Thanks to everyone who came to be part of the conversation in person! We had a fantastic audience, especially for ten in the morning on the last day of a con. Below, as promised, are links to everything people recommended during that session. Comments and further recommendations are always welcome, and if you’d like to say anything to me directly, my e-mail address is julia@juliarios.com.

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Notes:

JoSelle Vanderhooft’s Work
*Jo’s website.
*SteamPowered and SteamPowered II are the lesbian steampunk anthologies Jo edits with an eye toward diverse content and viewpoints. SteamPowered III will be accepting submissions in February.
*Sleeping Beauty Indeed is an anthology of lesbian fairy tales, which includes a story by Meredith.
*Heiresses of Russ is the best lesbian stories of 2010 Jo collected co-edited with Steve Berman. Jo says Steve’s contribution (a retelling of Swan Lake) is the best short story she’s ever read.
*Bitten By Moonlight is the lesbian werewolf anthology that came up during the horror and dark fantazy recommendations part of the panel.

Meredith Schwartz’s Work
*Alleys and Doorways is the anthology Meredith edited, which contains Jo’s butch werebunny story (why have I not read this yet?).
*Meredith is also running this year’s program for LunaCon.

Don Sakers’s Work
*Meerkat Meade is Don’s home page.
*Dance for the Ivory Madonna is Don’s all-inclusive “Meta Gay” book (though no one’s been able to explain what Meta Gay means without taking at least three pages, apparently). It was a finalist for the Spectrum Award, and almost made the final Hugo ballot as well.
*Curse of the Zwiling is Don’s dark fantasy, which came up during the horror and dark fantasy recommendations part of the panel.
*Don also has a regular column in Analog Science Fiction and Fact.

Raven Kaldera’s Work
*Raven’s website.
*Raven’s books (including Best Transgender Erotica, and Double-Edge: The Intersection of Transgender and BDSM).
*Raven’s list of Female to Male non-fiction and fiction books.

Other Recommended Works
*Everyone recommended Catherynne Valente (whose work was, at one point, described as “relentlessly queer”–there’s a quote for the next book cover). Jo particularly singled out Palimpsest and Silently and Very Fast.
*Don recommended Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series and The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins as examples of bestselling books with prominent and complex QUILTBAG characters.
*Meredith recommended Amanda Downum’s The Bone Palace, which she said she read first even though it is the second of a trilogy, and she believes it stands alone. This book was also on the Tiptree shortlist in 2011.
*When an audience member asked about Twilight‘s influence on YA, Jo mentioned Melissa Marr’s Wicked Lovely Things, and I mentioned Justine Larbalestier and Sarah Rees Brennan’s Team Human as books with protagonists who don’t think dating supernatural creatures is a very good idea.
*Jo recommended Steve Berman in general and Meredith recommended his YA novel, Vintage, in particular.
*Jo also recommended Erekos by A.M. Tuomolo.
*Don recommended Melissa Scott, particularly Trouble and Her Friends and Shadow Man. Meredith added that Trouble and Her Friends is a good example of cyberpunk that doesn’t feel dated.
*Don also recommended Open Your Eyes by Paul Jessup.
*Simoun was Jo’s anime recommendation, which she says will appeal to fans of Revolutionary Girl Utena, and which features supernatural aircraft powered by lesbian kisses.
*Meredith recommended Lynn Flewelling’s Nightrunner series and Ellen Kushner’s Swordspoint (which is now also available as an audiobook with an exciting cast of voice actors as part of the Neil Gaiman Presents series).
*Melissa Scott and Jo both recommended the lesbian zombie novella, Eat Your Heart Out by Dayna Ingram. And this starts our run of dark fantasy and horror recommendations, which an audience member requested.
*Meredith and Jo recommended Ginn Hale’s Lord of the White Hell for dark fantasy fans.
*I recommended Lee Thomas in general for horror fans, and specifically mention The Dust of Wonderland, which won a Lambda Award.
*Meredith recommended A Companion to Wolves for fantasy fans, which led me to recommend The Bone Key for horror fans, and then all of us to recommend Sarah Monette’s work in general.
*Don recommended Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman series for dark fantasy fans.
*An audience member recommended Joanna Russ.
*Adrienne Odasso recommended Clive Barker for horror fans.
*Another audience member recommended the television series Carnivàle for horror fans.
*And our final recommendation from the panel was Maureen McHugh’s China Mountain Zhang, which Meredith started and I jumped all over, and then Jo got in on it, too.
*Raven recommends Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan series, particularly citing Bel Thorne and Lord Dono Vorrutyer as well drawn intersex and trans characters.
*Raven also recommends Steel Beach by John Varley.
*Raven also felt it worth mentioning Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover series, and Mary Gentle’s Ilario series.

