If you don’t already know about the issues plaguing SFWA at the moment, this is a post you can probably skip, but the short version is: I have recently seen a whole bunch of members of my professional organization behave like assholes all over the internet. To be totally clear: I’m talking about people who hold repugnant, racist, sexist, homophobic views. Not people who stumble sometimes on difficult issues or communicate awkwardly or get blindsided by our own prejudice–those things are true of me, and you, and everyone else. No, I’m talking about people who are actively working to make my professional organization unwelcoming to me. Calling for women to shut up when they’ve been sexually harassed. Calling for less diversity among the membership. I am SO NOT OKAY with this. I’ve been watching a number of people I respect leaving the organization due to this hostile environment. I wish they could stay, because they’re the people I want to associate with in my professional association! But I understand and respect their choice. I am choosing differently. Partly, it’s privilege: I have the energy to keep up with the political discussion, vote, and just plain stick around long enough to […]
Story Day!
Item the first: “Bleaker Collegiate Presents an All-Female Production of Waiting for Godot“ is live at Podcastle today, read by Tatiana Gomberg, who does a wonderful job as the voice of the young, jaded and vulnerable Deirdre. I am so delighted by this. Item the second: Congratulations to all of the Nebula nominees. Many of the works on this list I’ve read and loved, and I’m looking forward to catching up on the others. I see this as a very strong year all round and I’m full of joy at the strength, beauty and relevance of our genre, and awe at the, well, awesomeness of the people I know. Item the third: speaking of beautiful and relevant work, Kelly Rose Pflug-Back has a wonderful story at Strange Horizons right now which you should go and read. Item the third-B: the first comment on that story was a hilarious troll complaining about SH publishing too many lesbian stories. (If you are wondering: yes, all of my SH stories feature lesbian or bisexual protagonists. Viva la revolucion! Although SH has plenty of stories without lesbians, also.) (PS: The fun that was had on Twitter today… well, I found a whole bunch of […]
In which I plan to unleash the Pussy Hurricane
The title for this post came to me from a cherished friend who is one of very few people in my life from whom I’d accept large-scale guidance on the direction of my fiction. She’s earned this right by being the only person to have read absolutely everything I’ve written in the last four years. She’s read a few things in draft which you, the world, haven’t seen yet, since I haven’t sold them yet. She says my fiction really comes to life when I write women protagonists, and she asks me to do more of that (the above-mentioned hurricane). This advice comes at an interesting time for me. When I first started writing seriously, in university, I had a hard time writing believable female characters. Partly due to internalized misogyny: it’s only recently that women’s works have become more included in the cultural canon, and the literary education I received as a kid was pretty heavily weighted in favour of the dominance of men’s works and men’s stories, which in turn influenced how I write. More personally, I’m told I’m a pretty atypical woman in some ways. When I tried to write characters like myself, I’d get feedback that […]