Outer Alliance Spotlight #86: OA Podcast #10 July 31, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : interviews, Outer Alliance Podcast , 4commentsWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #86. 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 the tenth Outer Alliance Podcast episode for you!
Ellen Klages joined me at a coffee shop to talk about her work, queer history, and other awesomeness.
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 N. K. Jemisin, Elizabeth Bear, and all the other World Fantasy Award nominees!
Ellen Klages’s Work (and things she’s been involved with):
*The Green Glass Sea and White Sands, Red Menace are novels about kids whose parents worked on the Manhattan Project.
*Portable Childhoods is the short story collection, which contains her two overtly queer stories, “Triangle” and “Time Gypsy”.
*The GLBT Historical Society
*Exploratorium: the museum of science, art and human perception
Some of the Historical Details We Discussed:
*Here’s a photo of the 1956 raid at Hazel’s in San Mateo County (as described in the lesbian time travel revenge story, “Time Gypsy”).
*The Stonewall riots (which Ellen mentioned in passing) were a major turning point in US LGBTQ civil rights history.
*San Francisco Pride, and the Dyke March are awesome reminders of how far we’ve come in the past 50 years.
*pink-triangle.org has some information about the experience of gay people in Nazi Germany. This page does not go into much gruesome detail, but keep in mind that even so, it’s awful stuff.
*Here’s a state by state breakdown of anti-miscegenation laws in the United States.
*Here’s a brief explanation of Loving Vs. Virginia, the Supreme Court Case that marked the end of anti-miscegentation laws in the US in 1967 (not 1970 as Ellen guessed, nor 1968 as I guessed).
Some things that have given me hope lately:
*The first legal same sex marriage in New York–two grandmothers at Niagara Falls, which was all lit up with rainbow colored lights!
*More pictures of couples getting married in New York!
*Lesbian married couple saves 40 people in Norway. I’m in serious awe of these women for doing what they did, and also really happy that we live in a time when they can be married, and it’s okay to report that as one of the facts. No one’s going to arrest them for being married, or loving each other, and it’s not the most important thing about this story at all.
Stuff we’ll be discussing in the next podcast in late August:
*Hal Duncan‘s Spectrum winning story, “The Behold of the Eye”. Read it for free online, buy it in Wilde Stories 2009, or listen to it for free at Podcastle.
*Kim Westwood‘s story, “Nightship”. Buy it in Dreaming Again, or listen to it free at Terra Incognita.
*Peter M. Ball‘s novellas, Horn and Bleed. Buy them in print or e-book format from Twelfth Planet Press, or get the instant dowload e-book versions from Smashwords. Trigger warning! Horn contains graphic sexual violence.
That’s it for this time. If you have feedback, please leave a comment here, tell us on the google group, or e-mail me personally at julia@juliarios.com.
Outer Alliance Spotlight #84: OA Podcast #9 July 14, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : interviews, news, Outer Alliance Podcast , 2commentsWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #84. 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 the ninth Outer Alliance Podcast episode for you!
This month our guest is Kelly Jennings, author of the novel, Broken Slate, which is out now through Crossed Genres. Kelly talks about successful slave revolts, the trials and tribulations of being a socialist and atheist English professor in Arkansas, and lots of other interesting things. After the interview, she reads an excerpt for us, too.
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:
Farewell to Wayne Hergenroder
One of the fan Guests of Honor from this year’s Gaylaxicon (featured here previously in the special OA Mini Podcast) has passed away. He will be much missed. If you have thoughts or memories to share with us, please leave a comment here or on the google group.
Find Kelly Online at her personal blog and at FanSci, the group science fiction and fantasy blog she shares with Barbara Ann Wright and Marilou Goodwin. You can buy Broken Slate in print or e-format through various venues. Crossed Genres has all the details.
Kelly’s Recommended Resources on Slavery
*The Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James
*Bury the Chains by Adam Hochschild
*Slavery by Another Name by Douglas Blackmon
*Born in Slavery: Narratives from the Federal Writers Project 1936-1938 (an online resource)
*Ta-Nehisi Coates’s blog at The Atlantic.
Reminder: Next Month is our Writer and Critic episode!
Do check out the stories we’ll be discussing if you can.
*The Writer & the Critic (in case you want to start listening to one of my favorite podcasts right away).
*I recommended Hal Duncan‘s Spectrum winning story, “The Behold of the Eye”. Read it for free online, buy it in Wilde Stories 2009, or listen to it for free at Podcastle.
