February 7th, 2012 by Cheryl
Further to yesterday’s announcement, Juliet McKenna has posted on her LiveJournal about the book I’ll be publishing for her. To find out more about A Few Further Tales of Einarinn, click here.
Posted in Books, Wizard's Tower | No Comments »
February 6th, 2012 by Cheryl
Well, it is a bit late (UK time) to be sending out a press release, but I did promise you news today so here’s the buzz.
The first book published by Wizard’s Tower this year will be a short fiction collection by the fabulous Juliet E. McKenna. The book, A Few Further Tales of Einarinn, will feature a number of short stories that have either appeared in small press venues or are original to the book. There’s also some rather nice artwork. Initially we’ll be doing ebook only. Full details are available here.
We don’t have a publication date as yet, but we are talking weeks rather than months, and there should be some more exciting Juliet-related news coming soon.
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February 6th, 2012 by Cheryl
One of the things that makes me very happy to be running an ebook store (despite the fact that it still loses money) is that I’m able to promote small presses from distant parts of the world. I’m therefore very pleased today to be welcoming Peggy Bright Books from NSW, Australia. They currently have two books in the store:
In both cases the ebook editions are available for just £2.50. Peggy Bright have also adopted the Book Depository model of offering paper copies for an all-inclusive (“postage free”) price. So I’m actually selling paper books. 
Stay tuned too, as there will be more Wizard’s Tower news coming later today.
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February 6th, 2012 by Cheryl
Here is how the BBC is reporting the state of the Six Nations table after the first weekend’s matches.
Of course it could just be incompetence. How else are they going to explain this (from the same page)?
Couldn’t follow Sam Warburton’s thick Welsh accent, perhaps?
Posted in Journalism, Rugby | No Comments »
February 5th, 2012 by Cheryl
Yesterday I headed up to London for the day, and managed to get back before the snow got heavy. Thanks to someone else being unable to go, I was able to snag a free ticket to a workshop being run by Write Queer London as part of LGBT History Month.
The main thing of interest to me was the historical talk on LGBT people in the 1950s. The obvious lesson from it was that tabloid newspapers have always been scum. Also, people believe the strangest things. Alongside the usual scare stories about the corruption of youth, the tabloids ran “queers under the bed” stories. How can you tell if someone you know might be a secret queer? Some of them look just like humans. It might even be your wife/husband.
The theory was that guys going to the pub together, or women having afternoon tea together, might in fact be having secret homosexual orgies. And this led to a truly wonderful headline: “The vicar drank cups of tea in secret”.
The vicar in question was trying to divorce his wife on suspicion of her being a secret lesbian. The court was told that she called her women friends “darling” and sometimes hugged them and kissed them on the lips. This was highly suspicious. But the vicar’s main beef with his wife appears to be that she nagged him mercilessly about his habit of having tea and biscuits before giving sermons. Apparently she was very High Church and regarded this as deeply inappropriate. So the poor vicar had to drink his tea in secret. Dreadful.
If you are able to get to London in the evening you might like to check out Wednesday’s talk in which Robert Mills will be addressing the issue of “Discipline and Desire in the Medieval Cloister”. That sounds fascinating.
The workshop took place in the Geffrye Museum in London, which I think is in Shoreditch, but Gideon & Jen may take me to task for my lack of understanding of London geography. It is a fascinating place. The museum is built inside a terrace of old alms houses. The interior walls have all partially knocked down, and a corridor opened up along the front of the building. So you walk along with front walls and doors on one side, and a sequence of rooms on the other. Each room is furnished from a different historical period. Much of it is hideous, but some of the earlier furnishings would be quite nice if you could add cushions.
The Geffrye is essentially a museum of middle class life, which makes it very British. Of course most of the visitors will be middle class too, and doubtless most of them disapprove of the majority of the decor in some way, just like I did, that being a very middle class thing to do. I should note, however, that they have a few very retro futurist pieces that were, of course, futurist at the time. This was my favorite piece.
You can read more about it here.
Posted in History, Where's Cheryl? | 1 Comment »
February 3rd, 2012 by Cheryl
My LGBT History Month talk last night went rather well, I though. We had 24 people there, which is much better than any of the Bristol Festival of Literature events we did last year. It was also a very varied group. There were LGBT activists, trans people, political radicals associated with Hydra Books, and BristolCon people. I like doing cross-fertilization.
The audience noted the large number of impressive feminist works coming from Australia. I should note that books by male Australian writers such as Stephen Dedman and Sean Williams also address gender changes.
I promised I’d do a reading list with all of the books I mentioned. Some people on Twitter were asking for a transcript. I didn’t do a recording because I knew that there would likely be trans people in the audience and I don’t want to scare anyone, but I’ve added some notes here regarding why particular books were mentioned.
There are, of course, many more SF&F books that feature trans people. Many of them I know about, and quite a lot I don’t. Feel free to suggest other titles in comments. The list is below the fold. I have linked to my reviews where available and where the review addresses the gender themes. Note that some of these reviews are quite old and I may have changed my view of some of the books. See also this essay which I wrote for ICFA two years ago and which was published in Finnish (I think in Cosmos Pen) last year.
Continue Reading »
Posted in Books, Feminism, Gender | 1 Comment »
February 2nd, 2012 by Cheryl
The new Clarkesworld went online yesterday and as usual is packed with good reading.
The lead story is “And the Hollow Space Inside”, a science fiction tale by Mari Ness. It is available in audio here.
The back-up stories are “A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight” by Xia Jia and “All the Young Kirks and Their Good Intentions” by Helena Bell. The former is translated from the original Chinese by Ken Liu.
Jeremy’s interview subjects are Lev AC Rosen and Lisa L. Hannett.
