Outer Alliance Spotlight #25: Lee Thomas March 12, 2010
Posted by juliarios in : interviews , 2commentsWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #25. 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 horror author, Lee Thomas.
Lee has been writing for as long as he can remember, but only submitting stories for publication since 2001. He won a Stoker Award for his first novel, Stained, and went on to win a Lambda Award for The Dust of Wonderland. Currently his short story collection, In the Closet, Under the Bed, is up for another Stoker.
Lee is gay, and writes horror feautring queer and straight protagonists for adults and young adults under the names Lee Thomas, Thomas Pendleton, and Dallas Reed. He has short fiction forthcoming in Dead Set, Darkness on the Edge, Armageddon Lightshow (Bloodletting Books), and Best Gay Stories 2010 (Lethe Press). Two of Lee’s novellas, The Black Sun Set (Burning Effigy Press) and Focus, co-written with Nate Southard, will also be released this year as standalone books.
In addition to his personal website, Lee maintains a LiveJournal and a Facebook page. He is the chair of the 2011 World Horror Convention, which will take place in his current hometown of Austin, Texas. He lives with one good dog, one good cat, and one evil cat.
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…)
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”.
Linkdump – the inaugural edition September 27, 2009
Posted by zeborah in : links , 1 comment so farGreetings all! Each week I’ll be compiling whatever links people bring to my attention as likely being of general interest to those following the Outer Alliance Blog. The links for the first linkdump are…
Benjamin Solah reviews Tom Cho’s short story collection Look Who’s Morphing.
As part of a series on American women athletes, the Angry Black Woman writes about transgender athletes.
- Benjamin Solah also blogs about the recent media circus surrounding Caster Semenya.
- On the same topic, Chris / M-Brane SF says Do we ask if Michael Phelps is really a human male and not half fish?
Anna Caro writes City of Possibilities as part of New Zealand Speculative Fiction Blogging Week.
The Lambda Literary Foundation has announced changes in its board of trustees and its executive director position. These have coincided with a clarification of the Lambda Literary Award guidelines (see the guidelines at the LLF website).
Coming Out in Middle School in the New York Times explores the trend of gay and bisexual middle-schoolers increasingly being able to come out to friends, family, and adults at school. Benoit Denizet-Lewis talks to students, parents, and educators:
Though many of the parents I spoke to needed a period of adjustment before accepting their children’s announcement that they were gay or bisexual, others offered immediate and unequivocal support. “The biggest difference I’ve seen in the last 10 years isn’t with gay kids — it’s with their families,” says Dan Woog, an openly gay varsity boys’ soccer coach at Staples High School in Westport, Conn., who helped found a gay-straight alliance at his school in 1993. “Many parents just don’t assume anymore that their kids will have a sad, difficult life just because they’re gay.”
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”.
Lambda Literary Foundation and Giovanni's Room Team Up for Read-a-Thon September 2, 2009
Posted by Natania in : announcements, events , add a commentOuter Alliance member Nicola Griffith says:
Just got this. It looks like a great opportunity for queer writers of all stripes and persuasions to meet, drink some free wine, eat some fab free food, chat–and even sell books. Think of it as a mini-festival. I wish I could be there.
Dear LGBT authors:
The Board of Directors of the Lambda Literary Foundation and Ed Hermance, owner of Giovanni’s Room, would like to invite you to read at our first “Read-a-thon”. The event, to be held at 7:30pm on Saturday November 21, 2009, at Giovanni’s Room in Philadelphia, will be a benefit for both the Foundation and the bookstore. We’d like to invite LGBT authors to read from a recent or classic book and answer questions for approximately 15 minutes each. 100% of the proceeds from the event will go to the two beneficiaries. We will be serving donated wine and snacks during the marathon reading. While the foundation and the bookstore can’t offset any expenses authors might incur participating in this benefit, we can possibly arrange housing in local homes. Both the Foundation and Giovanni’s Room will be very grateful for your help in these trying economic times. While this is a fundraising event, we’re hoping it will be a lot of fun for a community of people who treasure our words and writers.
The Lambda Literary Foundation is dedicated to raising the status of openly lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people throughout society by rewarding and promoting excellence among LGBT writers who use their work to explore LGBT lives. The Foundation sponsors the annual Lambda Literary Awards and held its first Writer’s Retreat in 2007.
Giovanni’s Room, located at 12th & Pine in Center City Philadelphia, is the oldest LGBT bookstore in the USA. The store is faced with a financial challenge as their front wall of their historic structure is being replaced. The queer community of Philadelphia, rather than lose their cherished bookstore, is organizing fund-raising events through the fall to ensure the store’s survival.
We hope that we’ve enticed you to participate at this, sure to be wonderful, event. If you would like to read, or have any questions/comments/suggestions, please contact Scott Cranin at scranin@tlavideo.com or 267-765-9840.