Readercon 2024
Wed 10 Jul 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Benjamin Rosenbaum, Greer Gilman, Jeffrey Ford, Naomi Mitchison, Readercon, Sofia Samatar, Susan Stinson| Posted by: Gavin
I’m looking forward to Readercon this coming weekend. It looks like we will be there from Saturday afternoon to Sunday morning. I am hoping to attend a panel on Naomi Mitchison on Saturday afternoon and then lie around and not do much. A number of Small Beer authors will be there —
Benjamin Rosenbaum
Greer Gilman
Jeffrey Ford
Sofia Samatar
Susan Stinson
— and Kate and Jonathan will have some of their books at the Small Beer/Book Moon table in the dealer’s room.
I am both intrigued to go to a convention for the first time since Boskone 2020 (what a close escape as there was an early superspreader event at another Boston convention that month!) and also nervous about 120-year-old me running out of steam very quickly. Oh well! It will be a lot for everyone.
Quite a few people are down with Covid so we’ll be using our carrageenan nasal sprays, wearing our N95 masks, and cross our fingers that everyone doing the same will keep us all safe.
Top 10 21st-Century Fantasy Novels
Tue 26 Jul 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Sofia Samatar| Posted by: Gavin
Brian Attebury’s new book Fantasy: How It Works comes out from Oxford University Press in October and in the run up to the publication date he wrote up a Top 10 21st-century Fantasy Novels for the Guardian. I’ve read seven books on the list — I should just complete it! — and was very happy to see Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria on the list:
5. A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar (2013)
In this gorgeously written tour of a complex secondary world, Samatar explores ghosts, culture clashes and the effect of written language on a purely oral culture, while also providing engaging characters and a rousing adventure story. The imagined world of the fiction reflects Samatar’s own immersion in multiple cultures as the daughter of a Somali immigrant and a scholar of Arabic literatures with teaching experience in Sudan and Egypt.
Backlist To The Future: Short Story-Style
Fri 22 Jul 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Sarah Pinsker, Sofia Samatar| Posted by: Gavin
Should you be a short story kick this weekend, Book Riot’s SFF Yeah’s podcast has you covered:
Jenn discusses two favorite speculative short story collections.
Tender by Sofia Samatar
Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea by Sarah Pinsker
We are Satellites by Sarah Pinsker
Follow the podcast via RSS here, Apple Podcasts here, Spotify here.
The show can also be found on Stitcher here.
Signed Sofia Samatar Books
Mon 9 May 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Sofia Samatar| Posted by: Gavin
I wasn’t there so I can’t give the 100% accurate count of books or anything, but Sofia Samatar stopped by Book Moon on Saturday and signed copies her books. Use these links to order signed copies: A Stranger in Olondria, Tender, and The Winged Histories.
Her new book, The White Mosque, comes out in October from Catapult
50 of the Best
Fri 20 Aug 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Sofia Samatar| Posted by: Gavin
We’re delighted to see Sofia Samatar’s two Olondria novels included in NPR’s big fun list — how many have you read?
We Asked, You Answered: Your 50 Favorite Sci-Fi And Fantasy Books Of The Past Decade
In Olondria, you can smell the ocean wind coming off the page, soldiers ride birds, angels haunt humans, and written dreams are terribly dangerous. “Have you ever seen something so beautiful that you’d be content to just sit and watch the light around it change for a whole day because every passing moment reveals even more unbearable loveliness and transforms you in ways you can’t articulate?” asks judge Amal El-Mohtar. “You will if you read these books.”
Which reminds me it was also on a big list last year: Time Magazine 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time
“This slowly-unraveling, exquisitely-detailed novel made the poet Sofia Samatar a World Fantasy Award winner and a Nebula Award finalist. It follows Jevick, a young writer who is obsessed with the fantastical, distant world of Olondria, where his father is a merchant. But when Jevick is called there after he inherits the family business, he becomes haunted by a ghost—and is unwittingly pulled into Olondria’s power struggle. The novel unfolds in waves of A Game of Thrones-level twists, all while its fantastical world-building pulls from South Asian, Middle Eastern and African cultures to offer a welcome departure from Eurocentric fantasy.”
