Reading: Diaspora of the Fantastic: Black Women Writers of SF/F/H

If you're in New York City this Thursday, you may be interested in a reading I'm participating in: Diaspora of the Fantastic: Black Women Writers of SF/F/H. Here's the description:

Join science fiction, fantasy, and horror authors Linda D. Addison, K. Tempest Bradford, N. K. Jemisin, and Alaya Dawn Johnson for a reading and discussion on women of color in speculative fiction.

Far from being indifferent to the genre, people of color are creating and consuming SF literature and media more than ever. Come hear some of the best new and award-winning speculative voices of color writing today.

Date: Thursday, July 30, 2009
Time: 7:00pm - 9:00pm
Location: Bluestockings Books
172 Allen Street (one block south of Houston)
New York, NY

Open Letter to the SF Community re: Ellison/Bradford Incident

To the Speculative Fiction Community:

We at the Carl Brandon Society are writing this open letter to our community regarding the recent incident involving Harlan Ellison and K. Tempest Bradford. Mr. Ellison, mistakenly believing that Ms. Bradford had criticized him on her blog, wrote a post on his discussion board that included the following passage:

She is apparently a Woman of Color (which REALLY makes me want to bee-atch-slap her, being the guy who discovered and encouraged one of the finest writers and Women of Color who ever lived, my friend, the recently-deceased Octavia Estelle Butler). And she plays that card endlessly, which is supposed to exorcise anyone suggesting she is a badmouth ignoramus, or even a NWA. Ooooh, did I say that?

Mr. Ellison has subsequently apologized to Ms. Bradford and she has accepted his apology. We do not wish to address what has now become a private matter between the two. However, since the problematic post was made in public and thus was published in full view of the SF community, the Carl Brandon Society wishes to define some basic principles of discourse which were put into question as a result of this exchange. We hope community members will consider and respect these principles in future debates and disagreements.

These principles are as follows:

1) The use of racial slurs in public discourse is utterly unacceptable, whether as an insult, a provocation, or an attempt at humor. This includes both explicit use of slurs and referencing them via acronyms.

2) Any declaration of a marginalized identity in public is not a fit subject for mockery, contempt, or attack. Stating what, and who, you are is not “card playing.” It is a statement of pride. It is also a statement of fact that often must be made because it has bearing on discussions of race, gender, and social justice.

3) Expressing contempt for ongoing racial and gender discourse is unacceptable. Although particular discussions may become heated or unpleasant, discourse on racism and sexism is an essential part of antiracism and feminist activism and must be respected as such. There is no hard line between discourse and action in activism; contempt of the one too often leads to contempt of the whole.

The Carl Brandon Society assumes in this letter that everyone reading it shares the common goal of racial and gender equity, and general social justice, in all our communities. We hope for a quick end to arguments over whether or not unacceptable forms of debate should be allowable. These arguments obstruct the process of seeking justice for all.

Sincerely,

The Carl Brandon Society

STEERING COMMITTEE
Candra K. Gill
Claire Light
Victor Raymond
Nisi Shawl
Diantha Sprouse

Please feel free to add your signature to this letter in the comments.

POC Short Fiction in Anthologies, Collections and Indie Pubs

With this post I'm all caught up with the short fiction published through July 2009 that I'm aware of. I only separated out anthologies, collections and etc. this time around to make my job a bit easier. Going forward, I'll list all the short fiction in a month together.

Collections

• Tides From The New Worlds by Tobias S. Buckell; Wyrm Publishing
• Returning My Sister's Face: And Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice by Eugie Foster; Norilana Press

Anthologies

• Hooves and the Hovel of Abdel Jameela by Saladin Ahmed in Clockwork Phoenix 2
• Different Day by K. Tempest Bradford in Federations
• Running on Two Legs by Eugie Foster in The Fleas They Carried: Animal Aid Anthology
• Swanwatch by Yoon Ha Lee in Federations
• Like They Always Been Free by Georgina Li in Federations

Other

• Devil's Marionette by Maurice Broaddus (novella); Shroud Publishing

And there we have it. Caught up to July 2009. Now, going forward, if you'd like to alert me of short fiction coming out in an anthology, magazine, or as its own volume, please let me know by filling out this form.

I also encourage any POC who's had short fiction published in 2009 or 2008 to please go to the Carl Brandon Society wiki and add your fiction. We're trying to create a comprehensive list but we'll need help from the community. Also, you don't have to add only your own fiction. If you know an author is POC and read a story b them, check and see if it's on the wiki. If you're an editor, please take part, too.

Omnivoracious Interview with K. Tempest Bradford

Jeff Vandermeer interviewed me for Amazon's Omnivoracious blog to talk about the Clarion West Write-a-thon. The WaT is still going on, by the way. You still have time to sponsor a writer.

Here's a bit from the interview:

Amazon.com: How do you think the SF/fantasy field will be different in a decade?

