and speaking of feminism…

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Athena Andreadis, feminism in science fiction, The Other Half of the Sky

Check this out:

The Other Half of the Sky

“Women may hold up more than half the sky on earth, but it has been different in heaven: science fiction still is very much a preserve of male protagonists, mostly performing by-the-numbers quests.  In The Other Half of the Sky, editor Athena Andreadis offers readers heroes who happen to be women, doing whatever they would do in universes where they’re fully human.

Contributors
Melissa Scott, Alex Jablokov, Nisi Shawl, Sue Lange, Vandana Singh, Joan Slonczewski, Terry Boren, Aliette de Bodard, Ken Liu, Alex Dally MacFarlane, Martha Wells, Kelly Jennings, C. W. Johnson, Cat Rambo, Christine Lucas, Jack McDevitt”

Wiscon connections: Joan Slonczewski is one of this year’s Guests of Honor; Nisi Shawl was the Guest of Honor in 2011; and Alex Dally MacFarlane will be at  the Open Secrets Reading on Saturday May 25th, 2:30–3:45 pm.

Read teasers from the anthology here!

My Wiscon Schedule

Tags

feminism, speculative fiction, speculative poetry, Wiscon 37

Wiscon – the world’s leading feminist Science Fiction Convention – is just around the corner! Held here in Madison, Wisconsin from May 24th – 27th.

Thanks to LaShawn for being organized and posting her schedule, thus reminding me to do the same (I know what I’ll be doing Friday night – I’ll be going to the Oxford Comma Bonfire Reading).

This year I will be participating as a panelist in two discussions and reading from my poetry with a wonderful and talented group. My schedule in short (with descriptions and a list of panelists and poets below):

Sat, 1:00–2:15 pm; When Bodies and Jobs Are the Same; Caucus
Sat, 2:30–3:45 pm; Open Secrets: A Speculative Poetry Reading; Senate B
Mon, 10:00–11:15 am; Passing: Self-Care and Embracing Who You Are; Caucus

Passing: Self-Care and Embracing Who You Are

Type Program Track(s) Power, Privilege, and Oppression (Feminism and Other Social Change Movements) Description In some situations a person can choose to pass (hide their oppressed status); in others a person passes unless they choose to purposely identify their status. And sometimes a person has no ability to pass. When we have a choice, it’s often a difficult one. We’re often encouraged to embrace and disclose who we know ourselves to be, and trying to pass as something we’re not (white, cisgender, etc.) can be a source of great pain. But passing as something we know we’re not is sometimes the only safe way to live. Passing can be a matter of self-preservation. How can we decide whether we’re being self-indulgent or taking good care of ourselves? How can we make these choices with more social consciousness and self-acceptance? Location Caucus Schedule Mon, 10:00–11:15 am Panelists M: Mary Anne Mohanraj. Lisa Bradley, Courtney, Shayla Dunn, Kathrin Koehler

Open Secrets: a Speculative Poetry Reading
Type Reading Track(s) Description Members of the Secret Poetry Cabal (a speculative poetry group) will read their work. Location Senate B Schedule Sat, 2:30–3:45 pm Panelists Lisa Bradley, Amal El-Mohtar, Gwynne Garfinkle, Nancy Hightower, Kathrin Koehler, Shira Lipkin, Alex Dally MacFarlane, Elizabeth R. McClellan, Julia Rios, S. Brackett Robertson, Sofia Samatar

When Bodies and Jobs Are the Same

Type Program Track(s) Power, Privilege, and Oppression (Feminism and Other Social Change Movements) Description Often, we feel that the choices we make about our bodies are individual, but it’s almost impossible to separate the subject from the context. How our looks and physical abilities affect what we can make money at is one aspect of this issue. Fashion models, booth babes, actors, and flight attendants often have strict requirements on their appearance and presentation. Jobs involving manual labor make physical demands. This panel is a place to discuss the ways that living in the kyriarchy affect the choices we can make and why we choose what we choose. The decision to try to pass is qualitatively different from the choice to not try to pass. Location Caucus Schedule Sat, 1:00–2:15 pm Panelists M: Debbie Notkin. Wesley Chu, Courtney, Kathrin Koehler