Sign up for this Sofia Samatar online event
Mon 11 Jan 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Sofia Samatar| Posted by: Gavin
Sofia Samatar is part of the upcoming Living Writers Series at UC Santa Cruz — also in the series: K. Ming Chan, Lauren Groff, Valeria Luiselli, Tess Taylor and Danusha Laméris, & Tommy Orange.
Samatar will be reading from Tender on Thursday, January 14, via Zoom. The event runs from 8:20 – 9:55 Eastern time and event registration (free) is here.
Weird vitality, crossed by ghosts, monsters, and above all, stories
Wed 16 Dec 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Isabel Yap, Sofia Samatar| Posted by: Gavin
In February we’ll publish Isabel Yap’s debut collection, Never Have I Ever. This week we’re going to post some early reactions from those who’ve had a chance to read an early edition:
“Isabel Yap’s fiction channels the wary energy of meeting places: schools, hospitals, offices, hotels. In her work, the spaces of everyday life brim with weird vitality, crossed by ghosts, monsters, and above all, stories.”
— Sofia Samatar, author of Tender
Pinsker, Samatar, Marks (x3), Brennan, Schoffstall, Crowley
Wed 16 Jan 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal., John Crowley, John Schoffstall, Laurie J. Marks, Sarah Pinsker, Sarah Rees Brennan, Sofia Samatar| Posted by: Gavin
Not to bury the lede, but in November we are going to publish John Crowley’s new collection — his first for a long time — And Go Like This: Stories. The book will be published in hardcover and ebook and in a limited edition. We will contact Kickstarter backers from The Chemical Wedding first about the limited edition then make it generally available.
Ok, so 2019: yeah! One aside: it is amazing to see the news reporting on events they reported on before yet now with added shock and horror: the Russian asset AKA the US President had 5 meetings with his boss Vlad P. and no one knows what was said? Yup. That’s why we’ve been, are, and will continue to be upset with the GOP, Mitch McConnell (good argument for him being a fan of Vlad, too; see 2016-present), and those who keep going along to go along with the Idiot Baby-in-Chief. Hoping 2019 will see the Idiot, McConnell, et al, chucked out and maybe imprisoned. Goals!
Another aside: Hope to see you at the Women’s March this coming Saturday either in my hometown of Northampton (12 p.m., Sheldon Field) or wherever you can march.
In the meantime, in the interests of sanity, good reading, and getting tremendous art out into the world, we are going to publish more fab books!
Besides LCRW (subscribe?) and perhaps an omnibus ebook edition of Laurie J. Marks’s Elemental Logic novels and innumerable reprints and possibly one other reprint, here’s what we know we are publishing this year:
- Jan. 22 — Laurie J. Marks, Fire Logic, Elemental Logic Book 1
— available now, whoopee! - Feb. 19 — Laurie J. Marks, Earth Logic, Elemental Logic Book 2
— about to ship from the printer! - Mar. 19 — Sarah Pinsker, Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea: Stories
— at the printer! - Apr. 9 — Sofia Samatar, Tender: Stories, trade paperback
— about to go to the printer! - Jun. 4 — Laurie J. Marks, Air Logic, Elemental Logic Book 4 . . . !
- Sep. 3 — Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands, trade paperback
— Sarah’s new novel Season of the Witch (The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Book 1) comes out from Scholastic on July 9th. That will be fun! - Oct. 22 — John Schoffstall, Half-Witch, trade paperback — the sleeper book of the year!
- Nov. — John Crowley, And Go Like This: Stories
Cheers!
Carmen Maria Machado Recommends . . .
Fri 4 Jan 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link, Sofia Samatar| Posted by: Gavin
Over on Electric Lit Carmen Maria Machado, or, rather Carmen Maria Machado — yeah! — got 2019 off to a shiny bright start with some lovely lovely things she said about books by Shirley Jackson, Joanna Russ, Gloria Naylor — as well as Sofia Samatar and Kelly:
Stranger Things Happen, Kelly Link
When I was a baby writer, a friend recommended I check out Kelly Link’s stories, and it changed my life. I don’t mean that hyperbolically: if you are a reader who loves my work, you have Kelly Link’s mind-bending, genre-smashing, so-good-you-want-to-die fiction to thank. An entire generation of female fabulists have been profoundly influenced by her, and she was also my gateway drug into some of my other favorite authors: Angela Carter (The Bloody Chamber), Kathryn Davis (Duplex), Shirley Jackson (Haunted of Hill House), and so many others.