K. Tempest Bradford: I hope that there will be a lot more writers of color on the shelves. I would be great if the major publishing houses stepped it up a bit in this regard, but I suspect that the trend of de-centralization will make it so that this won't be a pre-condition...It's been said for many years that eBooks will replace paper books "any day now" and yet we've not had this amazing revolution. However, I do think we're really close...though I don't see paper books going away as fast as CDs seem to be. Though the major publishers and editors in the field may not be up to embracing this trend and the implications, SF readers are all too ready to do so. I would love to see authors taking cues from musicians in the way they get their work out there. Of course it won't ever work exactly the same way, but I'm hoping we'll be able to erase some of the old stigmas and prejudices attached to non-mainstream and currently accepted modes of publishing.

January and February Short Fiction

I know I promised this last week, sorry! With this post I'm now done listing short fiction from magazines. My next task is to list short fiction published in anthologies and probably also individually published short fiction. Now that I'm all caught up it won't take me so long to do this each month :)

January

• Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast by Eugie Foster in Interzone

February

• Hell is the Absence of God by Ted Chiang in PodCastle
• The First Time We Met by Maria Deira in Strange Horizons
• Time Out by Lee Gimenez was published by AlienSkin Magazine

As I mentioned, the stories I list here will also go up on the Carl Brandon wiki when I have the time. However, you don't need to wait for me -- add them yourself! If I've missed any 2009 stories by POC, please add them to the wiki.

Also, be sure to check out March/April and May/June/July as I've added new listings.

And finally: we've fixed the issue where individual posts could not be linked to. Thanks to everyone who pointed it out and helped us resolve it!

SF/F Artists of Color

In the midst of recent discussions of Fantasy art, I saw a comment or two about the paucity of people of color depicted on the covers and in the pages of prominent genre magazines. It's true that I often see more white faces than not, and I suspect that the artists themselves are often not POC (though one major exception is Frank Wu, a Hugo award-winning artist of fabulousness).

In order to provide a helpful guide for those interested in expanding their horizons when it comes to art and artists, I invite readers to post links to the portfolios of their favorite POC artists in the comments. It's okay if you want to link to your own work as well! At the end of this week I'll pick some to feature in a post. And, of course, I'll add the names and links to the CBS wiki.

I'll start off by pointing to one of my very favorite artists: Sanjana Baijnath. If you ever visited Fantasy Magazine in the first year after our redesign and saw the fairy girl on the header, you've seen Sanjana's work.

I showed you mine, now show me yours...

Short Fiction on the Wiki

You may or may not be aware that the Carl Brandon Society has a brand new wiki! This makes me particularly happy because I love wikis. I like categorizing and organizing information, and I love that the process can be democratized. There can be a lot of drama around wikis (just look at Wikipedia), but ultimately they're a good thing.

Example: look at the short fiction I'm listing on the blog. It's great to have it here, and hopefully when people search for multicultural or multiethnic fiction they'll find the listings. But a wiki has a further advantage of listing and presenting the information in a straightforward, easy to find way. This page will soon be a complete record of the short fiction published by POC in 2009. It won't be complete just because of me, though. It'll be complete because other people will come along and add any missing information.

Here on the CBS blog I'm only focusing on 2009 short fiction. But over on the wiki there's a page for listing 2008 short fiction. And if someone wants to, they can create 2007, 2006, 2005, etc. pages. Plus, there's a page for listing book-length work and individual author pages.

I very much encourage POC authors to contribute to the wiki. Unlike Wikipedia it's okay for the authors themselves to add their own information. (For now... I think. I did.) I'd love for the wiki to be one of the most comprehensive repositories for information about SF by and about people of color.

March and April Short Fiction

Here’s the data I have on POC short fiction published in magazines in March and April 2009:

March

• Elf Aware by K. Tempest Bradford in PodCastle
• The Time Zenith by Lee Gimenez in Escape Velocity Magazine
• The Wellness Center by Lee Gimenez in Aphelion Magazine
  
• Nira and I by Shweta Narayan in Strange Horizons
• The Unstrung Zither by Yoon Ha Lee in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

April

• Where Virtue Lives by Saladin Ahmed in Beneath Ceaseless Skies
• Four Last Things: A Disruption of Boschtown by Toiya Kristen Finley in Farrago’s Wainscot
• Within Your Soul I Sightless See by Eugie Foster in H.P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror
• The Reign of the Wintergod by Eugie Foster in Pseudopod
• The Photographs by Lee Gimenez in Writing Shift Magazine
• Proxima Centauri by Lee Gimenez in Beyond Centauri Magazine
  
• Jump Space by Mary Anne Mohanraj in Thoughtcrime Experiments

Once again, if I’ve missed some stories, please let me know in the comments or by sending an email to the Gmail address: theangryblackwoman+pocfic. Also check out the list we posted last week as I’ve added some new stories. This week I’ll finish up 2009 magazines and next week I’ll post fiction found in anthologies.

