Outer Alliance Spotlight #92: Crossed Genres October 21, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : announcements, links, news, queer-friendly publishers, submissions , add a commentWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #92. The Spotlight features news about (and sometimes interviews with) allies who are active in supporting and celebrating LGBTQI speculative fiction. Today we’re celebrating Crossed Genres!
Crossed Genres has been actively involved in the Outer Alliance from the start. I interviewed owners Bart and Kay back in 2009 for OA Spotlight #8, and they’ve been industriously celebrating, promoting, and soliciting queer content for the duration of Crossed Genres Magazine‘s run.
Earlier this month, they announced that the magazine will be closing. This is sad news for those of us who have loved anticipating each new theme for the past three years, but it’s actually great news, too. The reason Bart and Kay are closing the magazine is so that they’ll have more time to concentrate on anthologies and novels, like Fat Girl in a Strange Land (whose table of contents just went live today!) and Broken Slate (which was the subject of OA Podcast #9).
With a solid track record of diverse content, we can certainly look forward to excellent things once the magazine closes, but first, Crossed Genres Magazine is having one last major hurrah. Issue 36, which will come out in December, has the theme: Different. Submissions are open until the 31st of this month, and they’re accepting all sorts of different things for this one.
For this issue, we are open to all types of media. Previously we haven’t accepted poetry, or podcasts, or photography; now we are. We’ll even consider longer or shorter pieces of writing. (maximum 10,000 words though!) This will make the final issue – well, different from anything we’ve published before.
And we’re looking for as diverse a body of submissions as possible to choose from! We want submissions with characters of color, quiltbag characters, disabled characters, elderly or child M/C’s. We want underrepresented perspectives!
Wouldn’t it be lovely to see a lot of OA members in that last issue? I think so! If you have something Different for Bart and Kay to look at, do send it in!
Continuing the Conversation October 7, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : events, links, news , add a commentThe world of specfic is all about conversation. Individual pieces of work are in dialogue with society, and anyone who cares enough to read this blog is part of that dialogue. Given that, I thought I should point out some places where the conversation is open and actively inclusive of LGBTQIA-relevant topics.
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!
Keffy Kehrli Talks About Gender on Writing Excuses September 23, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : links , 4commentsI’m super busy this week, but I thought I’d take a minute to point out something good:
OA member Keffy Kehrli was a guest on Writing Excuses during WorldCon, and the episode went live this week. It’s a short (about 20 minutes), but good discussion. All of the participants talk about different ways to think about (and write) gender, and Keffy patiently explains some of the unfortunate stereotypes that trans people face.
There are also some resources on the comments page (and some unfortunate comments, but surprisingly few of those, honestly).
Have you got any favorite examples of well-written trans characters to recommend? I’d love to hear about them!
On Refusing to Straighten Up September 16, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : links, news , 6commentsI’m not talking about messy rooms here (though I could be–you don’t want to see the state my house is in at present), but about specfic. Naturally.
Earlier this week over at Genreville, Rose Fox lent her blog to Sherwood Smith and Rachel Manija Brown so that they could share their experience submitting a post-apocalyptic YA novel with a gay point of view character. They wrote about how an agent offered them representation if they’d change that character to make him straight.
Rose asked for honest conversation, and in the days since that post went live, I’ve seen hundreds of responses. Several agents and editors have publicly said they’re open to/actively hoping to see LGBTQIA content in their submissions piles, a representative from the agency in question responded claiming it had all been a misunderstanding, the #YesGayYA hashtag on Twitter took off and was full of recommendations and discussion, and many people have taken this as another prompt to point out their favorite YA books with non-straight characters. So that’s all good and happy and we’re done, right?
Not so fast.
As Sherwood and Rachel pointed out in their first post (in which, I note, they deliberately chose not to name the agent in question so as to focus on the larger problem):
Forcing all major characters in YA novels into a straight white mold is a widespread, systemic problem which requires long-term, consistent action.
In their personal blogs, in response to the agency’s post, they add:
This is why we went public: After the initial exchange a month ago, we spoke in private to a number of other writers, without mentioning the name of the agent or agency. There was an overwhelming response of “Me too!” Many other writers had been asked by agents and editors to alter or remove the minority identity of their characters, sometimes as a condition of representation or sale. Sometimes those identities had been altered by editors without the writers’ knowledge or permission.
…
We urge you all to continue focusing on the bigger picture.
The bigger picture does seem to be something everyone involved professes to care about, so let’s take a look at it.