Tender Sofia Samatar
2017 might seem like a pretty recent year for a book to have influenced me, but Sofia Samatar has been publishing these stories in magazines for ages, and they haven’t lost an ounce of their magic or eeriness. Samatar is best known for her secondary-world fantasy duology A Stranger in Olondria and The Winged Histories, but this collection of short stories occupies a different, more liminal space. Samatar’s keen and nimble mind, gorgeous sentences, and incredible imagination are on full display here; she balances beauty and horror in a way that thrills and inspires me. If you love Helen Oyeyemi (What is Not Yours is Not Yours), Karen Russell (St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves), or Kij Johnson (At the Mouth of the River of Bees), you need this book. (Bonus: It was published by Small Beer Press, owned by Kelly Link and her husband, Gavin Grant. They publish tons of amazing fiction, much of it by women. Check them out!)
Tender a WFA Finalist!
Thu 26 Jul 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Awards, Sofia Samatar| Posted by: Gavin
I am delighted to see that among all the happy finalists for this year’s World Fantasy Awards is Sofia Samatar’s debut collection Tender.
If you’re curious and would like to read a few of the stories from this wide-ranging collection, here are just a few:
An Account of the Land of Witches
British Fantasy Awards
Fri 6 Jul 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Awards, Sofia Samatar| Posted by: Gavin
I’m delighted to see Sofia Samatar’s collection Tender is one of five very strong finalists for the British Fantasy Award for Best Collection. It is always an honor to have a book in the running for an award, so yay, and thanks British Fantasy Awards for some good news!
Best Collection
· Norse Mythology, by Neil Gaiman (Bloomsbury)
· Strange Weather, by Joe Hill (Gollancz)
· Tanith by Choice, by Tanith Lee (Newcon Press)
· Tender: Stories, by Sofia Samatar (Small Beer Press)
· You Will Grow Into Them, by Malcolm Devlin (Unsung Stories)
Tomorrow: Sofia Samatar AMA
Wed 23 May 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Sofia Samatar| Posted by: Gavin
A Super-Intelligent Infection
Tue 27 Mar 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Abbey Mei Otis, Sofia Samatar| Posted by: Gavin
Sometimes I get great emails:
“After I read this book, I woke up with bumpy, reddish growths along my spine. They burst, releasing marvels: aliens, robots, prefab houses, vinyl, chainlink, styrofoam, star stuff, tales from the edge of eviction, so many new worlds. Alien Virus Love Disaster is a super-intelligent infection. Let Abbey Mei Otis give you some lumps.”
— Sofia Samatar, author of Tender
NPR’s 2017 Great Reads: Tender & The River Bank
Tue 5 Dec 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kij Johnson, NPR, Sofia Samatar| Posted by: Gavin
I’m delighted to see 2 of our 2017 titles on NPR’s endlessly entertaining Book Concierge Guide To 2017’s Great Reads:
Tender: Stories
by Sofia Samatar
Most of the 20 sumptuous tales in Sofia Samatar’s collection Tender take place on Earth – although not always the Earth we might recognize. Sprawling in subject from the supernatural power of names to the loneliness of a half-robot woman, Tender redefines the emotional power and literary heft that speculative fiction can convey. Where Samatar’s acclaimed fantasy novels exist in a strange, dreamlike world, her short stories daringly explore the overlap of familiarity and otherness.
— recommended by Jason Heller, book critic
The River Bank: A Sequel to Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows
by Kij Johnson
A beautiful, pitch-perfect sequel to Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, with characters original to Kij Johnson and spot illustrations by Kathleen Jennings, The River Bank is that species of fan fiction that unfolds new material from a beloved property with hardly a hint of a seam. Meandering with a river’s pace through musings on art, home and the end of summer, The River Bank is a more than worthy successor.
— recommended by Amal El-Mohtar, book critic
Luminous and Compassionate
Wed 18 Oct 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Christopher Rowe, Sofia Samatar, Vandana Singh| Posted by: Gavin
Yoon Ha Lee, author of Ninefox Gambit, just finished reading Vandana Singh’s forthcoming collection Ambiguity Machines and says of it:
“Ranging in scale from the smallest life to far-ranging interplanetary adventures, and drawing upon both science and mythology, Vandana Singh’s stories are luminous and compassionate.”
