Astrogator's Logs

Spending the Gift of a Second Life — the three major characters of “The Wind Harp”, visualized as beautifully as is her wont by Heather D. Oliver. [Click on the image to see larger version.]

—————————————————————————————

Last year, the stars aligned in such a way that during Readercon I was able to announce the partnership with Kate Sullivan of Candlemark & Gleam, who did such a tremendous job of publishing The Other Half of the Sky.

This year, I will have a different announcement to make at Readercon, in addition to proudly displaying the anthology (which, incidentally, just received yet another glowing review). Because of other urgent, immovable commitments, I will be doing only two events. As described in the Readercon program:

Saturday, July 13, 7 pm.

Women’s Bodies, Women’s Power. Athena Andreadis (leader), Alex Dally MacFarlane, Kate Nepveu, Vandana Singh, Sabrina Vourvoulias. In many times and places, cisgender girls and women have been evaluated by their bodies, including their choice of dress, sexual behavior, virginity, and fertility. Juxtaposed with this are the mystification and taboos surrounding menstruation, pregnancy, and menopause. This outlook has migrated wholesale into speculative literature. It’s still standard fare in fantasy for women to lose (or be thought to lose) any extranormal powers they possess when they first have penetrative sex, menstruate, or become pregnant, from André Norton’s Witchworld adepts to Zamia in Saladin Ahmed’s Throne of the Crescent Moon. Athena Andreadis will explore the tropes and assumptions around this issue, including variants applied to trans* and non-binary characters.

Sunday, July 14, 12:30 pm.

Reading: Athena Andreadis. Athena Andreadis. Athena Andreadis reads excerpts from “Planetfall” and “The Wind Harp”.

Which is where my announcement comes in.  “Planetfall” was published in Crossed Genres, reprinted in World SF and Nowa Fantastyka, and will be included in the Apex World SF 4 collection.  And… yesterday I received news that Crossed Genres accepted “The Wind Harp” for their issue themed “Deadlines”.  This is my first pro rate fiction sale; because of that, the magazine will also spotlight me with an interview when the story appears (September 2013).

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 30th, 2013 at 10:55 am and is filed under Biology & Culture, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Writing & Literature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.