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 #80: Feminism June 10, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : links, news , 3commentsWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #80. The Spotlight features news about (and sometimes interviews with) allies who are active in supporting and celebrating LGBTQI speculative fiction. This week we’re exploring Feminism.
Cheryl Morgan asks what feminism is, and explores some of the various answers in a thoughtful post on her blog. The comments there are also full of interesting points (like that the wave model is not really ideal, for instance). One of the things that Cheryl brings up is the idea of intersectionality–that feminism shouldn’t be in opposition with anti-racist movements or LGBTQI rights movements. That’s definitely something that most of the OA membership seems to agree with, based on the way people interact on the mailing list. It’s one of the reasons why we try to point out works by and about people of all sorts of genders and racial identities, and not just works by and about gay white men. Not that there’s anything wrong with gay white men, mind you. As a group, we love work by and about them (have I mentioned lately that Hal Duncan writes awesome stories, one of which just won the Spectrum Award for short fiction? I have? Oh, right then). Just, personally, I want to see everyone represented, and I think other OA members do, too.
There’s a long road ahead of us, I’m afraid. Even though there are awesome things like the Tiptree Award (and The Carl Brandon Awards, and the Lammies, and the Spectrum, and…), there are still a lot of people who don’t recognize works that don’t fit into their idea of normality. Which sucks. A lot.
Nicola Griffith points this out over on her blog with a post about The Guardian’s Favourite SF Books list (of which, out of over 500 listed books, 18 are by women–slightly imbalanced?). On the heels of that post, Nicola calls for us to take the Joanna Russ Pledge.
“The single most important thing we (readers, writers, journalists, critics, publishers, editors, etc.) can do is talk about women writers whenever we talk about men. And if we honestly can’t think of women ‘good enough’ to match those men, then we should wonder aloud (or in print) why that is so.”
I’m going to go a step beyond, and say that we should be doing this for people of color and LGBTQI people as well. The way to become visible is to refuse invisibility.
Finally, talking of Joanna Russ, the awesome women of Galactic Suburbia (an Australian feminist SF podcast) are planning to have a big discussion of The Female Man and “When it Changed” in an upcoming episode. I mention this because it’s a great chance to read and listen and contribute to the conversation about feminism and queerness in SF. I’d like to see more open conversation about this spread all over the internet.
That’s it for this week. Next week will bring the June episode of the OA Podcast. In the meantime, please feel free to share your thoughts on feminism, SF, Joanna Russ, intersectionality, and other related topics in the comments here, on the google group, or by e-mailing me at julia@juliarios.com.
Outer Alliance Spotlight #20: Hamish MacDonald February 5, 2010
Posted by juliarios in : interviews , 4commentsWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #20. 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 and bookmaker, Hamish MacDonald.
Hamish has been designing and publishing his own books for a decade, beginning with the Y2K thriller, doubleZero. All of his books feature gay characters, but he’s quick to point out that their sexuality is not the only thing that defines them. “In writing books, I try to create accessible, fun stories that clip along yet deep down ask a fundamental question about some issue we’re facing,” he says. “The homosexuality is always incidental to the story, but it’s something reviewers have singled out and use to describe the books; I think that’s narrow — straightness doesn’t need a warning label, nor is its inclusion taken to be a statement.”
Originally from Canada, Hamish gave in to the desire to live in place where his name would be commonplace, and relocated to Scotland in 2001. He lived in Edinburgh for 9 years, but is currently planning to move up into the highlands. In addition to creating books from scratch, he also passes on instruction and advice for others in his podcast, DIY Book. He keeps a blog on his website, and can be found on Twitter as hamishmacdonald.