You can read the title story on Tor.com. I just went over the proofread copy of the book with Vandana and it is such a fun book — if your idea of fun is Vandana’s unique thread of science fiction, which, of course it is! Or will be. Just wait and see, what a book. The book ends with a huge new story, “Requiem” set in Alaska with whales and drilling and global warming and a missing scientist.
Between “Requiem”, Christopher Rowe’s “The Border State” and Sofia Samatar’s “Fallow,” we have had a run of amazing original novellas.
Locus Says:
Mon 14 Aug 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Christopher Rowe, Kij Johnson, Sarah Rees Brennan, Sofia Samatar| Posted by: Gavin
This month’s Locus includes reviews of a four-fingered handful of our books! As well as all the usual good stuff: interviews with John Scalzi and Justina Ireland; reviews by Faren Miller, Gardner Dozois, & more; the Locus Survey results, an SF in Finland report, Kameron Hurley’s column [“Did ‘Being a Writer’ Ever Mean. . . Just Writing?”], reports from the Locus Awards and Readercon; & obits (boo!). [Locus is available from Weightless and they’re having a subscription drive this month and there is a Patreon.]
Four-fingered handful? Hmm. Three books are reviewed by the one and only Gary K. Wolfe. The first is Christopher Rowe’s new collection Telling the Map:
“. . . it is no accident that Christopher Rowe dedicates his first story collection Telling the Map to fellow Kentuckians Terry Bisson and Jack Womack. It’s also no accident that Rowe, on the basis of no more than a couple of dozen stories over nearly 20 years (of which 10 are collected here), managed to gain a reputation as one of the most distinctive voices to emerge from this period. This is not only because he writes with lyricism and great precision of style, but because of his firm geographical grounding, which is reflected in all the stories here (as well as in his title), but is a key factor in several (‘Another Word for Map is Faith’, ‘The Voluntary State’, ‘The Border State’). This isn’t the geography of fake world-building, with all those Forbidden Zones and Misty Mountains, but rather the geography of locals who measure distances between towns in hours rather than miles, and who know which bridges you’ll need to cross to get there. It’s also a world in which agriculture and religion are daily behaviors rather than monolithic institutions. As weird as Tennessee gets in Rowe’s most famous story, ‘The Voluntary State’ (and that is very weird) it’s a Tennessee we can map onto the trails and highways that are there now.
“‘The Voluntary State’ and its longer prequel novella ‘The Border State’ (the latter original to this volume), take up well over half of Telling the Map, and together they portray a nanotech-driven non-urban future unlike any other in contemporary SF.”
Gary goes on to write of Sofia Samatar’s debut collection:
“Tender: Stories includes two excellent new pieces together with 18 reprints, and one of them, “Fallow”, is not only the longest story in the collection, but also her most complex and accomplished SF story to date. On the basis of her award-winning debut novel A Stranger in Olondria and its sequel The Winged Histories, Samatar’s reputation has been mostly that of a fantasist, and her most famous story, ‘‘Selkie Stories Are For Losers’’ (the lead selection here) seemed to confirm that reputation – although once Samatar establishes the parameters of her fantastic worlds, she works out both her plot details and cultural observations with the discipline of a seasoned SF writer and the psychological insight of a poet.”
and Kij Johnson’s forthcoming The River Bank:
“The familiar figures of Mole, Water Rat, Badger, Mouse, and of course Toad are here, but the story opens with two new figures, a young mole lady named Beryl and her companion the Rabbit, an impressionable young woman described by Mouse as ‘‘right flighty,’’ moving into Sunflower Cottage on the River Bank. Beryl is a successful ‘‘Authoress’’ of potboiling adventure novels, and while Johnson has a good time giving us hints of these novels and of Beryl’s own writing process, her real significance is that she is not only one of the first female characters to move into the village, but one of the first who actually has a clear occupation. Both she and Rabbit are welcomed by the locals, although Mole himself seems oddly reticent to have any dealings with her, for reasons that become clear much later. Most of these residents are familiar in their dispositions, although Toad may if anything be a bit darker and more reckless and impulsive than in Grahame. One of the more intriguing aspects of The Wind in the Willows, maybe especially for SF readers, was the satirical manner in which it introduced technology into the world of the animal fable, and Toad’s famous passion for motorcars is here supplanted by an equally voracious and hilarious lust for the new motorcycles, after he sees a messenger riding one. That, of course, leads to the series of disasters – and attempted interventions on the part of Toad’s friends – that make up Johnson’s fast-moving plot. . . . The delicate balance of challenging the assumptions of a beloved classic while retaining the oracular charm of that classic seems almost effortless in Johnson’s hands, but it’s more of an achievement than it might at first seem.”