Not every author has major trouble around this kind of thing. Malinda Lo‘s Ash, a retelling of Cinderella in which the main character happens to be a lesbian (and no one in her world thinks that’s strange or anything!), seems to have had a fairly easy road to publication, for instance. This spring, she wrote a long post about how little homophobia she’s had to deal with in her professional life. In that post, she pointed out the difference between personal homophobia and cold hard marketing numbers crunching. Then, this week, she crunched some numbers and made some colorful graphs and charts. These numbers are encouraging in some ways, and very discouraging in others.
Encouraging:
*All the major publishing houses consistently put out at least one YA book with LGBTQIA main or supporting characters each year.
*The numbers dropped sharply in 2010, but rose again in 2011.
*There has been at least one trans or genderqueer character each year.
Discouraging:
*The number of YA books with LGBTQIA main or major supporting characters comprises less than or about 1% of all the YA books out there. Now, the lowest estimates I usually see about LGBTQIA people tend to say that we make up about 10% of the general population. If that’s correct, 1% is a rather low representation.
*Of the LGBTQIA YA books out there, 50% are about gay males. This means Lesbians, bi people of all genders, genderqueer, trans, questioning, asexual, and intersex people are even more under-represented in YA than gay males.
*Very few of these books feature LGBTQIA characters as the protagonist of the book. Many have LGBTQIA supporting young characters (the gay best friend, etc.), or parent/guardian characters instead.
*Many of the books with LGBTQIA characters as the protagonist are Issue Books. That is to say, they’re about the struggles associated with accepting one’s gender identity and/or sexual orientation. While these kinds of books are good to have around, by being the overwhelming majority of this tiny subset of YA books, they’re also contributing to a general sense that LGBTQIA people are not normal. If all queer stories feature people trying to accept their LGBTQIA identities, then what we’re saying as a society, is that having an LGBTQIA identity is something that isn’t easily acceptable. Do we really want to be telling ourselves that? What I hear over and over from members of the community is that we’d love to see more books where people are queer as a matter of course and not as an issue which requires great personal struggles. I think many of us would love to see more books like Ash, in which the protagonist’s orientation is not an issue, and her journey is about more than coming out or learning to accept her identity.
*Out of the eleven LGBTQIA YA books on Malinda’s list, which were published in 2010, only one was a specfic book. YA is a major market for specfic. In almost every bookstore I’ve gone into in the last two years, there’ve been separate sections for non-specfic YA and specfic YA, because there was just so much YA specfic out there. So the fact that only one book on that 2010 list is a specfic book? Is really sad to me. I haven’t counted the other years. Maybe they’re better. But I’m betting the numbers are still pretty low.
Below are a few collected responses to this debate:
Seanan McGuire (AKA Mira Grant) wrote a great post about what she wants to see in fiction.
When I talk about wanting diversity in my YA, I’m not asking for more specifically “queer YA.” I love it, I want to see it keep getting published, I think it’s important, and I think it’s not the point of this particular sword. What I want is paranormal romance where the lead is in love with the head cheerleader, not the head jock. What I want is heist books and con men where it’s Mike and Dan, not Mike and Dawn.
Nicola Griffith wrote a post and included a video of her telling the story of her struggles getting attention for her book, Slow River.
I think just about every queer author has been through this. I imagine people of colour go through it, too. We all choose whether or not to walk away. I dealt with this in 1994–instantly, satisfyingly (though it was a jaw-dropping shock).
Dennis Upkins wrote a post, which supported Nicola’s musing about people of color facing under-representation.
Do you honestly think this was an isolated incident or these kind of attitudes are happening in a vacuum?
This is most pervasive of the industry as a whole.
Ask yourself how many novels there are out there in mainstream speculative fiction that feature LGBTQs, particularly gay males, as the primary protagonists? For that matter ask yourselves how many mainstream speculative novels feature POCs, or better yet how many feature queer POCs.
Corinne Duyvis posted a roundup of arguments and counter arguments about this issue (well worth reading all of them if you have the time).
One point I did want to make–and something I’ve seen most people echo, thankfully–is that the agent’s reasons for requesting these changes don’t matter. whatever her personal biases or lack thereof, requesting a change like this contributes to the marginalization of an already underrepresented group.
Scott Tracey posted about his experience getting his book with a gay protagonist, Witch Eyes, published.
