Outer Alliance Spotlight #5: Nicola Griffith October 16, 2009
Posted by juliarios in : events, interviews, publications , 3commentsWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #5. Each Friday the Spotlight features an ally who writes, reviews, publishes, or is in some other way involved with LGBTQI speculative fiction. Our guest this week is author, editor, and Lambda Literary Foundation board member, Nicola Griffith.
Nicola’s first novel, Ammonite, won the Premio Italia, Lambda, and Tiptree awards. She went on to win the Nebula, Spectrum, World Fantasy Award and 5 more Lambdas before joining the Lambda Literary Foundation Board of Trustees in June of 2009. In addition to writing 5 novels, a memoir, and several shorter works, she also co-edited (with Stephen Pagel) the Bending the Landscape series of LGBTQ science fiction, fantasy, and horror anthologies. She keeps a blog at http://asknicola.blogspot.com/.
Originally from the UK, Nicola now lives in Seattle with her partner, Kelley Eskridge, with whom she recently started Sterling Editing (an editing, mentoring, and coaching service for writers). Both Nicola and Kelley will be appearing alongside futuristic heavy metal band, BloodHag, on October 24th at Olympia Washington’s first SciFiFest. (more…)
LACUNA: New historical fiction journal launches October 15, 2009
Posted by mbranesf in : announcements, publications, queer-friendly publishers , add a commentMegan Arkenberg reports the launch of her new historical fiction publication Lacuna. Says Megan in her introduction:
“When I first decided to create a historical fiction magazine, there were three publications listed on Duotrope’s Digest dedicated exclusively to the genre: by the time Lacuna opened to submissions, there were only two. For me, as for many of you who read historical fiction, write it, or both, this is a very sad state of affairs. I created Lacuna in the hope that it could provide some relief for both readers and writers looking for a place to enjoy and create tales of days gone by.
“The lack of historical fiction magazines which lead to the creation of Lacuna has also kept me from narrowing the magazine’s focus to one particular style or theme. The stories are not all literary—though they are beautifully written and meticulously characterized; nor are they all adventure and suspense—though I guarantee you’ll find them hard to put down. The settings run from 19th century Spain to biblical Timnah to the pre-Columbian (or is it?) New World. Some stories have fantasy elements, some are alternate histories, and some aim for precision and historical accuracy.”
Though not specifically focused on queer-oriented fiction, Lacuna is open submissions with queer content.
Outer Alliance Spotlight #4: Lynn Flewelling October 9, 2009
Posted by juliarios in : interviews, publications , add a commentWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #4. Each Friday the Spotlight features an ally who writes, reviews, publishes, or is in some other way involved with LGBTQI speculative fiction. Our guest this week is Lynn Flewelling, author of the Nightrunner series and the Tamir Triad.
Lynn began writing as a child, and got serious about her craft when she was in college. She worked writing advertising copy and as a freelance journalist until she sold her first novel, Luck in the Shadows in 1995. Since then, Lynn has been writing fiction full time. The first three volumes Nightrunner series have recently been optioned for film by C-Squared Pictures, and C-Squared have stated their intentions to preserve the gay relationship between Lynn’s main characters in the film adaptations. The 4th book in the series, Shadows Return, is out now, and the fifth book, The White Road, will be available in May of 2010, just in time for the writing workshop cruise Lynn is leading in the Caribbean.
Although she is in a committed and loving relationship with a man, Lynn is glad to be an ally, and says that she would be very open minded about possible mates if she were (by some disaster) to find herself single again. In addition to supporting LGBTQI rights, Lynn supports women’s rights and human rights. She is particularly interested in the International Campaign for Tibet, and the humanitarian work of Thich Nhat Hahn.
Lynn’s cruise workshop is open for reservations now, and she’ll also be reading at Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego on Saturday the 17th of October, 2009.
Washington domestic partnership law under attack October 6, 2009
Posted by mbranesf in : announcements, links , add a commentPlease visit this page and read Jen’s post about the looming deadline to save the state of Washington’s new domestic partnership law. People who live in Washington (and people who do not) can get active now and make sure that the Referendum 71 vote succeeds. The forces of bigotry and lunacy frequently try to use these off-year referenda and special elections to advance their evil (a similar thing is afoot in Maine). Let’s not let it happen this time.
The passage of Proposition 8 in California last year established a terrible precedent. The forces of bigotry were emboldened because, yes, it turns out that voters will, in fact, vote to take away people’s rights. This is a relatively rare concept in this country. Generally, once civil rights are conferred they are not taken away. But now it’s routine to try to do exactly that.
