the perspective of a gay Black man coming to term with his sexuality, race, and class—a story about unique paths of love and difference leading to elevation and, ultimately, self-actualization.