Vision and Re-Visioning

Tags

Nalo Hopkinson, post-colonial fiction, re-visioning stories, Report from Planet Midnight, So Long Been Dreaming, The Tempest

I have discovered the short stories of Nalo Hopkinson. Wow. Amazing, gripping writing. I had recently read an anthology she co-edited with Uppinder Mehan, So Long Been Dreaming, an anthology of postcolonial science fiction and fantasy – excellent stories, brilliant, go check it out if you haven’t read it yet. A search led me to Report from Planet Midnight, a thin volume from PM Press’s Outspoken Authors series. I was looking for a selection of short stories, as that is what I’m writing and able to process these days (short things, please).

There are two short stories included in Report from Planet Midnight along with the 2009 Guest of Honor speech she gave at the International Conference of the Fantastic in the Arts: “Message in a Bottle” and “Shift”. Both blew me away. The similarities between the two? Intelligent, concise, evocative, and thoroughly engaging stories. Their styles and tone are very different, their plots – different, their main characters – different. Yet both grabbed me and both had me reeling. That’s good writing.

“Shift” is the perfect example of re-visioning – in this case, Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”. I have read and seen many adaptations, re-visions, re-tellings of well-known tales: from John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” to Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s Snow White, Blood Red anthology series. “Shift” went farther than most; it brought with it history ignored by the original, brought a fairy tale into daily contemporary life and interactions.

I have always had a thing for stories that bring the secondary characters to the foreground. Maybe because I have always felt like a secondary or tertiary character, maybe because I have always wondered “but what was that like? what did people do?” when confronted with dull, antiseptic history of dates and battles and wars that totally ignored, you know, people; people living daily life, waking up (where? on what sort of bed? next to how many other people?), eating food (what kind? where did they get it? did they grow it?), thinking and interacting with others, their families and relationships… how were they viewed by society? were they able to love? live? breathe? think? What is war? What is it to be colonized? conquered? displaced?

“She tell me say I must call her Scylla, or Charybdis.

Say it don’t make no matter which, for she could never remember one different from the other, but she know one of them is her real name. She say never mind the name most people know her by; is a name some Englishman give her by scraping a feather quill on paper.

White people magic” (53).

There are some amazing twists in “Shift”; plays on culture, plays on fairy tales and gender roles and sibling rivalries and grandmothers; plays on how we view ourselves and how we fit in to society but what if we don’t fit? The title itself makes me think of sea change, that term coined in “The Tempest” from which it gets its characters. But not a complete change, more an alteration of course. A twist. A more realistic ending than a Happily Ever After, perhaps. Or a shifting of the prevailing winds…

And the writing style and narration don’t “fit” conventional genre pigeonholing and what all the textbooks tell you you should write like; but they do fit. They’re perfect. Ms. Hopkinson has written this transformative, shifting, changling of a story in this brilliant way: second person narration present tense -but wait, there’s more- two point-of-view characters with alternating interwoven texts. Yeah. How cool is that?

“In my mother and father, salt meet with sweet. Milk meet with chocolate. No one could touch her while he was alive and ruler of his lands, but the minute him dead, her family and his get together and exile her to that little island to starve to death. Send her away with two sweet-and-sour, milk chocolate pickney; me in her belly and Caliban at her breast. Is nuh that turn her bitter? When you confine the sea, it don’t stagnate? You put milk to stand, and it nuh curdle?” (63).

The Englishman may have given Sycorax a false name, may have only written from the point of view of the colonizers, but Nalo Hopkinson has re-visioned that story, has brought it into our contemporary world, made it real, has given it history and context; she has given us the point of view of the colonized characters. The “other” characters, the ones who lived on that island first, who had a home and lives before that story the Englishman wrote, the characters with their own stories. A story of Diaspora.
A story of finding one’s self. Of re-shaping oneself, re-telling one’s own narrative from one’s own view point after others have turned you into a secondary character, an “other”.
A tale of magic.

