Outer Alliance Spotlight #49: Celebrating Bisexuality September 24, 2010
Posted by juliarios in : links, news , add a commentWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #49. The Spotlight features news about (and interviews with) allies who are active in supporting and celebrating LGBTQI speculative fiction. Yesterday was Celebrate Bisexuality Day (AKA Bisexual Visibility Day), so this week’s topic is bisexuality.
K.V. Taylor, editor of The Red Penny Papers marked the day by posting about some of the common stereotypes assigned to bisexual characters in fiction. As annoying as these misrepresentations are in fiction, they’re even worse in real life.
Minal Hajratwala, winner of the 2010 Lambda Award for Bisexual Non-Fiction, posted her acceptance speech online, acknowledging the struggles bisexual people (especially immigrants) face, and calling for all of us to work on fostering acceptance through IQ (Intelligent Queerness).
JoSelle Vanderhooft, co-editor of the forthcoming Hellebore and Rue: Tales of Queer Women and Magic, says, “I definitely agree that bi folks are marginalized, and I’ve experienced a little of that myself in the form of a friend who once told me that no, I wasn’t bi, I was a lesbian–and that calling myself bi was basically offensive to gays and lesbians because it wasn’t taking a stand on an identity.”
So where can we find good representations of bi characters in speculative fiction?
Mike Griffiths says his Skinjumper series features a hero who “… could certainly be considered bisexual. … Positive role models are important and Dak is not just a postive role model, he is a rough and tumble hero that doesn’t take flack from anyone, except perhaps his lover.” The Skinjumper series appeared in the first 5 even numbered issues of M-Brane SF, and Mike tells us that M-Brane will also be releasing a Skinjumper later this year.
And of course, I always like to recommend Lauren McLaughlin’s Cycler and (Re)Cycler, which feature a refreshingly stable bisexual boy as one of the main characters. Lauren talked a bit about this in her Spotlight interview last November.
JoSelle points out that there’s still plenty of room to expand and improve on the variety of bi characters in speculative fiction, though. “The only thing that makes me a little sad is that most often bisexual characters are shown hooking up with someone of the opposite sex. I mean, my first relationship was with a guy, but my partner of six years is a woman. I guess doing that might make the bi character ‘too queer’ or something, but I still wish I could see more bisexual diversity on TV, in films and in books.”
What about the rest of you? Do you have any story recommendations for us? Who are your favorite bi characters, and what would you like to see more of?
Outer Alliance Spotlight #48: Bill Tucker September 17, 2010
Posted by juliarios in : events, interviews, queer-friendly publishers, submissions , 1 comment so farWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #48. The Spotlight features news about (and interviews with) allies who are active in supporting and celebrating LGBTQI speculative fiction. This week, our interview guest is Bill Tucker, editor of Rockets, Swords, and Rainbows.
News & Notes
*This week marks the inaugural issue of Stone Telling, the magazine of boundary-crossing speculative poetry. Rose Lemberg has done a great job of seeking diverse voices for this issue. It’s full of excellent work, including some queer content.
*Tomorrow, the 18th, Connie Wilkins (AKA Sacchi Green) will be reading at the Strange Horizons fundraiser reading event at Pandemonium Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I’ll also be there as a member of the audience. Do say hello if you see me (I’ve got blue hair, so I’m hard to miss). If you’re on the other side of the country, there’s another Strange Horizons reading with some West Coast authors in Portland, Oregon on Sunday the 19th.
*Bookview Cafe has just released a charity anthology to benefit Gulf Coast oil spill relief efforts. Breaking Waves is available as an e-book for $4.99, and includes a story by Sandra McDonald.
Interview with Bill Tucker
Bill Tucker works as a civil servant with law enforcement officials by day, and writes and edits speculative fiction by night. He grew up in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, but now lives in Boston, Massachusetts. He’s currently seeking stories for an anthology of LGBTQI science fiction and fantasy. Rockets, Swords, and Rainbows is open to submissions until the 21st of November, and will be published by The Library of Fantasy and Science Fiction (an imprint of The Library of the Living Dead).
Outer Alliance Spotlight #47: Congratulations! (and some changes) September 10, 2010
Posted by juliarios in : announcements, links, news, publications, queer-friendly publishers , add a commentWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #47. Traditionally, the Spotlight has featured an ally who writes, reviews, publishes, or is in some other way involved with LGBTQI speculative fiction. It’s been a year since the Spotlight started, though (I’ve missed a few weeks due to travel and so forth), and it’s time the Spotlight format changed a bit. We’ll still have interviews some weeks, but from now on the Spotlight will also be a news and notes column. There may be more exciting changes in the works, too, but I’m afraid I’m not going to say more about those just yet. For now, let’s get to the news!