And then, turning the page, there is Colleen Mondor’s amazing review of Sarah Rees Brennan’s YA novel, In Other Lands — which comes out this Tuesday! The review begins thusly:
“I have rewritten the first paragraph of this review a half-dozen times, trying to find some way to make clear that Sarah Rees Brennan has created a nearly perfect YA fantasy without gushing. I can’t do it. In Other Lands is brilliantly subversive, assuredly smart, and often laugh-out-loud funny. It combines a magic-world school setting with heaps of snark about everything from teen romance to gender roles, educational systems and serious world diplomacy.”
It is pretty great when a book finds its reader!
Frankly Tender
Thu 27 Apr 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Sofia Samatar| Posted by: Gavin
I really enjoyed Brit Mandelo’s use of the word “frank” in their Tor.com review of Sofia Samatar’s Tender: Stories. The word captures something about Sofia’s writing that I haven’t been able to describe. This book is something else:
“I was also impressed with both of the pieces original to this collection. . . . ‘Fallow’ is the second original piece, a novella, and is by far the longest in the collection. It’s also the best novella I’ve read in quite some time. . . . a heady mix of science and grim hard-scrabble religious life in a dystopic and closeknit society. . . . I’d strongly recommend giving the literary, clever, and productive art that Samatar has collected here a read. It’s as good as I’d hoped, and just as smart too.”
This week also saw the book appear on NPR woohoo!, where Jason Heller reviewed it:
“Tender‘s longest story is also a science fiction tale set in the future — and like ‘The Red Thread,’ it toys with the ambiguity between dystopia and utopia. Told from the perspective of a child named Agar Black Hat, who lives in an extraterrestrial colony after cataclysmic climate change and a universal draft have forced a sect of religious pacifists from Earth, the story is a feast of ideas. It’s reminiscent of vintage Ursula K. Le Guin in its combination of social science and hard sci-fi, even as it probes the nature of belonging and belief.
“The book’s beating heart, though, is its title story. ‘Tender’ starts out with a clever play on words — ‘tender’ is used as a noun, as in, one who tends — and employs some tricky unreliable narration and splintered points-of-view. But Samatar’s virtuoso flourishes of form serve a higher purpose: They couch a quietly devastating account of a woman who gave up her life as a career woman and mother to become a cyborg, one who, alone, tends to a radioactive waste facility which she may never leave. While Samatar slowly unspools her character’s reasons for leaving her former life — delivering a primer on the haunting philosophies and damaged psyches of the scientists who gave us nuclear power along the way — ‘Tender’ redefines the emotional power and literary heft that speculative fiction can convey. As does Tender as a whole.”
Manana
Mon 10 Apr 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Juan Martinez, Kij Johnson, Lydia Millet, Sofia Samatar, Ursula K. Le Guin| Posted by: Gavin
We publish Sofia Samatar’s collection Tender: Stories tomorrow. Many, many people are going to be very happy about this.
Also: next week there will be a giveaway for Lydia Millet’s final Dissenters novel, The Bodies of the Ancients, on Goodreads.
The above giveaway is for readers in the USA only due to mailing costs, but: right now readers worldwide can sign up to receive a free advance copy of Christopher Rowe’s forthcoming collection Telling the Map on LibraryThing.
Edelweiss users: this morning we posted Kij Johnson’s The River Bank.
Juan Martinez will be at 2 upcoming literary festivals: in Arkansas on April 29 and much closer to home at the Evanston Literary Festival on May 8,In Celebration of the Short Story with Christine Sneed at .
Did you hear that Ursula K. Le Guin’s Words Are My Matter is a finalist for the Hugo Award? How wonderful! I also really like Ursula’s new publicity photo by Rod Searcey.
A New Story by Sofia Samatar
Mon 3 Apr 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Sofia Samatar| Posted by: Gavin
Out today on The Offing: “An Account of the Land of Witches” a multi-layered story from Sofia Samatar from her collection Tender: Stories, which oh me oh my-oh comes out next week.