*Kirstyn recommended Kim Westwood‘s story, “Nightship”. Buy it in Dreaming Again, or listen to it free at Terra Incognita. I listened to it this month, and really enjoyed Kim Westwood’s reading.
*Ian Recommended Peter M. Ball‘s novellas, Horn and Bleed. Buy them in print or e-book format from Twelfth Planet Press, or get the instant dowload e-book versions from Smashwords. Trigger warning! Horn contains graphic sexual violence. Bleed does not (though it isn’t non-violent, generally), and it explains all the necessary backstory if you want to be up to speed for our discussion, but can’t deal with the other content.
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.
Outer Alliance Spotlight #82: Podcasts July 1, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : links , add a commentWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #82. The Spotlight features news about (and sometimes interviews with) allies who are active in supporting and celebrating LGBTQI speculative fiction. The Outer Alliance Podcast exists to bring you LGBTQIA news and interviews and fiction excerpts, but there are also a lot of other podcasts out there. Some of those others either involve, or may be of interest to OA members, so this week we’re going to take a look at a few of them.
The SF Squeecast is a brand new podcast, which, it seems, has been months in the making. The first episode came out yesterday, but it was recorded back in January. Lynne Thomas (curator of rare books and special collections at Northern Illinois University, and editor of pop culture essay collections like the Hugo nominated Chicks Dig Time Lords) moderates conversations in which Elizabeth Bear, Catherynne Valente, Seanan McGuire, and Paul Cornell get their geeky excitement on about SFnal stuff they’ve enjoyed. The first episode tackles The Middleman, Unstoppable, Yarn by Jon Armstrong, and A Dream of Wessex by Christopher Priest.
The Writer and the Critic is one I’ve mentioned before! It’s one of my favorites, and in addition to being future OA Podcast guests, Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond have another OA connection: the most recent episode features guest reviewer Cat Valente. In this live recording from Continuum 7, they discuss Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King, Among Others by Jo Walton, and Embassytown by China Miéville.
Galactic Suburbia is another Australian podcast. Tansy Rayner Roberts, Alisa Krasnostein (the person behind Twelfth Planet press, which published the two novellas Ian recommended for our August OA podcast episode), and Alex Pierce discuss SF fandom from a feminist perspective. I know I’ve mentioned this one before, but I’m bringing it up again because their next episode is going to be a discussion of Joanna Russ’s The Female Man, How to Suppress Women’s Writing, and “When it Changed”.
Broad Universe has two monthly podcasts. One is authors reading excerpts of their work, and the other is a discussion of a particular theme or writing style. Since June was pride month, both the June episodes of the Broad Universe podcasts had LGBTQ themes. The Broadpod featured excerpts by Kelly Harmon, Jennifer Pelland, Connie Wilkins, Roberta Gregory, and Jessica Freely, while Broadly Speaking had Cecilia Tan, Racheline Maltese, Elissa Malcohn, Catherine Lundoff, and JoSelle Vanderhooft discussing queer SF. Both June episodes were hosted by Trisha Wooldridge. I’ll be hosting July’s Broadly Speaking discussion on the theme of writing humor, too, so look for that at the end of this month.
Podcastle and Escape Pod are weekly audio fiction podcasts, which have featured stories by several OA members like Amal El-Mohtar and N. K. Jemisin (who just won the Locus Award for Best First Novel!).
That’s it for now, but please do tell us about podcasts you like to listen to in the comments here, or on the google group!
Outer Alliance Spotlight #81: OA Podcast #8 June 22, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : announcements, interviews, links, news, Outer Alliance Podcast , 1 comment so farWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #81. 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 the eighth Outer Alliance Podcast episode for you!
This month we have tons of news and two interview guests. David Levine talks about a few of his many short stories, and Dennis Upkins talks about his debut YA novel, Hollowstone.
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
On the Amina Arraf and Paula Brooks Hoaxes:
*The OA post I made about this last week: Are All Gay Girls Secretly Men?
*Liz Henry at BlogHer: Warnings and Question about Paula Brooks.
*Ben Rosenbaumguest posting on Liz Henry’s personal blog about when it’s okay to pretend to be someone else, and why it’s not when it’s not.
*Liz Henry on her own blog: Notes on Sockpuppetry and Astroturfing (explaining some internet jargon related to hoaxes, and the mechanics of how people perpetrate hoaxes.