An excellent tale. Because it’s true.

[new content added 9 May, 2013]
I forgot to include some links:

Essay: Dark Ink by Nalo Hopkinson

Interview with Sofia Samatar on Strange Horizons

Article in the LA Times

Following the Story

Tags

creativity, story telling, thoughts, writing

Some writing-related things I pondered today:

I have to follow the story wherever it leads, no matter how far or dark or unexpected or uncharted or difficult the path it takes is, I have to follow the story.

Sometimes I am afraid to follow and so I don’t move much from the little clearing that is the start of the path. I attempt some fitful starts, nervous pacing, walk in circles, or I walk down the paved road. I peer into the distance to see if I can catch a glimpse of where the story would go, to see if I can judge from here how far, how difficult, how exhausting, how winding the path.

From the clearing of my starting point I can’t clearly see the path the story will take and I can’t see where it will end. The distance and any details glimmer in the dappled light and are soon obscured completely.

Any height looks daunting when viewed from the bottom. The trick then, if there is one, is to climb. Gauge and prepare, certainly, but in the end I must climb; I must risk falling to see the breath-taking vistas from atop, just as I must follow the story through tangles of forest and seemingly endless prairie and rain-soaked muddy countryside and over the uncertain footing of scree if I am to write honestly.

To remain safe in the valley is to remain in shadow. To remain in the clearing is to miss out on many adventures, many opportunities for wonder and personal growth. (And a strange sense of deja vu just now.)

this is to have succeeded

Tags

Emerson, success, writing process

I feel good.

I wrote and wrote today and I figured out an ending! I’d written a story earlier this year but knew the ending wasn’t quite right, though it wasn’t clear to me what would have been. (Now I know!)

Had the Wiscon deadline today (well, now it was technically yesterday) nipping at my heels, and while I worked on that story the ending made itself apparent to me. It flowed out my fingers and onto the screen (typo had it “flower” out of me… which I kind of like). I read the story, the ending, and smiled. And typed a couple more words, because I knew then what would really, really tie it together. And it did. It folded itself in while unfurling into possibility – the paradox of a good ending.

Tonight I am a successful writer.

When I feel unsure of my accomplishments I revisit Emerson: “To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch… to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded!”

As an artist-writer who works hard to create a true poem, works hard to craft the good story, those things only I can see and tell and share… this quote of Emerson’s reminds me that I am succeeding, even if I struggle to get there (and who’s to say that isn’t part of it); it reminds me that struggling with my stories (and perhaps myself) and creating beauty and sharing it with others, that these are worthwhile endeavors.

To all gardeners, and parents and grandparents, and appreciators of beauty, to all writers and readers,

thank you.

Sofia Samatar’s “A Stranger in Olondria” is out!

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A Stranger in Olondria, Sofia Samatar

It was waiting for me when I came home from lunch.

Oh what a great day it’s turning out to be: warmer temperature with some sun shine; delicious lunch and good, thoughtful conversation with Sofia, and then finally getting to hold and read her book (read more about Sofia and her book and other writing on her blog); and I had some thoughts on where I can go with my writing for Wiscon’s writing workshop. Hurray!

Gotta go write, but wanted to celebrate and shout out in joy! (Ah, it even smells like new book…. mmm. Nose full of book scent, off I go to write.)

Congratulations, Sofia!

Spring and the fallow mind

Tags

spring, Wiscon, writers' block

I am actually sitting outside right now and not freezing my arse off or risking electrocution. It’s been coooold and wet – wet I can understand, it is spring after all and rain is what spring is all about. But it doesn’t need to be so cold, and I do mean cold as it’s been ten to twenty degrees below normal temperatures and it’s still freezing at night.