I don’t like to talk about it, because I still feel like someone’s going to come and rap my knuckles with a ruler, but WITCH EYES had it’s moments. I had agents who said there wasn’t a market for a paranormal with a gay character who had a romance. I had editors suggest they would reconsider the book if Braden and Trey became Brenda and Trey. Or if I removed the romance and made it a straight girl/gay guy buddy comedy.
Scott asks us to buy more LGBTQIA YA if we want to see more published. I think that’s a really important thing to do, but it only works if we have LGBTQIA YA books available to buy.Which brings us to our ending point for today.
Rick Lipman wrote a post about his experiences being a young queer reader and writer. His ending words bring us straight to the heart of this issue:
Listen. I am not that old. When I was growing up, there were no gay characters. And then, when there were, it was Will & Grace and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. I did not get to see people like me in books, or on television, or as superheroes. We were not mainstream. We were not acceptable or appropriate for public consumption.
I’m 24 years old. Times have changed a lot in recent years, but to act like there isn’t still a long road of progress ahead is arrogance, plain and simple. I didn’t grow up with role models or stories of my own.
It is unconscionable to me that teens today may still be in the same position.
I’m going to leave it there for today, but I welcome further discussion. I’m not particularly interested in attacks on or defenses of Sherwood, Rachel, or the agency in question, though. I’d rather we keep this discussion to the larger issue, because this isn’t about three people; it’s about all of us.
Queering Shakespeare: reflections on damaging tropes, and some positive alternatives September 9, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : links, news , 15commentsThis is a hard post to write. I’m pretty sure I’m going to get it wrong, and I’m sorry about that. I want to say going in that I speak for me, not for others, and that every opinion quoted and linked here is the expressed opinion of an individual. The Outer Alliance is not one person. We’re a widely varied group of people with a large range of opinions. We band together with a set of common goals (to support each other and promote speculative fiction with LGBTQI content), but we don’t always agree on how to handle every situation.
We have yet another controversy rocking the queer specfic community this week. It’s one I have reservations talking about, but I know it’s deeply important to a lot of our membership that the OA addresses it, and I do understand and support that sentiment, so here I am.
Three years ago, Tor published a collection of novellas, which included one by Orson Scott Card. He retold Hamlet. I didn’t hear about it at the time. By then I’d already stopped buying books by Card, or submitting work to his publication, because I knew that our fundamental values were at odds. He’s publicly said many times things that indicate that he doesn’t support LGBTQI rights, and believes a lot of things I find offensive and damaging. Now, my personal response to that has been to ignore him. He has the right to say what he wishes, because we both live in a time and place where freedom of speech is a protected right. I have the right to speak out against him if I choose, but to date I’ve always felt that exercising that right would give his damaging viewpoint more attention, and I didn’t really want to do that.
People talk about honest reviews being good, and I agree. People have said that negative reviews can help boost sales, and I agree with that, too. I’ve bought books before because I read a review that made me sure I’d like them even though the reviewer didn’t. More than anything, reviews give books attention. I wouldn’t have known about this book if it hadn’t been for a review. I’m guessing a lot of other people wouldn’t have either. I worry that the fervor over it will lead to results other than what the protesters would hope. I know that I’m potentially fueling that unwanted attention by adding my voice to the conversation, and that unsettles me.
I’ve said before that it’s important not to attack people personally. I don’t wish to do that, and I won’t be doing that today. I’ve also said that it’s important to speak out against injustice, and important to educate people when we can. It is my hope that I will accomplish these things, and also that this post will serve as a part of an extended open dialogue with the specfic community at large.
Now, the review in question was in response to a reprint of Card’s Hamlet retelling, not the original Tor collection. The standalone novella came out this Spring from Subterranean Press. I was especially dismayed to hear that news, and to hear, in the first cries of outrage, people calling for a boycott of Subterranean. That particular press has often published great books and stories with queer content, and by queer authors. I’ve bought some of them, and always felt good about supporting an open-minded small press with really nice production values. Seriously, if you’ve ever bought a book from them, you’ll know that they use highest quality materials. Their art is usually great, and every time I receive one of their books, I feel a sense of tactile joy, because they understand about texture at Subterranean. Their books are a pleasure to hold.
When this all erupted in a flurry of passionate e-mails on the OA google group, I said that if I boycotted every publisher who ever put out something I found offensive, I’d severely limit my reading choices. Others asked why people hadn’t called for a boycott of Tor. Still others pointed out that this was a troubling reprint because it was specifically chosen by a small press, and we ought to demand to know Bill Schafer’s reasoning. Along with boycotting, demands for various other concessions floated about, but none seemed to unite everyone in agreement.