*Daniel Nassar at Gay Middle East: The Impact of Audacity: The Amina Story and its Effect on the LGBT People of Syria and (with Sami Hamwi) From Damascus With Love: Blogging in a Totalitarian State.
*Britta Froelicher at The Washington Post: Britta Froelicher, wife of ‘A Gay Girl in Damascus,’ caught in her husband’s ‘hurricane’.
And because it bears repeating in writing: Trans women are not pretending to be women. Trans and genderqueer/questioning people who do not feel safe revealing their identities and need a pseudonymous online identity in which to explore that are not the people who are doing damage here. There’s a giant difference between that sort of thing and the Amina and Paula hoaxes. I think Ben Rosenbaum’s post above does a good job of exploring when and why pretending to be someone you’re not is harmful, so that’s a great place to start if you aren’t sure.
On Feminism and Gender Bias in SF:
*The OA post from a couple of weeks ago: Outer Alliance Spotlight #80: Feminism.
*The SF Signal interview (and large comments thread): MIND MELD: What’s The Importance of ‘The Russ Pledge’ For Science Fiction Today?
*Athena Andreadis voices her frustration: Why I Won’t Be Taking the Joanna Russ Pledge. (Note the comments. I was glad to see Nicola stopping in, and I particularly liked what JGStewart had to say–I feel that’s one of the great reasons for promoting things like the Joanna Russ pledge. You just never know when a basic step like that will reach a particular person and lead to more openness and consideration.)
*Ann Leckie on editorial bias in seven parts! This is a really great in depth look at bias, building on the things she said at WisCon on the editorial bias panel: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
Congratulations to Sacchi Green for winning a Goldie!
On The Writer & the Critic/OA Crossover Episode:
*The Writer & the Critic (in case you want to start listening to one of my favorite podcasts right away).
*I recommended Hal Duncan‘s Spectrum winning story, “The Behold of the Eye”. Read it for free online, buy it in Wilde Stories 2009, or listen to it for free at Podcastle.
*Kirstyn recommended Kim Westwood‘s story, “Nightship”. Buy it in Dreaming Again, or listen to it free at Terra Incognita.
*Ian Recommended Peter M. Ball‘s novellas, Horn and Bleed. Buy them in print or e-book format from Twlefth Planet Press, or get the instant dowload e-book versions from Smashwords.
Warning for anyone who has trigger issues with sexual violence: Horn does contain some graphic rape, which triggered me. I did like the story and find it worth reading, but I would have probably done a bit better if I had known going in that I was going to be reading about graphic rape. It’s not victim-blamey, and it is very much intrinsic to the plot, but you know, it’s still violent and awful because rape is violent and awful. “Nightship” also deals with sexual violence, but it maintains a distance that left me feeling okay. You may have different safe zones and boundaries than I do, though, so I thought I’d mention both. I still recommend these stories to anyone who feels up to reading them before our August episode. I just wanted to give any unsuspecting survivors a heads up about the potential triggers.
On David Levine:
*“At the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting of Uncle Teco’s Homebrew Gravitics Club” — Subverting the sexy blonde stereotype character. Free online!
*”Second Chance” and many other free online stories are linked from David’s bibliography page.
*The 100th issue of Realms of Fantasy contains David’s lesbian plumber story, “Tides of the Heart”. Buy it in print or in digital format.
*David’s short story collection, Space Magic, is available through Wheatland Press.
*David’s Mars Journal chronicling his experience at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah. Available together with the journals of David’s other Mars research team members as a book, The Mars Diaries.
On Dennis Upkins:
*Denny’s website, where he blogs all about Hollowstone.
*Hollowstone as an e-book at Parker Publishing.
*Hollowstone in print at Amazon.
*Lee Thompson Young is Denny’s top pick for actors who might play Hollowstone’s main character, Noah, on the big screen.
*Denny is also on LiveJournal as Neo_Prodigy.
Okay, that wraps this monster episode up! If you have feedback, please leave a comment, or e-mail me at julia@juliarios.com. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Outer Alliance Spotlight #79: OA Podcast #7 May 27, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : events, interviews, news, Outer Alliance Podcast , 6commentsWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #79. 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 the seventh Outer Alliance Podcast episode for you!
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.