Finally, I noted on the podcast, and I’ll note again here that not all books work for all people, and that books might have problems, but still work for a lot of people, and be worth reading, considering and talking about. Opinions tend to vary greatly around books with trans and/or intersex content because every person experiences gender and orientation differently, and because there are so few of those books to begin with. All of these recommendations did work for the recommenders, but I do want to acknowledge that they may not work for everyone, and that people who disagree with these recommendations also have valid experiences and opinions. Individual experience is, after all, highly subjective. We’re open to discussion, and happy to collect more suggestions if you’ve got them.

Part 1 is here.

Part 2 is here.

Part 3 is here.

Thanks to Charles Tan for letting me know this video existed!

I’m Here, I’m Queer, What the Hell Do I Read?: Lee Wind’s awesome book recommendation blog. He reads all kinds of things and shares his thoughts with the rest of us–and there’s always an open comment thread. Seriously excellent resource. Right up there with…

Bibrary Book Lust: Sally Sapphire’s super book recommendation resource. Sally’s open to all sorts of genres, and super interested in keeping the conversation going–she started the Gender Identity and Expression Book Challenge at the beginning of this year. There’s still time to participate, if you like!

Twitter #FeministSF Chat: This happens every Sunday at 2pm EST. Every week there are one or two host/moderators who guide discussions on particular themes. This Sunday, Catherine Lundoff and Kathryn Allen are going to be talking about outsiders and cyberpunk. Sign into Twitter and follow the #FeministSF hastag. Anyone can participate, and it’s a great way to meet other people and get book recs.

In Person in New York This Month: On the 24th, The Center for Fiction is hosting an Outsiders in SF panel with Steve Berman, Samuel Delaney, Andrea Hairston, Carlos Hernandez, Alaya Dawn Johnson, and Ellen Kushner.  And on the 10th (that’s Monday!) Bluestockings is hosting a reading from Milk and Honey: A Celebration of Jewish Lesbian Poetry. Rose Fox will be a part of that one. Honestly, if you’re ever in New York, it’s worth checking out the Bluestockings events calendar, since they have stuff going on nearly every day.

In Person in Washington DC This Month: Capclave is next weekend, the 14th-16th in Gaithersburg, MD. Catherynne Valente is one of the Guests of Honor.

In Person in San Diego This Month: The World Fantasy Convention is on the last weekend of October. It’s already completely sold out, and has been for some time, but it promises to be full of exciting conversations, which I’m hoping will spill over onto the internet so that people like me, who can’t be there, can join in the fun.

If you know of other places where excellent conversations are happening, please tell us in the comments here or on the google group. And if you’re going to any of these in-person events and want to share your experience with us, we’d love to hear those, too!

Pi-Con is this weekend in Enfield, Connecticut. Hurricane Irene is heading up the East coast, but Pi-Con is still happening. If you’re in New England and feel like venturing out (or in New York and forced to evacuate…), you can come see several OA members like Jennifer Pelland and Shira Lipkin. I’ll be there, too!

If you’re near Austin, Texas this weekend, you might want to check out ArmadilloCon. It’s also got some OA members on the program, including JoSelle Vanderhooft, Lee Thomas, and Elizabeth Bear.

Dragon*Con is next weekend in Atlanta, Georgia. It will be giant as usual, but if you’re there and want to hang out with some awesome LGBTQ people, Outlantacon is hosting a Rainbow Flag Party on Saturday night. You can meet all kinds of excellent queer fans and allies there, and get the chance to purchase a 2012 Outlantacon membership at a discount.

That’s it for this week. See you at Pi-Con if you’re there! And Congratulations to all the Hugo winners! We’re especially pleased to note that Lynne Thomas and Cheryl Morgan snagged shiny new rocket ships this year. Hurray!

The Hugo Awards ceremony is tomorrow! If, like me, you’re unable to make it to Reno, you can still watch a live video stream at 8pm Pacific Time. Jay Lake and Ken Scholes are hosting the ceremony, and lots of fine people and works are up for consideration. It’s too late to vote if you haven’t already, but it’s not too late to get some some last minute reading in.

