Brazilian Translation Workshop Brings Soilpunk to Portuguese Readers

BROOKLYN, N.Y., June 5, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Tractor Beam launches its international translation initiative, starting by releasing the Spring 2025 issue, Generation, in Portuguese. The translations are a collaboration with a group of literary translators led by Professor Elton Luiz Aliandro Furlanetto at the Universidade Federal do Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS) in Campo Grande, Brazil. 

Tractor Beam is an editorially independent speculative fiction publication incubated by Tractor Beverage Company in service of its long-term commitment to regenerative agriculture and soil health. It is known for championing soilpunk — an emerging genre of anti-apocalyptic, ecologically rooted storytelling.

Beginning June 5, World Environment Day, Tractor Beam will roll out the Portuguese translations on Substack alongside the original English versions, which will also appear on Substack for the first time. The initiative also opens an invitation to translators worldwide.

"Our first issue, Generation, explores renewal, possibility, and new beginnings that build on Indigenous knowledge and inherited wisdom," said Claire Gustavson, co-founder and co-editor of Tractor Beam. "It imagines soil and the natural world as technologies for world-building, something that felt intrinsically woven into the canon of Brazilian speculative fiction. From its inception, Tractor Beam has been a project about access: bringing visions of the future closer to home (not to Mars). How can we have a truly collective future if it isn't available to everyone?"

The collaboration began when Elton Furlanetto, a scholar of science fiction and utopian studies and the Brazilian Portuguese translator of Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time, contacted Tractor Beam on behalf of a literary translation workshop at UFMS. The group, which has grown to include students from multiple Brazilian universities, had read the first issue and asked whether they could bring it into Portuguese.

"We want soilpunk to inspire us here in Brazil," Furlanetto wrote. "The students started a study group that developed into a workshop for translating literature, and people from other universities in different regions in Brazil joined us. They read Tractor Beam, and they loved it, and so did I." 

The project created several full-circle moments. Renan Bernardo, author of Tractor Beam's inaugural story, "Maitake-by-the-Sea," is Brazilian and publishes sci-fi and fantasy primarily in English. The translation project was a welcome opportunity to bring it back to his native language, and Bernardo served as an advisor throughout the process. Furlanetto also introduced the Tractor Beam editors to Jana Bianchi, a Brazilian editor and author, whose work was published in the most recent issue, Underground.

"Speculative fiction usually flows toward English-language publishing," said Lana Z Porter, co-founder and co-editor of Tractor Beam. "But writers like Renan have always held multiple traditions, multiple imaginaries. Bringing his story home in Portuguese, and meeting authors like Jana in the process, has underscored that this genre isn't an export; it's an inheritance, and we are grateful to play a small role in tending it."

With the Portuguese edition, Tractor Beam is opening a broader call to translators, literary collectives, and academic groups around the world interested in bringing soilpunk into their own languages. Interested collaborators can reach the editors at [email protected].

About Tractor Beam

Tractor Beam is an independent speculative fiction publication born from the regenerative vision of Tractor Beverage Company, an organic brand built on the belief that a better food system starts with the land and the people who care for it. Exploring anti-apocalyptic futures rooted in soil, food, farming, and regeneration — also known as soilpunk — the platform publishes short stories, comics, illustrations, and commentary centered on ecological imagination, cultural storytelling, and regenerative futures.

Learn more at tractorbeam.earth.

About the UFMS translation group

Mão na Massa: Grupo de Estudos e Oficina de Tradução Literária [Hands-on: Study Group and Literary Translation Workshop] is coordinated by Professor Elton Luiz Aliandro Furlanetto at UFMS in Campo Grande, Brazil. The group brings together students and translators from multiple universities to collaborate on literary translation as both scholarly practice and creative inquiry. Their previous projects include a Brazilian Portuguese edition of Omenana Magazine (Issue 31).

MEDIA CONTACT
Claire Gustavson
[email protected]
(917) 698-8207

SOURCE Tractor Beverage Company