Outer Alliance Spotlight #78: Jon Wilson May 23, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : interviews , 1 comment so farWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #78. The Spotlight features news about (and sometimes interviews with) allies who are active in supporting and celebrating LGBTQI speculative fiction. This week we’re going to have two because that’s just how things worked out. First, for your Monday reading pleasure, an interview with Jon Wilson, author of The Obsidian Man.
Jon is a gay writer with two novels in two different genres under his belt. The Obsidian Man, his latest, is a YA fantasy, while his earlier work, A Hundred Little Lies is a romance/western. Jon recently started a blog, and he’s also active on GoodReads, where his publisher is holding a giveaway for The Obsidian Man this month.
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Outer Alliance Spotlight #76: Two Submissions Calls May 13, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : announcements, queer-friendly publishers, submissions , add a commentWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #76. The Spotlight features news about (and sometimes interviews with) allies who are active in supporting and celebrating LGBTQI speculative fiction. This weekend is Outlantacon/Gaylaxicon, so a light blogging week, but we’ve still got a couple of submissions calls to share.
Crossed Genres is accepting submissions for a new anthology. Fat Girl in a Strange Land will be a science fiction and fantasy anthology with fat female protagonists. According to the guidelines, “Fat can’t just be a passing detail of the main character’s physical description. It should have an impact on the plot and character development. Just like in real life, fat should be an asset or a liability, or even more realistically, both over time.” And, of course, queer content is always welcome at Crossed Genres.
JoSelle Vanderhooft is now reading submissions for Femmes Fatales, a noir lesbian mystery erotica anthology. This will be published by Lethe Press in 2012, and while it is not strictly SF, speculative fiction is open for consideration .
Outer Alliance Spotlight #75: Remembering Joanna Russ and Congratulating Several Others May 6, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : announcements, events, news, Uncategorized , add a commentWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #75. The Spotlight features news about (and sometimes interviews with) allies who are active in supporting and celebrating LGBTQI speculative fiction. This week we have a few news items for you.
This Sunday there will be a memorial Twitter chat in honor of Joanna Russ. To participate, just log into Twitter at 1400 (2pm) Eastern Daylight Time on the 8th of May, and follow the #FeministSF hashtag. Several OA members and other people who are interested in feminism and speculative work will be talking informally about Russ and other pertinent subjects.
Congratulations to OA founder Natania Barron, who became an associate member of SFWA this week! You can read recent story “Without a Light” in the first issue Fantastique Unfettered (which is open for submissions for issue #3 right now).
Sunny Moraine has a new short story in Strange Horizons this week. “The Thick Night” is story both dark and hopeful with an interesting F/F relationship.
Congratulations to Katharine Beutner, who won the Publishing Triangle Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction for her novel Alcestis! Here’s a writeup of that awards ceremony from Lambda Literary.
Next week is Outlantacon/Gaylaxicon! Several OA members will be attending this convention, which exists to celebrate queer speculative fiction, gaming, media, and fans. JoSelle Vanderhooft and Catherine Lundoff will be hosting a launch party for the print version of Hellebore and Rue. Steve Berman and JoSelle will be reading selections from the book, and we’re tentatively planning to have that serve as an OA meetup, too, so if you’re in that area, come hang out and talk awesome queer fiction with us!
That’s it for this week. If you’ve got thoughts on any of this, or news of your own, please let us know!
Outer Alliance Spotlight #74: We Say Gay April 29, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : Uncategorized , 1 comment so farWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #74. The Spotlight features news about (and sometimes interviews with) allies who are active in supporting and celebrating LGBTQI speculative fiction. This week we have only two things to share, but both are significant.
First, the sad news:
Joanna Russ has died. After she was admitted into hospice care earlier this week, today we learn that one of the best beloved feminist SF writers has left us. Russ was the author of The Female Man, How to Suppress Women’s Writing, and several other books, both fiction and non-fiction. When I ask people for influences or old favorites, they cite her almost every time. She’ll be much missed.
And now, something a bit more encouraging:
We Say Gay is a website where people can gather to protest Tennessee’s Don’t Say Gay bill (which, as we mentioned last week, would ban any mention of sexual orientation other than heterosexuality in Tennessee primary and middle schools). Mary Robinette Kowal‘s nephew, a Tennessee resident, is one of the group who started the site. The bill is going to vote on the 5th of May, so the time to speak up about it is now. You may sign the online petition even if you are not a Tennessee resident.
If you’ve got thoughts about either of these things, please feel free to share. We’d love to hear them.