Omnivoracious interview with Minister Faust

Ominvoracious interviews black Canadian science fiction writer Minister Faust:

I was born and have spent my whole life in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. My mother’s family came to Alberta in 1910 when the province was only five years old.

Magazines and Editors Who Want More Diversity in Their Slushpiles

As I continue posting lists of POC short fiction, you may start to notice a trend in the markets you see attached to the stories. The same ones come up more than once while others never appear at all. Sometimes that’s due to the editor/s, but often it’s also due to writers not sending their stories to particular markets.

As a writer I can be a bit picky about which markets I’ll submit to and which I won’t. I have a list in my head of places I feel aren’t worth my time or postage because the editor doesn’t seem interested in fiction with a POC perspective at all. But markets change, editors change (or move on, allowing for new editors), and sometimes editors actually want to publish more POC but just aren’t getting a lot of submissions from them.

Last year I make a list of magazines I knew wanted more diversity and asked editors to let me know if they wanted their markets added to the list. Here it is again (minus those markets that no longer exist):

• Fantasy Magazine
• Sybil’s Garage
• PodCastle
• Asimov’s
• Electric Velocipede
• Clarkesworld Magazine
• Strange Horizons
• Southern Fried Weirdness
• Dog Versus Sandwich
• Ideomancer
• Weird Tales
• Greatest Uncommon Denominator (GUD) Magazine
• Brain Harvest
• Three-lobed Burning Eye
  

Anthologists

• Delia Sherman

Editors, if you want your market or name added to the list, say so in comments.

Hopefully this list will be useful to readers as well. It's not always easy to know which magazines are more likely to have stories written by POC or even including POC characters. This is a good place to start.

First Order of Business: May, June & July Short Fiction

Thanks to the Carl Brandon Society for having me as a guest blogger this month! I’m very excited about contributing and will hopefully institute a few regular features. The first one I’ve already talked about a bit on my other blog, The Angry Black Woman -- each month we're going to list the short fiction that’s been published by POC in magazines and anthologies. Part of the CBS mission is to bring attention to our fiction and I’m happy to facilitate that. Plus, I like having a handy reading list each month of stories I’m likely to be interested in.

Since it’s already July I’m going to spend the month playing catch up. So for today here are all the short stories published by POC in magazines in May, June and July that I know about. Want to be included in this or future lists? Check out the verbiage below the stories.

May 2009

• Change of Life by K. Tempest Bradford -- PodCastle
  
• Élan Vital by K. Tempest Bradford -- Sybil’s Garage No. 6
• Enmity by K. Tempest Bradford -- Electric Velocipede issue #17/18
  
• The Death of Sugar Daddy by Toiya Kristen Finley -- Electric Velocipede issue #17/18
  
• Eating Ritual by Toiya Kristen Finley -- Sybil’s Garage No. 6
• Enzyme by Lee Gimenez -- Ascent Aspirations Magazine
• On Sale Now by Lee Gimenez -- Dark Fire Magazine
• Paper or Plastic by Lee Gimenez -- Sonar 4 Magazine
• Unhistory by Lee Gimenez -- Orion's Child Magazine
  
• The Fourth Horseman by Yoon Ha Lee -- Electric Velocipede issue #17/18
• From the Lost Diary of TreeFrog7 by Nnedi Okorafor -- Clarkesworld Magazine
• Good for the Gander by Don Pizarro -- Fantasy Magazine
  
• Down in the Flood by Nisi Shawl -- Podcastle
  

June 2009

• Another Beautiful Day by Lee Gimenez -- Skive Magazine
• September 12 by Lee Gimenez -- Aphelion Magazine
  
• Shard of Glass by Alaya Dawn Johnson -- PodCastle
• Homecoming by E.C. Myers in A Thousand Faces

July 2009

• Placa del Fuego by Tobias S. Buckell -- Clarkesworld Magazine
• 20% Off Designer Genes by Lee Gimenez -- Static Movement Magazine
  
• A Small Sacrifice by Lee Gimenez -- Morpheus Tales Magazine
  
• Daniel 7 by Lee Gimenez -- M-Brane Magazine
• The United States of Generica by Lee Gimenez
  
• Tough Love by Don Pizarro -- Reflection's Edge

Should your story be on this list? If it was published anytime in 2009, then: yes. Please let me know! I’m also going to add stories to the Carl Brandon wiki and I don’t want to miss any. If you’re a POC author and had a spec fic story published in a magazine or anthology, be it online or print, in 2009, please fill out this form.

Editors are welcome to alert me of stories I missed as well. I hope that editors and authors will give me a heads up every month!

Welcome K. Tempest Bradford, Guest Blogger

The Carl Brandon Society is pleased to announce that writer and artist K. Tempest Bradford will be guest blogging for us for the month of July. She is the founder of the Angry Black Woman blog (where CBS steering committee member Nisi Shawl has been guest blogging). She is also a writer of fiction, a jewelry artist, and a dramatist, amongst many other things. You can find her extended bio at http://tempest.fluidartist.com/about/