Then someone pointed out that it was in fact possible that Bill Schafer and others hadn’t realized how and why this story was offensive. People who have the privilege of not being targeted by these damaging tropes are often unaware of them. Indeed, Bill Schafer’s response to the whole thing indicates that this might have been the case for him. He asks for people to share their thoughts, and says that he’s listening. If all of this results in a publisher learning a little more about how and why works he publishes might actively hurt people, then I suppose it’s worth the risk of giving attention to an author I’d rather ignore. Here is a collection of accounts by OA members of their experiences with this particular controversy, followed by some recommendations of queer-positive Shakespeare stories.
Rose Fox summed up the whole sordid saga in a concise and comprehensive manner over on the Genreville blog.
[T]his is the thing about offensiveness grenades: they may look entirely inert for so long that you forget they’re dangerous, but sooner or later, they explode.
On the google group, Rose added the following:
I am really sad and disappointed that Subterranean Press and Tor Books, which publish many books by queer and trans authors and with queer themes, also published a novella that vilifies queer people and equates us with child molesters. I call on those publishers–and on all SF/F publishers, imprints, and magazines both large and small–to refrain from publishing books and stories that vilify any group of people in such a fashion.
Cheryl Morgan said much the same thing to me, and explained why this particular reprint is so upsetting:
There is, I think, a difference between publishing the story as part of a retrospective of Card’s work, which can put it in context, and publishing it has a high-priced collectors’ edition, which suggests it is something special and of extra value.
Elizabeth Schechter posted about her personal reaction on her blog:
To be honest, right now, I’m more at the stage of sputter…sputter… whiskey tango FOXTROT???
And my reaction isn’t because Card wrote this. Anyone who is following along and playing Homophobic Bingo: the Home Game just maxed out their score. This is no surprise.
The surprise is that Subterranean Press published it.
River Willow Fagan posted an extremely brave and heartfelt open letter to Bill Schafer, explaining how and why this kind of thing damages people:
One of the most painful aspects of being a queer survivor has been the doubts: what if all those hateful voices were right? What if I am attracted to men because my father abused me? What if I really am sick, what if my soul really is twisted and broken like all those conservative Christians say?
Sunny Moraine called for people to demand better stories, and posited that small-mindedness leads to bad writing:
I think that it’s important to recognize that art can be really offensive and still have a huge amount of value. But I also think that believing stupid, hateful things – more often than not – makes you a bad artist. As it cripples and stunts your mind and heart and spirit, it cripples and stunts the things that your mind and heart and spirit produce.
Brandon Bell, talking of the demands for more good queer stories, noted:
I’m certainly happy to see queer-themed Shakespearean works at Fantastique Unfettered.
Angela Korra’ti expressed a hope that people would not buy the book now that it has received more attention, and offfered a few alternatives for people who want good queer retellings of old stories:
So to all of you who never knew about this work, I’m a bit sorry to have brought it to your attention, and can only hope you will continue to not only not buy it, but will specifically not buy it because bigotry is not okay. To those of you who already knew about it and elected not to buy it on that basis, I thank you.
To counter its existence, I’d like to commend to your attention the Lethe Press anthology Time Well Bent, in which Catherine Lundoff has a story in which Shakespeare isn’t queer, but his sister Judith is–and so is his friend Kit Marlowe. Hayden Thorne has Arabesque, a dark m/m adaptation of Snow White. And I’ve mentioned this one already, but it’s worth mentioning again in a post whose theme is “adaptations of classic stories”: i.e., Ash by Malinda Lo.
Several people recommended Elizabeth Bear’s Spectrum Award winning Stratford Man duology. Warren Rochelle, one of the judges for the award, shared his thoughts about the books alongside some quotes from the official Spectrum Award writeup:
Ink and Steel and Hell and Earth, the two volumes in Elizabeth Bear’s duology, “were far and away the work most deserving of our award for the year.” I was quite taken by this universe in which Shakespeare and his rival and teacher and sometime lover, Marlowe, move back and forth between the worlds of Elizabethan England and Faerie and even Hell, a universe in which “the worlds of a great writer can shape the world as a form of magic … {Y]ou’ll find yourself believing that this magic of words is more than a fantasy story.” All three worlds are masterfully done and I was more than willing to suspend disbelief. I was caught up in the ongoing crises, crises “that only a handful of individuals, including Shakespeare, can overcome . . . Both Shakespeare and Marlowe . . . must face their own demons, their own mortality, and their own desires if they are find immortality for their own work, and the two kingdoms they come to love.”