Jason’s column this month has an article on food in fantasy and science fiction by Matthew Johnson
Neil presents the results of the readers’ poll. Much as I love Julie Dillon, I’m proud to see that the winning cover artist is Bryn Jones who has a Welsh name and lives around here somewhere.
The winning story is “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees” by E. Lily Yu, which had already earned a place on my Hugo ballot, as had the second-place work, “Silently and Very Fast” by Catherynne M. Valente.
This month’s cover is “Pilot” by Alexander Trufanov, which I suspect will do very well in next year’s readers’ poll.
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February 2nd, 2012 by Cheryl
Here’s another reason to be proud of Bristol. The City Council has just chosen a new Lord Mayor, and he’s gay. Peter Main is also chair of LGBT Bristol. He’ll take office in May. Full press release here.
Like many cities, Bristol is currently considering whether to go for an elected mayor. I venture to suggest that this would not have happened had elections been required.
Posted in Current Affairs, Feminism | 3 Comments »
February 1st, 2012 by Cheryl
I’ve been busily reading books with trans characters in them in advance of my talk tomorrow. Thoughts on Samuel Delany’s Triton may follow soon, but in the meantime I have a review of Nightsiders by Sue Isle, the first in the Twelve Planets series from my feminist pals in Australia. I was impressed. Find out why here.
Posted in Books | 2 Comments »
February 1st, 2012 by Cheryl
One of the things that worried me about the talk I’m giving tomorrow is how much education some of the audience might need before I can start to talk about trans characters in books. But now, problem solved, I will just hand out copies of this.
It’s not perfect. Asexual people, in particular, are liable to be spitting furious about being left out. But it is a lot better than having to spend half an hour explaining the issues.
There’s a long discussion of the issues raised in the infographic, and a larger, printable version of the image here.
Posted in Feminism, Gender | 2 Comments »
January 31st, 2012 by Cheryl
If any of you were wondering how you might support the Girl Scouts of Colorado who agreed to admit a young trans girl to their ranks, you can now donate directly thanks to the good folks at TYFA. This link won’t be up for long. In the longer term the Girl Scouts movement wants donations to go into a central anti-bullying fund, not just to one troop, which seems wise. All is explained on the TYFA site.
(And Kim, you rock! Still. )
On a much less happy note, various news feeds today have reported an horrific story of a young trans girl in Germany who is in danger of being committed to a mental health institution because her father disapproves of her identity. Here’s Pink News. And well done Jane for breaking the story.
Posted in Feminism, Gender | 1 Comment »
January 31st, 2012 by Cheryl
With February being LGBT History Month, I’m going to be out and about a bit. Here are some details.
On Thursday I’ll be presenting a talk on “Changing images of trans people in speculative literature” at Hydra Books in Bristol. Hopefully some of you will be able to attend (because right now Eventbrite says that the number of attendees is zero).
On Saturday I’ll be in London for a history-writing workshop. Someone offered me a ticket, so I snapped it up. I should have some free time late afternoon if anyone is about, though I have to be in a conference call from 5:30pm.
On Sunday, if I have any energy left, I’ll be at the History Walk in Bath.
Tuesday next week there is a celebration of lesbian and gay literature at Hydra. I’ll be taking some Hal Duncan poetry and talking about my pals at Lethe Press.
And on Thursday next week I’m hosting a talk by Juliet Jacques, also at Hydra.
That’s enough for now. I’m tired just thinking about it.
Posted in Where's Cheryl? | 3 Comments »
January 31st, 2012 by Cheryl
This is a reminder about the Translation Awards fund raiser. Right now there are 24 prizes on offer, and only 19 people have made donations. So your chances of winning a prize are pretty darn good. There are more prizes waiting to be released as well. It’s worth a small donation. Details here.
Posted in Awards | No Comments »
January 31st, 2012 by Cheryl
Well, CNN might not know where London is, but they do have some interesting stories.
According to this news item, a group of shipwreck hunters operating in the seas between Finland and Sweden have discovered an unusual object on the bottom. It is roughly circular, about 60 metres across, and looks remarkably like the Millennium Falcon.
Weird news experts have already picked up the story. I found it via David Roden who linked to this piece, speculating that the object might be part of R’lyeh.
I, however, have a different theory. It is well known that Finnish and Swedish fans hold an annual convention on an island in the seas between Finland and Sweden. Is it possible that what the shipwreck hunters have discovered is in fact Jukka Halme’s secret undersea base? Inquring minds want to know.
Posted in Fandom, Weird | 6 Comments »
January 31st, 2012 by Cheryl
The Canada air travel thing has been getting a lot of traction around the Internet since I posted yesterday, even reaching the pages of Jezebel. The issue is getting a lot of attention from feminists, because it could so easily be used to target cis women. If you have short hair, don’t wear make-up, and for comfort have decided to travel in jeans, a baggy t-shirt and sneakers, you could, under these regulations, be denied boarding. Airline and security officials should not be given the power to police how people dress.
As far as we know, that isn’t happening, and it seems it would probably be OK for me to travel. However, it is certainly a badly worded regulation that could easily be mis-used, and it is a very real issue for many trans people who are barred from using air travel as a result.
There is, as usual, an online petition. If you are Canadian you might also consider writing to the Minister for Transport:
Hon. Denis Lebel, Ministre des Transports | Minister of Transport
Courriel | E-mail: denis.lebel@parl.gc.ca
Phone: 613-996-6236
Fax: 613-996-6252
Adresse postale (sans timbre) | Mailing Address (postage free) : Hon. Denis Lebel, Chambre des communes/House of Commons, Ottawa ON K1A 0A6