Rachel Swirsky’s novella, The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window, may be of particular interest to the OA membership, as it explores gender roles and expectations, and has a queer protagonist.

In tangentially-related-if-we-stretch-pretty-hard news, Lynne M. Thomas (a nominee in the Best Related Work category for Chicks Dig Time Lords) is stepping up as editor of Apex Magazine. She’ll be taking over where Cat Valente left off, and will undoubtedly continue to welcome submissions with queer content. Hurray!

Do you want to talk about the Hugos on Twitter? The women of Galactic Suburbia will be live tweeting as they watch the stream with their @galacticsuburbs account, Mur Lafferty and Kevin Standlee will be doing official text coverage, incorporating Hugo-specific hashtags like #hugos and #hugoawards, and I’ll be around, too. Do say hello if you join the fun. I’m @omgjulia, and I love hearing from people.

Best of luck to OA members who’ve been nominated this year!

The World SF Travel Fund is something Lavie Tidhar is overseeing, and it’s an awesome idea. Its goal is to send one person to an international event every year. This year the person is Charles Tan, who does all sorts of excellent internet promotion and review and discussion of SF and fandom from his home in the Philippines. The SF Travel Fund wants to send him to San Diego, CA for the World Fantasy Convention this October. So far they’ve reached 70% of their fundraising goal (which will be enough to send Charles to World Fantasy and to seed the fun for next year so that it can be sure to continue). The board for this project is a fantastic group of diverse people, who I’m hopeful will choose candidates to further diversity at major SF events in the future, so I’d love to see them reach their goal. They’re offering donors e-books as a thank you for donating, too! Go check it out!

Con or Bust is an ongoing project which aims to get people of color to conventions. Kate Nepveu oversees this one, which runs on an auction system, and takes requests for help from individuals. It’s a pretty fantastic thing! If you ‘re a person of color who wants to attend a convention in October or November, you can request help between the 15th and 25th of this month. Darkovercon has donated a membership for someone, which is totally awesome because their GOH lineup is full of queertastic goodness.

Shveta Thakrar is taking matters into her own hands. Shveta is one of the contributors to Steam Powered II, and she’s written a paper about women and monsters in South Asian folklore and sacred myth, which she’d like to present at the Sirens conference in October. She’s not far from her goal, and is busily thinking up ways to thank people who donate. It would be excellent if we could all make this happen for her.

Okay, so that’s it for travel funds. We have a bunch of other stuff to share this week, too! Yay, we’re rich in LGBTQI news!

Cheryl Morgan recorded a panel about gender in SF at Eurocon in June, and put it up as a podcast this week. You can download it free and hear Elizabeth Bear, Johan Jönsson, Kristina Knaving, Ian McDonald, and Cheryl Morgan talking about Gender with Kari Sperring as the moderator. Charles Stross also participates from the audience. They cover all sorts of interesting territory in the 50 minutes of panel time.

Galactic Suburbia’s Joanna Russ discussion episode happened a few weeks ago, but I was so busy preparing for Readercon that I forgot to mention it was up! You can get that here, and I highly recommend it. They cover How to Suppress Women’s Writing, “When it Changed”, and The Female Man, and they explore both the awesome things and the not so awesome things about Russ’s work. In the following episode, they also present some thoughtful listener feedback.

Jessica Verday’s queer YA story is now available! Back in March, Jessica Verday pulled a story from a YA anthology after the editor asked her to change her gay protagonists to straight ones. That story is now available as an e-book on Amazon.

The Outwrite LGBT Book Fair is happening this weekend in Washington, DC. Lethe Press will be there along with a bunch of other awesome queer publishers. Details here. Do let us know if you attend!

Apex is hosting a Twitter chat tomorrow with Jennifer Pelland at 3pm EST. Jennifer is an OA member with lots of great queer short fiction out there (and a novel with a bi protagonist forthcoming). Apex has all the details on how you can ask her questions.

Okay, that wraps up this week’s news. If you’ve got anything to share, please let us know here in the comments, on the google group, or by e-mailing me personally at julia@juliarios.com.

C.S.E. Cooney (newly minted Rhysling award winner!) is posting writeups on the Black Gate blog about her experience, including a mention of the Steam Powered group reading. Alas, I had to miss that one as I was frantically preparing for the Interstitial Arts Exchange Party I hosted that evening, but word around the con was that it was excellent.