And, finally, Hal Duncan offered his own playfully modernized screenplay retelling of As You Like it, free of charge. You can read his explanation of how it came to be, and the first scene in this blog entry, and you can download the whole thing at this site.
That wraps things up for this harrowing monster of a blog post. As I said earlier, I hope that it will be a part of an extended open dialogue. I’d love to hear more from anyone who wants to share their thoughts about this, and I’m especially interested in ideas about how we can use this situation to make our community better and stronger. Please leave a comment here, talk to us on the google group, or email me directly at julia@juliarios.com.
Lambda Guidelines Change Again August 30, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : announcements, links, news , 5commentsBack in 2009, the Lambda Literary Foundation changed their requirements for awards eligibility to include only authors who self-identified as LGBT. This was a pretty divisive decision. At the time, Nicola Griffith, who was on the LLF board, said, “Our explicit mission is to honour and reward openly LGBT writers.” Others voiced concerns that this policy might exclude people who were not comfortable being out publicly, or (worse) result in unwanted outings. Being a part of the LGBTQI spectrum is something which comes with a certain amount of safety concerns. Some of us are lucky enough to live in places where our orientations are acceptable, but others of us face discrimination and violence on a daily basis. Additionally, there were those who felt that this rule excluded a subset of high quality literature with LGBT content, which might be directly relevant to LGBT issues and lives, but written by straight people. Others felt that straight writers were not part of the community and should not be included in awards meant to promote and honor LGBT people.
These issues are still very much alive and kicking in the LGBTQI community, so perhaps it should come as no surprise that in the past couple of days, I have seen people express both excitement and discomfort at the LLF’s new awards guidelines. It seems that Lambda Literary is trying to appease everyone with their proposed change (most awards open to anyone regardless of orientation, some awards limited to particular groups), but their exclusive categories are too exclusive for many members of the LGBTQI community.
In particular there are categories meant for debut novel to be awarded to a lesbian and a gay man, and then mid-career awards for a female-identified person and a male-identified person. By these rules, I (an openly bi-identifed person, who is active in the LGBTQI community) would not be eligible in the debut category, and many of my friends would not be eligible in these special categories because their genders are fluid or non-binary. This is troubling because I’m pretty sure we’re all the sorts of people LLF would like to include, not exclude.
But don’t take my word for it! Have some links to ponder!
Rose Fox (a past Lambda judge) posted an open letter, in which she dissects the wording of the special categories and explains why she finds it troubling. Rose also includes the brief response she received from Dr. Judith Markowitz, which, alas, doesn’t clear matters up much.
Cheryl Morgan posted her thoughts on the matter, and received several interesting comments from previous Lambda winners and judges like Rick Bowes, Roz Kaveney, and Cecilia Tan as well. Do read the comments on that post!
Nicola Griffith (who is no longer a member of the LLF board, but still interested in the LLF’s work) posted a call for, “… a full and frank discussion of these issues. The Lambda Literary Foundation needs to address trans and bi visibility, equality, and accessibility. Or it should bill itself not as an LGBT organisation but LG(bt).” Nicola also points to an example of someone who disagrees with the removal of the self-identified LGBT authors only requirement, in case you’re curious to see what people have to say about that.
Shaun Duke also weighs in on the issue, and we’ll end with his last line: “ When an important award which is supposed to celebrate LGBT issues in literature doesn’t get how its policies discriminate against its own target demographic, then something is seriously wrong…”
Have you got thoughts about this issue? Please feel free to share them in the comments here, or on the OA google group. We do love lively and frank discussion.
Outer Alliance Spotlight #88: Hugos! August 19, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : announcements, events, links, news , 2commentsWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #88. The Spotlight features news about (and sometimes interviews with) allies who are active in supporting and celebrating LGBTQI speculative fiction. This weekend is WorldCon, so we’re focusing on that!
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!
Outer Alliance Spotilight #87: Travel Funds August 5, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : events, links, news , add a commentWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #87. The Spotlight features news about (and sometimes interviews with) allies who are active in supporting and celebrating LGBTQI speculative fiction. This week we’ve got lots of news and notes, with a special focus on funds that get people to faraway events.
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.