What’s Up?
Thu 9 Mar 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Ayize Jama-Everett, Delia Sherman, Kelly Link, Sofia Samatar| Posted by: Gavin
Kelly Link will be reading in Greensboro tonight — check out the picture of her midflow on the UNCG MFA program page! Here’s the info:
The MFA Writing Program at Greensboro and The Greensboro Review will host a fiction reading by Kelly Link on Thursday, March 9th at 7PM in the UNCG Faculty Center on College Avenue. The event is free and open to the public and will be followed by a book signing.
And, hey if you are in that area, don’t miss the upcoming readings with Chris Abani (3/22), David Blair (4/5), and Heather Hartley (4/13).
This weekend I would love to be in San Francisco for FogCon where Ayize Jama-Everett and Delia Sherman are the Guests of Honor — and Iain M. Banks (RIP) is the Honored Ghost — and the theme is “Interstitial Spaces.” I just looked at the programming and it made me want to go, darn it. It will be a weekend of great conversations!
And coming up in two weeks, on Friday 3/24, Sofia Samatar will be on a panel at the Virginia Festival of the Book: “Building (and Breaking) Worlds in Contemporary Science Fiction and Fantasy,” Central JMRL Library, Charlottesville, VA.
AWP 2017, Before
Wed 8 Feb 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Juan Martinez, Karen Joy Fowler, Kelly Link, Sofia Samatar| Posted by: Gavin
We’ve arrived in DC — where democracy is taking a beating, fingers crossed it will survive — and tomorrow the whole AWP shebang begins. Our books are still in transit due to the ice storm that hit the northeast. With luck I’ll be getting them today and by tomorrow there will be a lovely table (110-T, come on by and say hello) full of books all neatly set up and ready for dispersement into the world.
There are approximately four quadrillions readings and parties going on in the next few days. Here are a few Small Beer-related or -adjacent during the conference and then on Saturday at 6 pm we have a reading with Kelly Link & Juan Martinez at Politics and Prose.
Thursday
Signing at the Small Beer Press table: 110-T (on the edge, near Tin House)
10:00am to 10:30am Juan Martinez
10:30am to 11:00am Sofia Samatar
11:00am to 11:30am Kelly Link
| Thursday, February 9, 2017 | |
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1:30 pm to 2:45 pm |
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Marquis Salon 7 & 8, Marriott Marquis, Meeting Level Two |
R205. The Political Woman: Historical Novelists Reimagine and Reclaim Women’s Place in Politics. (Erin Lindsay McCabe, Gina Mulligan , Karen Joy Fowler, Alex Myers, Mary Volmer) While rarely central and often discounted, women have always played a role in politics. In this panel, historical novelists discuss how and why they chose to unearth and reimagine the lost and untold stories of women in politics. What are the risks and rewards of using fiction to place women at the center of political narratives? What liberties are novelists compelled, or unwilling, to take with the historical record? |
4:30 pm to 5:45 pm |
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Ballroom A, Washington Convention Center, Level Three |
R282. Jennifer Egan, Karen Joy Fowler, and Hannah Tinti: A Reading and Conversation, Sponsored by Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau. (Ron Charles, Jennifer Egan, Karen Joy Fowler, Hannah Tinti) This event will bring together three engaging contemporary female writers to read and discuss their craft. Jennifer Egan is the author of five books, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel A Visit From the Goon Squad. Karen Joy Fowler is the author of nine books, including We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award. Hannah Tinti is the author of three books, including The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley, which will be published in 2017. |
| Saturday, February 11, 2017 View Full Schedule | |
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12:00 pm to 1:15 pm |
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Liberty Salon N, O, & P, Marriott Marquis, Meeting Level Four |
S181. Immigrants/Children of Immigrants: A Nontraditional Path to a Writing Career . (Ken Chen , Monica Youn, Marie Myung-Ok Lee, Juan Martinez, Irina Reyn ) Not only do you not have an uncle in publishing or see people from the neighborhood get MFAs, immigrants and children of immigrants are inculcated to opt for “safe,” “secure,” often well-paying jobs; a writing career may seem like an unimaginable luxury or a fantasy. This panel of working writers looks at both psychic and structural issues that add a special challenge for writers from immigrant families. |
4:30 pm to 5:45 pm |
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Marquis Salon 9 & 10, Marriott Marquis, Meeting Level Two |
S271. The Short Story as Laboratory. (Lesley Nneka Arimah, Carmen Maria Machado, Kendra Fortmeyer, Sofia Samatar, Juan Martinez) What does short fiction allow? The form is beloved by science fiction writers, who use it to test out hypothetical futures; what does it offer writers who are doing other kinds of testing, related to emotional transitions, marginality, and migration? Is the short story an inherently border form? This panel considers these questions, the challenge of putting a set of experiments into a collection, and the tension between the laboratory and the completed book. |
Saturday
6 pm
Kelly Link and Juan Martinez
Politics & Prose Bookstore, 5015 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, DC 20008 Get Directions
Kelly Link will read with Juan Martinez (Best Worst American) at the most excellent Politics & Prose Bookstore and Coffeehouse. This event is free to attend with no reservation required. Seating is available on a first come, first served basis. Click here for more information.