The Crossed Genres Broken Slate party was hopping on Friday evening. I slipped in a for a few minutes while I was supposed to be setting up the arts party, and got to hear Camille Alexa read, which was excellent. It looked like some other OA types were in there, too, like Craig Laurance Gidney.

Steve Berman was on a panel about gender and sexuality in SF, which I also sadly missed, but I hear that was pretty great, too. I did get to snag a copy of the latest issue of Icarus from him, though.

The Readercon website has a list of con reports from attendees.

My own con report  with links to my very small amount of con photos is here. I also got to wave at Joselle Vaderhooft, share a couple of meals with Brit Mandelo (who does the lovely Queering SFF column over at Tor.com) and briefly speak with Madeleine Robins. I wish I could have spent more time with more awesome OA people, but I suppose there’s always next con.

So, where will you be? And when?

A Gay (Straight) Girl (Man) in Damascus (Edinburgh) by Ali Abbas and Assia Boundaoui is an explanation of the damage the Amina hoax did from two “New York based writers and freelance-journalists that submitted a blood test and birth certificate to affirm that the above thoughts are their own analysis based on a lifetime of Arab and or queer and or American and or woman identification.”

White Privilege and the ‘Gay Girl in Damascus’ is an NPR segment in which Brian Spears (a white man) talks about white male privilege and why it’s not okay to co-opt the voices of marginalized people.

Sara Amis will be moderating a Feminist SF Twitter chat on Sunday at 2pm EST. The theme of this discussion is worldbuilding. If you want to participate, just follow the FeministSF hashtag.

And while we’re talking about #FeministSF, NPR is asking people to share their favorite SF/F books with the goal of ultimately making a top 100 books list. Nicola Griffith reminds everyone to consider including books by women on the list. I’ll add a bid for considering including books by queer people and people of color.

Finally, Ladies of Trade Town is available now at HarpHaven Publishing. I talked to Lee Martindale about this in the big Gaylaxicon podcast episode–it’s an anthology of stories about the oldest profession, with stories by Catherine Lundoff and Cecilia Tan.

My girlfriend and I technically attended GCLS last year. But it was held in Orlando, Florida, and neither of us had been to Disney before. Basically we ended up seeing a lot more of Mickey Mouse than Karin Kallmaker. So this was the first year that we were really present at GCLS. (Next year GCLS will be in Minneapolis, and Portland, Oregon the year after.)

One of the most fun parts of GCLS was their awards ceremony. It’s like the Oscars if everyone was a lesbian. GCLS runs their awards the same way Lambda and Publishing Triangle do: publishers (or authors) nominate books by paying a fee and providing copies, and then judges winnow the nominations down to a list of finalists. The awards are known as the Goldies. What’s amazing is that there can have more than one winner per category, depending on how many finalists there are.

The Outer Alliance’s own Sacchi Green won a Goldie in the category of lesbian erotica, for Lesbian Lust, although she wasn’t present at the ceremony. Winners in the speculative fiction category were Bourn’s Edge by Barbara Davies, More Than An Echo by Linda Kay Silva, and Nigredo by Alex Mykals. I read one of the finalists, Lesser Prophets by Kelly Sinclair, which follows a group of women through a flu epidemic that decimates the earth’s population but mysteriously spares gays and lesbians, and I thought it was excellent. Outer Alliance member Andi Marquette had a finalist as well, A Matter of Blood. Although I haven’t read that one, I did read the first book in the same series, Friends In High Places, and it had great world-building, intrigue, and romance. OA peeps would also enjoy Shadow Point by Amy Briant, a winner in the debut novel category, which is about a woman who goes to a haunted naval base when her brother dies there and must fight a malevolent ghost. The winners of the paranormal category also sounded intriguing: Rip Van Dyke by Kate McLachlan, a time travel story, and Riverwalker by Cate Culpepper, about a vengeful spirit. I loved learning about the pioneers of lesbian fiction, like Katherine V. Forrest and Ann Bannon. Apparently in the 1950s and early 1960s under the Comstock laws postal inspectors censored pulp fiction for vocabulary and plot, so that all gay books had to end in suicide or a straight marriage to be acceptable. Those early writers had a tough battle. They paved the way for all of us today, and we are truly standing on their shoulders.