But today blue sky is peeking out between the gauzy layer of cloud. Grackles, cardinals, robins, finches, and other birds are chirping wildly in their cacophonous glory. I think the Osterglocken (literally “Easter bells”, or, you know, daffodils) in our front yard will bloom soon! I had no idea we had daffodils. And there’s a few other things I don’t know what they are yet – maybe hyacinth! Mmm, those smell delicious.

Why am I telling you this? Because it’s glorious. Truly. I’m so excited by Spring’s return. As many other animals clearly are as well. Some much more vocal about it that I am.And I’m telling you this because there is nothing to mention on the writing front. I’ve been unable to write well for a couple weeks now. It sounds a bit like I’m telling my doctor about a health problem I’ve been suffering. And in many ways it feels like it, actually. I get so grumpy when I don’t write… when I don’t write well that is, which is to say with a purpose whose fulfillment I’m actively and markedly working on.

I’m not making any progress!!! Waahhhh. Though I think the catnip seeds I’ve sowed have germinated… which is so cool. But it’s not me or my doing. I’m not germinating, damn it! Fallow. I’m lying fallow and Spring and renewal are flourishing all about. Maybe I should stop whining and enjoy the bounty Refill thine vessel.

But I’ve this deadline of this evening for submitting a short story to Wiscon‘s writing workshop, which is a wonderful opportunity to have three or four other speculative writers and a well-published pro critique my work – feedback is huge, people! It is one of the most helpful things. Practice (writewritewrite), of course, readreadread, and get feedback that’s not from your own little head. It’s energizing to get well thought out feedback and criticism. And I’m going to miss getting it (well, this year anyway) on one or two stories I’m working on that could really use the eyes of some intelligent, culturally and socially aware and literate individuals. Especially since there are characters who are PoC and I’ve only purposefully written characters who identify as PoC a handful of times, and none in stories that actually developed into something publishable.

I’ll complain briefly here: my drafts take too damned long to get through, not to mention the rewriting and editing (that’s an eternity within an eternity… okay little strong on the hyperbole); I don’t outline and I don’t feel I can outline without writing the stories to find out where they’re going because in order to think and explore I write and talk, not the other way around….. and I soooooo need to get over myself and this phony-writer syndrome. Because there’s nothing more annoying than listening to someone complain about how they suck and all when a handful of respected individuals who have nothing to gain by complimenting the writer compliment the writer and you know, actually read her work, enjoy it, and publish her. Yeah, I’m that writer right now. Humility is rarely in short supply, if you ask me, but that’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about the self-effacing, keeping-myself-down attitude of self-doubt.

I’m going to transplant some violas and get my hands dirty. Have another cup of coffee, and realize that things are as they are right now, and I’ll figure out later this writing thing and this outlining and writing more effectively or efficiently thing… because right now, life is blooming all around me. Right now the sun is shining and the world is alive!

The news so far on my applications and its effects on me

Tags

Breadloaf, Clarion, Clarion West, Margo Lanagan, Odyssey, Samuel Delany, success, writing process

Now that my breathing has mellowed, my pulse has slowed, and Normal Reality has re-brushed its pale patina upon the world I feel able to share with you the results of my Clarion (x2) applications:

I was not admitted to Clarion West (good bye, Margo Lanagan and Samuel Delany, it was nice wishing to meet you!) BUT I did receive a supportive, encouraging email letting me know that their “readers particularly commended” my story and that I should apply again. Oh, you know I will! I can be stubborn when I want to be.

Then questions of doubt, of “what if I’d sent that other story I like” wriggled into my thoughts and threatened to drown me in worry and self-doubt. I looked at that abyss and walked away (mixing metaphors, I know. Indulge me, I just got rejected). I am proud of that accomplishment, too.

This was a more personalized rejection than last year’s = progress! This means my writing is improving and I’m not wasting my time with delusions of grandeur (or delusions of capability… which for those of us more humble comes to more or less the same thing).