First, congratulations to all the Hugo winners! Lots of awesome stuff up there, including plenty of things by LGBTQI friendly people. Congratulations, too, to all the nominees who didn’t end up taking home a rocket ship of their very own. It was a great crowd this year. Special thanks and congratulations to Cheryl Morgan, who provided live coverage of the awards (alongside podcast superstar, Mur Lafferty), and shared the Best Semiprozine win with Neil Clarke and Sean Wallace of Clarkesworld.
Second, Congratulations to Outer Alliance founder, Natania Barron, for a few things! Aside from being in on the groud floor of the new Geek Mom blog, our fearless leader has a story in the new Dark Futures anthology. She’s in great company as the anthology is full of stories by excellent writers, including two who’ve been interviewed here before: Sara Harvey and Michele Lee.
But that’s not all Natania’s been up to! She’s also agreed to take on editorial responsibilities (along with OA member, Jaym Gates) at Crossed Genres starting next year. Bart Leib and K.T. Holt will still be the publishers, but they’re handing over the editorial reins so that they can focus on putting together anthologies, and managing the Science In My Fiction site, which they started last March. The best part? Science In My Fiction will be publishing short stories each month, which means there’s yet another LGBTQI friendly SF market in the world (here are the submissions guidelines). Hurray!
Next is something not speculative fiction related, but noteworthy all the same: the fine folks at Lambda Literary have posted a call for submissions to a Mothers of Trans Children Project. This will be published by Cleis Press and edited by Rachel Pepper, co-author of The Transgender Child: A Handbook for Families and Professionals.
And finally, here’s a thoughtful guest post about bisexuality and gender-bending in paranormal romance by Cecilia Tan on the GLBT Reading blog.
That’s it for this week. If you have any Spotlight-worthy notes, news, links, etc., please let us know in the comments, on the OA google group, or by telling me on Twitter. You can address me directly, or use the Twitter tag #oaspotlight to let me know what’s new. I look forward to hearing from you!
Outer Alliance Spotlight #46: AussieCon 4 and Dragon*Con September 3, 2010
Posted by juliarios in : events, links, news , add a commentWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #46. Each week the Spotlight features an ally who writes, reviews, publishes, or is in some other way involved with LGBTQI speculative fiction. This week, with so many people at two big conventions on different continents, we’re highlighting LGBTQI supportive people and events at both Dragon*Con and AussieCon 4 (this year’s WorldCon).
At AussieCon 4, you might catch up with Sumana Harihareswara, Cheryl Morgan, and Catherynne M. Valente (and there are several other LGBTQI friendly people there, too!).
Sumana offers the following suggestions of panels which may be of interest to Outer Alliance members:
Academic Panel: Fantastic females: reworking feminism in women’s fantasy — Saturday 1630 Room 203
Delia Sherman (mod), Catherynne M Valente, Gail Carriger, Alaya Johnson, Glenda Larke, Tansy Rayner Roberts
Is fantasy the new vanguard of feminist politics in specfic? Fantasy authors discuss the role of gender issues in their work.
The case for a female doctor — Sunday 1200 Room 204
Tansy Rayner Roberts, Carolina Gomez, Kerrie Dougherty, Catherynne M. Valente, Paul Cornell
He’s transformed from an old man into a young one, so why not from a man into a woman? Doctor Who remains one of the most imaginative and open-ended science fiction programmes ever produced, but can the format extend to include a female Doctor? What other elements of the series are necessary? Does he/she have to have a TARDIS? Does there need to be a companion? Must the series be British? An examination of how far you can stretch the world’s most stretchable science fiction series.
The future of gender and sexuality — Sunday 1600 Room 219
Cristina Lasaitis, David D. Levine, Erika Lacey
What does the future hold for our ideas of gender and sexuality? How will we understand these concepts in 10, 50 or even 500 years? How have science fiction texts already predicted our understanding of gender and sexuality in the future – and how accurate do we find those predictions?
AussieCon 4 also marks the launch of Cheryl’s new magazine, Salon Futura! The first issue has just launched, and you can get it here.
On the other side of the world, in Atlanta, Georgia, there’s a bunch more LGBTQI friendly stuff going on at Dragon*Con. If you’re there, you might catch Outer Alliance founder Natania Barron, who just launched the new Geek Mom blog. Look out for Lee Martindale, C.D, Covington and Racheline Maltese, among others.
C.D. and Racheline will both be reading as part of Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading on Saturday at 11:30.
Lee will be on the Beyond Binaries 101 panel on Saturday, and Racheline will be on the Beyond Binaries 201 panel on Sunday (both exploring alternatives to m/f gender pairings in spec fic).
There are several other LGBTQI themed panels on the Dragon*Con program, and Outlantacon is hosting a Rainbow Flag party on Saturday night in the Sheraton Ballroom.
Happy Con Weekend to everyone in Melbourne and Atlanta! And for those of you playing the home game, don’t forget to check out Salon Futura #1!