We Will Know You By Your Friday Afternoon Executive Orders
Fri 3 Feb 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Juan Martinez, Sofia Samatar, Ursula K. Le Guin| Posted by: Gavin
And will be unimpressed with your chaos, bombast, and moral weakness. That the Democratic Party are not impeaching this President yet is astounding. That the “Republican Party” accept their “President’s” actions: his racist Executive Orders, his racist and lying advisor and press secretary, his not recording his calls to Vladimir Putin, his insulting of allies, his emolument-clause twisting actions show that they are power hungry dogs willing to tear the country to pieces if only they can hold on to power for a moment longer.
Our town was supposed to get 51 refugees this year. There has been so much prepwork done for these 51 people — out of 60,000,000 displaced people. This anti-humanist “government” is a disgrace.
Here’s to the people who have been, are, and will continue to volunteer, march, and fight for actual freedom and the welcoming principles this country has (at least supposedly) espoused.
As well as all that: we publish extremely good books and here are a few spots in the world where they are being enjoyed:
— We published but five books last year and four of them are on the Locus Recommended Reading List. No stories from LCRW, which I’d disagree with, as would be expected of any editor. But I tend to think LCRW is one of the best zines out there and one I consistently read (for), so there’s my 2 cents.
— Over on Tor.com Juan Martinez writes about George Saunders’s CivilWarLand in Bad Decline for “The One Book That Unstuck My Writing”
“I owe so much of my writing life to George Saunders that even this introductory bit is lifted from him, I just realized, even as I started writing it. Because I was going to begin by sharing how often I fantasized about meeting writers I admired, and it’s super common, this fantasy—writers meeting their idols, and then the idol recognizes your genius and you become best buds, and the idol lifts you from whatever dire circumstances you happen to be in, and your life is perfect from then on. I totally wanted to start with that—with confessing how often I thought of meeting Saunders—before I realized why I wanted to start with that.”
— a profile of the indomitable Ursula K. Le Guin by David Larsen in New Zealand’s The Listener:
“Words Are My Matter demonstrates, among other things, the difference between a hectoring sermon and a memorable oration – notably in the text of her instantly viral 2014 speech on freedom, in which she lambasts profit-driven corporate publishing. ‘Books aren’t just commodities; the profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings.'”
Lauren Beukes says:
Thu 2 Feb 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Sofia Samatar| Posted by: Gavin
of Sofia Samatar’s Tender:
“Equal parts brutal and beautiful, flinty, and acrobatic, Samatar’s stories explore lesser known territories of the imagination. The results chime with all the strangeness of dream and the dark-hearted truth of fairytale. I loved it.”
Yay!
Another Whole Paradigm
Tue 17 Jan 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Sofia Samatar| Posted by: Gavin
Every day I wake up in this weird state of disbelief that 62 million people voted for the hatefest of humanity being put forward as the next President and government.
