Greer Gilman’s Shirley Jackson Award Acceptance Speech
Thu 10 Mar 2016 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Greer Gilman, Shirley Jackson Awards| Posted by: Gavin
On Sunday, July 13, 2014, Greer Gilman received the Shirley Jackson Award for her chapbook Cry Murder! in a Small Voice at Readercon in Boston.
In celebration of the occasion of sending Cry Murder! back to the printer for a third run we are pleased to reprint Greer’s acceptance speech:
Thank you.
Guess I’m scary. Who knew ?
I was monster angry when I wrote this. That — film Anonymous had just come out, and the media was full of its promoters, saying that the glover’s son Shakespeare wasn’t privileged enough to be a writer. Here:
“Whoever Shakespeare was, he wasn’t a little ordinary yeoman . . . I’m quite certain that he was a quite exceptional aristocrat who had to keep totally quiet and needed Shakespeare as cover.”
“A little ordinary yeoman.” My little Haitian dressmaker. My houseboy.
And that? was Vanessa Redgrave of the Workers Revolutionary Party. As my friend Cathy Butler said, “Scratch a socialist, find an extra from Downton Abbey.”
Shirley Jackson would have laughed.
Look around this room, Vanessa. We’re all extraordinary.
All of us write.
The Anonymian cult also believes that writers only write about their own quite exceptional lives. One must be a prince to write Hamlet, a vampire to write Dracula —
Let’s stake that conceit, shall we?
I myself have been a ghost, now and then, a whole pantheon of vengeful goddesses, a murder of crows—and I love that I get to be Ben Jonson, in all his fury, his fatness, and his honesty. I love playing in his world of players, writing poetry and taking names.
Congrats to the Shirley Jackson Award nominees!
Sun 11 May 2014 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Awards, Greer Gilman, Nathan Ballingrud, Shirley Jackson Awards| Posted by: Gavin
Congratulations to all the finalists for the Shirley Jackson Awards, especially to Nathan Ballingrud whose debut collection, North American Lake Monsters, is a nominee in the single author collection category, and to Greer Gilman whose Cry Murder! in a Small Voice, is a nominee in the novelette category.
The awards will be presented on Sunday, July 13, 2014, at Readercon 25, in Burlington (outside Boston), Massachusetts. Kelly was one of the jurors this year, so, as the site says: “Where a conflict of interest arises for a juror, the juror recuses himself/herself from voting for the particular work.”
Come say hello if you’re at Readercon! We will have stacks of these books — and more goodies, of course. And by the end of the week we should have another piece of very exciting news for fans of Greer Gilman!
ETA: Susan Stinson and Bob Flaherty (“My god, Susan! What you have you done to me!”) talk about North American Lake Monsters during their monthly bookswap on WHMP.
Back
Tue 31 Jul 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Clarion West, creepers, Elizabeth Hand, Readercon, Shirley Jackson Awards, travel| Posted by: Gavin
We’re back in the office after 2+ weeks away. Yay! Yesterday we flew back from Seattle: today I feel like the sludge left at the bottom of a cup of cowboy coffee. Did we miss anything? (Yes.)
There is a stack of mail, a box of packages, tons of orders (thank you!), many emails, a few phone messages, a sad lack of telegraphs, one beeping box (a toy!), and a number of deadlines looooming.
Before leaving, we were at Readercon for a couple of days and we owe many thanks to Jedediah Berry and the et al awesome people who ran our table when we left. We were offline the last few days so missed Readercon’s craptacular response to the craptacular behaviour spotlighed by Genevieve Valentine so we just signed Veronica’s petition. (I am not sure if the BoD should stand down, but only because I want to make sure the convention survives. If the Board stands down and new directors are elected [is that how it works?], then that’s great.) But over all, blech. And kudos to Genevieve for posting about her experience. Thank you for helping everyone by doing that.
Also, Elizabeth Hand (“Near Zennor”), Kelly (“The Summer People”), and Maureen F. McHugh (After the Apocalypse) won Shirley Jackson Awards. (And, I have the nominee rock to send to Joan Aiken’s estate’s agent!). Wish we had been there.
After Readercon, we went to Seattle to teach week 5 at Clarion West. This is a heads-up to editors and publishers everywhere*: the 2012 Clarion West class are coming for you! They are in a white hot heat of creation, revision, and submission, and you will be hearing from them soon. Wow, that was a week. The worst part about it was leaving on Saturday. We wanted to stay!
We owe huge thanks to the Clarion West organization for all their work and accommodations. We traveled as a party of four, Kelly, me, our daughter Ursula and Kelly’s mom, Annie (without whom it would not have been possible, so thanks to Annie, too) and the CW people didn’t blink. They put us up, they put up with us, they ferried us around (even acquiring car seats when needed!) to parties and more. Every time I’ve seen Clarion West in operation I’m impressed. (The 2013 instructors have been announced.) Also thanks to Nicole Kimberling (publisher of Blind Eye Books and LCRW food columnist) who visited the Clarion class and Eileen Gunn & John Berry and Greg Bear for wonderful parties. (I grew up reading Greg Bear but was able to speak 2-3 coherent sentences to him without my head exploding. Phew.)
Then we went to Portland (hello Powell’s and Reading Frenzy) and Vancouver (hello Naam!), both of which were lovely (and occasionally terrifying—eek!). While post-Clarion braindead in Vancouver we almost watched a movie in the hotel . . . but it was $15.99. Um. Internet was expensive and so avoided. Do people really pay prices like that?
Travel back was ok except that we would like to unthank the bridge that got stuck in the upright position meaning we had to drive from Vancouver to Seattle instead of take the lovely train. Bad bridge, bad! (Loved the train otherwise.) And: United Airlines has the smallest seats in the world. Boo! Also: on the way out they lost our stroller and we did not get it back for a whole week. Ever really missed something? We missed that stroller! I even tried tweeting United but I got no response. Oh well!
And now we are back in body if not in spirit. Emails will be returned soon-ish.
* I think every Clarion instructor always wants to send out this heads up but since this is the first time I have officially been one of the instructors I am adding my voice to the masses of other instructors.