OCTOBER 11 is COMING OUT DAY! October 5, 2009
Posted by mbranesf in : announcements, events , 2commentsOctober 11 is Coming Out Day. To mark this occasion, we are encouraging members of the Outer Alliance to write and post on their sites some short coming-out stories. These can be personal or fictional, told from your own perspective or through that of a character. Another possibility would be to talk about what it’s like coming out in the speculative fiction community or what kinds of challenges or experiences have resulted from it. Also, it would great for members to link to this site and encourage new people to join the group.
We probably should have been promoting this idea a bit earlier than now, but we managed to come up with the 9/1 Pride Day and its stunning collection of blog posts pretty quickly…so we should be able to do something comparable again. Members who have a post on this day can share the link to it in the Forum (I will add a topic for them) or by way of the Google Group list, and we will gather the links together in a blog post as well, like we did on the Pride Day.
Linkdump #2 – Lambda Awards and Banned Books October 5, 2009
Posted by zeborah in : links, membership , add a commentI don’t have as many links as last week, so instead I’ll point to someone else’s linkdump – elf‘s Lambda Literary Awards linkspam, collecting posts about the controversy around Lambda’s new/clarified guidelines for their awards.
The American Library Association (ALA) celebrated Banned Books Week from 26 September – 3 October this year. Their 2009 list of challenged/banned books (PDF, 8.4MB) includes “And Tango Makes Three”, “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding”, “King & King”, “Girl, Interrupted”, “The Joy of Gay Sex” and “The Lesbian Kama Sutra”, among others. (Speculative fiction books included “The Golden Compass” “The Great Tree of Avalon”, “Brave New World”, and more.) For the curious, past lists of challenged/banned books are also available.
If you come across any links to share for next week’s linkdump, please post them to the Outer Alliance forum or bookmark them on delicious or diigo with tag “outeralliancelinks”.
Outer Alliance Spotlight #3: Maria Lima October 2, 2009
Posted by juliarios in : interviews, publications , add a commentWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #3. Each Friday the Spotlight features an ally who writes, reviews, publishes, or is in some other way involved with LGBTQI speculative fiction. Our guest this week is Maria Lima, author of the Blood Lines series.
Maria was born in Cuba and emigrated to the United States as a child. She began writing fiction eight years ago, and has worked writing non-fiction for over twenty years. Maria identifies as bisexual, and includes various types of queer characters in her stories, so she’s very happy to promote LGBTQI speculative fiction with The Outer Alliance.
When she’s not writing, Maria works for an interactive web agency in the Washington DC area. She also keeps a blog at www.chickwriter.com, and posts to Twitter as chickwriter. Maria’s short story, “The Butler Didn’t Do It” received an Agatha Award nomination in 2004. Pocket Books reprinted her novels Matters of the Blood (originally published in 2007) and Blood Bargain (originally published in 2008) in August and September of 2009, and the third in her Blood Lines series, Blood Kin will be available for the first time on the 27th of October.
Hal Duncan @ BSCreview on the Outer Alliance October 1, 2009
Posted by Natania in : announcements, links, The Outer Alliance , add a commentSince the Outer Alliance came into existence last month, we’ve grown rather large rather fast, and we’ve already seen some surprising controversy and discussion. Outer Alliance member Hal Duncan recently wrote an article for BSCreview entitled “Notes from New Sodom: To the Water Fountains” which contains within a rather remarkable reflection on some of what we’ve been able to achieve in the last month and change. I was particularly taken with his reflections on the FFO issue and its aftermath.
But in place of another fucking FailFail, what we ended up with was not just a host of impassioned but level-headed criticism and statements of support, but tangible positive outcomes, with the rejected ad being displayed on scores of blogs and journals and free advertising space being offered by at least one major site. No shitstorm. No FailFail. This was a Win.
You might well agree; I sincerely hope you do. Or if you disagree, I hope it’s because you’re a bolshie motherfucker yourself, and think that shitstorms are exactly what’s called for in the face of prejudice. That’s fair enough. Still, even amongst those who agree, I’m kind of curious, to be honest, as to how much these sort of issues hit others in the gut and how much this sort of result just gives… a warm glow of affirmation that, yes, we can all be nice to each other and make the world a nicer place.
When I first sent out the call for members for the Outer Alliance, this is exactly the sort of justice I hoped we’d achieve. Did I think it would happen so swiftly and within our first few weeks of being? Well, no. But that it did just brought us together and affirmed that yes, this group is needed and is absolutely essential in the speculative writing community.
Thank you, Hal! And thank you all for being part of the Outer Alliance.