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Outer Alliance Spotlight #47: Congratulations! (and some changes) September 10, 2010

Posted by juliarios in : announcements, links, news, publications, queer-friendly publishers , add a comment

Welcome 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 #37: Lauren P. Burka June 4, 2010

Posted by juliarios in : interviews , 2comments

Welcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #37. 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 Lauren P. Burka, writer and assistant editor at Circlet Press.

Lauren’s fiction debuted in 1992 with the collection, Mate: And More Stories from the Erotic Edge of SF/Fantasy. Since then she’s written several more pieces, both long and short. Most recently Torquere Books released her m/m romance, Wishbone,  and her short story, “Double Edged Bomb” appeared in the collection of erotic superhero stories, Like a Mask Removed. As an editor, she works on single author projects and anthologies such as the transgendered themed Up For Grabs, the BDSM themed Kneel to Me, and the M/M SFF erotica collection, Wired Hard 4. She is currently editing the sequel to Up For Grabs, and writing a cookbook for people with Autism and Asperger’s Syndrome.

Lauren lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near the Circlet Press headquarters. If you’d like to catch up with her in person, she’ll be attending Readercon in July.

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Outer Alliance Spotlight #27: Sumana Harihareswara March 26, 2010

Posted by juliarios in : interviews , 2comments

Welcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #27. 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 Sumana Harihareswara, co-editor of Thoughtcrime Experiments.

Sumana is a straight ally, who is committed to promoting diversity and acceptance in everything she does. She has written for Salon and Bookslut in the past, and currently writes for the Geek Feminism blog. Together with her husband, Leonard Richardson, she edited the anthology Thoughtcrime Experiments in 2009. Thoughtcrime experiments has been longlisted for the British Fantasy Award, and one of the illustrations in it (“Gaia’s Strange Seedlike Brood (homage to Lynn Marguils)” by Patrick Farley)  is on the shortlist for the Ursa Major Awards.

In her non-writing and editing life, Sumana dabbles in all sorts of pursuits from standup comedy to technical project management. She has managed projects for Fog Creek Software, Behavior Design, and Collabora, and one of her former colleagues recognized her as an exemplary woman in technology for Ada Lovelace Day this year. Sumana keeps a personal journal on her website, a fanfiction profile at Archive of Our Own, and a micro journal on identi.ca (also available on Twitter).

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Linkdump #9 – libraries and politics March 23, 2010

Posted by zeborah in : links , add a comment

Fiction and libraries
GLBT Reading (The Blog That Dare Not Speak Its Name) has focused this March on graphic novels and manga.

Shelf Check is a webcomic set in a public library that frequently touches on GLBTQ issues – see for example the strip on ‘transgender’ in the Library of Congress subject headings and a recent blog post asking “As a GLBTQ library patron, I feel welcomed when…” [complete the sentence].

Politics
Got an iPhone? You can now use it to sign a petition to repeal Proposition 8 in California. Sign the petition at http://restoreequality2010.com/ipod.htm or signal boost this article about it.

Benjamin Solah writes about a protest for same-sex marriage in Melbourne.

Kei Kei has created a sourced timeline of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

And of course, remember to Queer the Census!

For more regular linkdumps, please let me know of any interesting links in comments, by email, on 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 far

Greetings 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.

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”.

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