The GCLS attendees were hardcore fans. It was bittersweet to hear so many women in the vendor room saying things like, “I lost my job and don’t have much money but I have to buy these books.” They knew classic lesbian books like Curious Wine by Katherine V. Forrest backwards and forwards. I’m afraid I have never read a single word by her or any of those trailblazing writers, although now I feel like I should. Attending GCLS showed me that there is a huge generation gap in lesbian fandom. I have to say that I was outside of my comfort zone at this con. Of course there were a variety of different kinds of people there, but the majority were white lesbians age 45 and up, many of whom live in isolated communities where they don’t meet a lot of other LGBTQ people. It seemed that a lot of women had come to GCLS by way of Xena, and I’m sorry to say I’ve never watched Xena either. What we did have in common was that we were all bookworms who admire lesfic writers at the top of their game like Karin Kallmaker, KG MacGregor, Georgia Beers, and Lee Lynch.

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Nora Olsen, a proud member of the Outer Alliance, writes LGBTQ-themed science fiction. The End: Five Queer Kids Save The World is her debut novel, and her short fiction has appeared in Collective Fallout. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her girlfriend, writer Aine Ni Cheallaigh, and two cats.

This is the big Outlantacon/Gaylaxicon tour episode. I basically spent my con weekend talking to fascinating people about their projects and their Outlantacon/Gaylaxicon experiences. It’s a great sampling of the con population, from gamers to cosplayers to writers to fans (and beyond!).

You can subscribe to the podcast RSS feed here or use this link to subscribe with iTunes. You can also hit play on the embedded player in this post and listen to the podcast on the web, or visit the individual episode page to download this episode as an MP3 without subscribing.

Notes:

Congratulations to the Award Winners! Steve Berman, Lynne Jamncek, Catherine Lundoff, Melissa Scott, Hal Duncan, and Sandra McDonald all deserve heaps of congratulations.

Sandra’s Diana Comet and Other Improbable Stories just won the Lambda for Best LGBT Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror. You can buy that at Wizard’s Tower Press by following the link above.

Joan Slonczewski is a professor of microbiology and a science fiction author. You can find out more about both of those things at her website.

Michael Liebmann is a voice actor and filker. You can hear some of his voice work over at Starship Excelsior, and check out his filking at GAFilk, the Georgia Filking Convention.

Hushicho is a writer, artist and occasional Go-Go dancer. You can learn more about his work at his website.

Alex Martin is a gay gamer and gamecaster. You can follow his gamecasts on YouTube (and talk to him about playing an all gay game of League of Legends).

Dennis Upkins is the author of Hollowstone, a queer YA boarding school ghost story, which will be out next month through Parker Publishing. You can find out more about that at his website.

Catherine Lundoff is a writer and editor, who just made the Gaylactic Spectrum Award shortlist for best other works for the anthology she edited, Haunted Hearths and Sapphic Shades. Find out more about all her work at her website.

Rob Gates is the director of the Gaylactic Spectrum Awards.

Casey Fiesler is a PhD Student, Clarion graduate, and part of the YA lit track staff for Dragon*Con, you can find out more about her here.

JoSelle Vanderhooft is a writer and editor. You can learn more about her at her website.

Warren Rochelle is a fantasy author and has been part of the Spectrum judging process for several years now. His website is here.

Sara Amis is a writer, and mom to the awesome sixteen-year-old Raven, who joined us for this interview. Sara has a story and a poem (the one she read aloud on this podcast, in fact) in Southern Fried Weirdness: Reconstruction, which is a charity anthology to benefit tornado relief efforts in Alabama and Georgia. Since Sara’s hometown was flattened by a recent tornado, this is a pretty personal cause for her.

Dale Everett is one of the hosts of Prometheus Unchained, an LGBT radio show. You can find out more about that at flamingfreedom.com, and if you feel so inclined, you can download past episodes, like the one broadcast live during Gaylaxicon, which features calls from Angelia Sparrow and JoSelle Vanderhooft.

Lee Martindale is a writer, editor, warrior, and bard. Her latest anthology, The Ladies of Trade Town, will be launched at A-Kon 22 in June. You can find out more about Lee and all her projects at harphaven.net.

Em Elliot is an activist with Georgia Equality, and an avid costumer. SHe works to promote safety, fairness, and opportunity for LGBTQI people in Georgia. To find out more about how to help with that, visit the Georgia Equality website.

My Flickr set from Outlantacon/Gaylaxicon has photos of many of the people mentioned in this podcast (including one of Em in costume, and one of me being fabulous with Hushicho).

If you have feedback, leave a comment, tell us on the google group, or e-mail me at julia@juliarios.com.