Clarion sent me an email, too. I squeaked and possibly yawped, and woke my partner. I checked to make sure I had not mis-read the email. I checked to make sure it actually originated from Clarion UCSD. Their admissions panel was impressed by my work and “would like to admit” me, HOWEVER there were more qualified applicants than there are spaces and I am on the waiting list.

I’m on the waiting list!!! Oh my goodness oh wow oh wow, oh. … I was overcome. I actually laughed and cried at the same time. Yes, I did. And yes, it is as cathartic and as uncomfortable as you might think. And it felt good. I felt so validated reading that email, it hurt.

Having had a few days to absorb and process that information, to live with it a little and continue the daily routines, I realized I’m not going to Clarion this year (I felt a little defeated, okay, it felt very deflating) BUT I have a reachable goal which previously was only a dream. I have worked hard at bettering my writing and trusting myself and my creativity. And it has worked, paid off, it has proven effective. I’m getting better! I have the ability to affect my chances at attaining something important to me. That’s pretty damned amazing (actually there were more expletives in that thought than I wrote here, but you get the idea – monumental).

I’m still working on my submission to Odyssey, which will be the story that I did not send to Clarion West, which is the second story I sent to Clarion. I’m a bit silly about it, actually. Nervous, doubtful, hopeful, tired, excited… so of course I haven’t sent it yet. That would be… well I did find two minor typos in my Clarion manuscript after I sent it and I’m all paranoid that that had something to do with my being on the wait list… a rabbit hole I do not wish to go down, but still not entirely without merit. So I’m gun shy, okay. I’ll get over it and send the application by the end of this week.

Breadloaf won’t be sending out notification letters until late May. I was informed last year that my application made it to the final round of deliberations… they accept only about 6% of scholarship applicants. I was encouraged by having made it to the final cut.

I need to go drink me some writing.

Oh, I am so silly! I totally meant to write the most important thing last and then, impressed with finding this wonderful quote, forgot! : Thank you, vielen vielen Dank, all of you, for supporting me in my writing in all your wonderful various unique ways. Without friends like you it would have been a much longer, darker, more treacherous road. And there is still so much more to travel.

Now, let’s drink together! Cheers!

Chinua Achebe

Tags

"Things Fall Apart", Chinua Achebe, culture, why art is important

The Root and The Guardian released the joint statement made by writer and Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka and poet and playwright J.P. Clark regarding the death of author Chinua Achebe, their “‘brother’ who was part of the ‘pioneer quartet’ of contemporary Nigerian literature.” The world grieves the loss of so important a writer.

“What I can say is that it was clear to many of us that an indigenous African literary renaissance was overdue,” [Chinua Achebe] wrote. “A major objective was to challenge stereotypes, myths, and the image of ourselves and our continent, and to recast them through stories — prose, poetry, essays, and books for our children. That was my overall goal.”

His novel Things Fall Apart became “a universally acknowledged starting point for postcolonial, indigenous African fiction, the prophetic union of British letters and African oral culture” (msn).

In my first go at college I enrolled in an African Literature course (I was so thrilled and excited at the selection of literature courses offered!) Things Fall Apart was one of the first novels I read by an African author. Others included So Long a Letter by Mariama Bâ and Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi. I still carry these books with me from all those years ago.

Soyinka and Clark “…confidently assert that Chinua lives. His works provide their enduring testimony to the domination of the human spirit over the forces of repression, bigotry, and retrogression.” They also stated the importance that the next generation of writers keep creating, keep writing to ensure “that there is no break in the continuum of the literary vocation.”

Art is necessary. Creation is necessary. We must keep writing. We must support writers from the world over to keep writing, to continue telling their stories. We must listen and hear. This is how we overcome.

I would like to remind everyone that Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History has nine more days of Kickstarter funding to go. They’ve already reached a second stretch goal. As an “anthology of speculative historical fiction revealing the voices of silenced dreamers” it will be a part of “a long and honorable legacy of literary resistance to erasure”.

The dangers of writing at home

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pet photo, the dangers of writing at home, too cute!

I think my cat is trying to tell me something.

My goodness, he’s cute.