Outer Alliance Spotlight #85: Readercon Recap July 22, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : events, links , add a commentWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #85. The Spotlight features news about (and sometimes interviews with) allies who are active in supporting and celebrating LGBTQI speculative fiction. Last weekend was Readercon, and several OA members were there, so that’s our focus.
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?
Outer Alliance Spotlight #83: Diversity is Hard July 8, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : links, news , 2commentsWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #83. The Spotlight features news about (and sometimes interviews with) allies who are active in supporting and celebrating LGBTQI speculative fiction.This week our focus is on diversity. I know, I know, that’s basically our focus every week, but this week we have a few different things to look at.
Let’s start with Cheryl Morgan’s post, Diversity is Hard. Cheryl included a link to a study in which researchers tried different approaches toward discouraging prejudice in their subjects. The result? Subjects who had more education and positive encouragement expressed less prejudice than those who were simply told they shouldn’t be prejudiced. Says Cheryl:
Obviously this is just one study, but it is worth bearing in mind. If you tell people they are doing something wrong, they tend to get defensive, and eventually angry. If you encourage them to do things differently, they are more likely to respond. Makes sense, doesn’t it?
With that in mind, we’re going to take a look at some recent things that have been upsetting people in the specfic community, with a focus on what we can do to make things better, and why we should want to.
First, a problematic poem in Star*Line, the official magazine of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. Mike Allen, former president has left the organization over this, and he’s explained why in great detail. Shweta Narayan has a links roundup.
All of this has been greatly distressing to a number of people, myself included. So what would make it better?
Listening
When someone says they’re hurting, listen. Even if you consider yourself a liberal-minded progressive type of person, especially if you consider yourself a liberal-minded progressive type of person, listen. It’s no fun at all to realize that we’ve hurt people, but when that happens, the best thing to do is to listen, and not to deny the validity of the other party’s feelings. A lot of the discussion about this poem within the SFPA turned to people claiming that the author of the poem and the editor of the magazine were not bad people and didn’t deserve to be attacked. Now, they may well not be bad people; that’s not actually what the poem’s critics were arguing. But by making those assertions, defenders of the author and editor rather derailed the conversation about why the poem itself upset people, and worse, dismissed the very real distress people felt over the poem’s content. When you see someone else hurting because of something you or one of your friends has said or done, try to remember times you’ve been hurt, and think about how you’d like to be treated in that situation. We’re all people, we all want compassion, and we’re the ones who can do something about that. It’s not like a compassion fairy is going to drop out of the sky to spread love and understanding if we don’t.
Apologizing with Sincerity
The SFPA debate isn’t over yet, so I don’t know how Star*Line is going to handle this in the end. One thing they could do is take a leaf out of Strange Horizons’s book, though. A story they published upset some people, and so this week Strange Horizons posted a response with honesty and sincerity. When I spoke with David Levine for Outer Alliance Podcast #8, he said that sometimes you do everything with the best intentions, and you still get it wrong, and when that happens, you have to take your lumps and try to carry on the best you can. That’s what Strange Horizons is doing here. We all make mistakes. No one is immune. Owning up to them and trying to learn from them is about all we can do.
Learning How to Do Better
Finally, we’ve all got to keep trying to do better. I mean all of us. Which is why it’s good to try to find resources to help improve our work, and also to provide those resources for others when we have the time and energy. It’s sometimes really hard to step out of hurt and anger enough to do that, but when we can, we’ve got the opportunity to help other people get it right. Not everyone will get it right, mind. Heck, a lot of people won’t even listen at all. But! And this is the important thing: you never know when someone will see the right resource at the right time and start becoming more awesome because of it.
This week, Dennis Upkins stepped up and offered a resource for people who want to write M/M relationships. Now this resource is not in any way work safe, so make sure you’re cool with seeing lots of half-naked men and, ah, colorful language, before you click through. If you write about men with men and you’re not a man, though, this is definitely worth a read. Now, it’s not the only resource for that kind of thing, and it shouldn’t be your only resource, but it’s a start. If you’re doing something outside of your direct experience, try to get as much perspective from the people you’re writing about as you can. And then it’s a case of lather, rinse, repeat. Do your best, listen, apologize when necessary, and keep trying.
Navigating diversity in this minefield of systematic oppression is hard. Don’t let anyone tell you any differently. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible, or that it isn’t worth doing. What’s in it for us? A better world with more acceptance of diversity, more compassion, and more awesome fiction. For me, those are all things worth vying for.