Then an email like this comes in and I think YES! We will make the future we want and need. Today’s thanks go out to adrienne maree brown (co-editor of Octavia’s Brood) and Sofia Samatar for her collection Tender:
“Sofia Samatar’s stories are just so good. Surprising. Suspenseful at an emotional level — I kept finding myself plummeted into an emotion face first, everything built up so steadily, with such subtle and meticulous storytelling. Samatar earns readers’ trust and uses it to take us into unexpected territory, to make us see ourselves in our power, in our messiness. Tender is the right word, so many of these stories touched into the place of gasping, or tears. Each story had me like, “Oh this is my favorite, I must mention this one.” But then I would read the next story which would be Another Whole Paradigm, similar only in that the writing was astonishing, each word so precise. This collection is an exquisite exploration of what otherness and belonging and place and language and love do to us all. It is visionary fiction. Please accept this as my enthusiastic recommendation to let this book have its way with you.”
Reviewers/Booksellers/Bloggers: please check the book out on Edelweiss.
Tender — the secret knowledge post
Wed 11 Jan 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Sofia Samatar| Posted by: Gavin
Yesterday I got a lovely email from David Connerley Nahm author of Ancient Oceans of Central Kentucky who had this to say about Sofia Samatar’s forthcoming debut collection, Tender:
“The stories in Sofia Samatar’s Tender are perfect and profound works of art written with the impossible ease of someone who has unlimited access to the secret knowledge of the exact right order in which words are supposed to go. The stories ring in sympathy with the reader like the favorite stories of childhood or youth or old age: Familiar and strange in the same proportion. These stories give you several new lives to live and with each reading–because you will read all of them several times–you discover new tales and new possibilities hidden within and you are filled endlessly with the pure pleasure of great literature.”
“If a library came alive…
Mon 9 Jan 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Sofia Samatar| Posted by: Gavin
Ben Loory just sent this about Sofia Samatar’s first story collection, Tender, coming in April:
“If a library came alive, and spent ten thousand years walking up and down upon the earth, exploring and dreaming and falling in and out of love, it might write stories like these.”
To which I say, wow! Also: true.
Review copies going out now. Available for download on Edelweiss soon. Watch LibraryThing for more advance copies.
Shipping Going Well
Mon 19 Dec 2016 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Jeffrey Ford, Joan Aiken, John Crowley, Mary Rickert, Sofia Samatar, Ursula K. Le Guin| Posted by: Gavin
At least, it’s going well from here — thank you! It’s busy as all get out but we are up to date to Thursday’s orders and by the end of today will have caught up again — unless there are too many orders to ship, woohoo, bring it! The post office says that US Priority Mail orders will still arrive by Christmas if ordered by 12/21, go for it!
Want some last minute present ideas? (OK, these are all going to be Small Beer books, I think.) Nothing here will stop the howling void of despair and depression taking over all from the electoral shenanigans but they will distract for various amounts of time:
Margaret Atwood selected Ursula K. Le Guin’s Words Are My Matter as one of her favorite books of the year in the Walrus:
It was a pleasure to encounter renowned SF and fantasy writer Ursula K. Le Guin’s book of essays, Words Are My Matter, and to hear her wise, informed, elegant, and occasionally testy voice discussing such joys as the early H.G. Wells classics such as The Time Machine and China Miéville’s Embassytown—which surely owes a debt to Le Guin’s own The Left Hand of Darkness, now out in a sumptuous new Penguin Galaxy edition.
And Nora Jemisin recommended the book in the New York Times Book Review. Also: there was an Ursula K. Le Guin symposium at the University of Oregon.
Sit back (or go jog, or shovel some snow) and listen to David Naimon and Sofia Samatar chat about The Winged Histories on the Between the Covers podcast. The Winged Histories was chosen as one of the best books of the year by NPR — yay!
The Valley Advocate ran a 3-page spread on John Crowley’s The Chemical Wedding which included interviews with Crowley, illustrator Theo Fadel, and designer Jacob McMurrary. The paper edition had many illustrations. Meanwhile the book was reviewed on Tor.com.
See the Elephant ran a review of Joan Aiken’s The People in the Castle, which was also selected as one of the year’s best books by the Washington Post. Double yay!
See the Elephant had previously run a review of Jeffrey Ford’s A Natural History of Hell which much to my enjoyment began “Hellishly Good Stories.” Jim Sallis revelled in Ford’s collection in F&SF (“Formally Ford’s stories are object lessons in how to stage a narrative.”) Alvaro Zinos-Amaro reviewed it on IGMS and DF Lewis wrote reaction posts while reading the stories. Hazel and Wren also liked the book. What can I say? It struck a chord.
There is a new issue of LCRW and meanwhile the previous issue received a strong review in Fantastic Stories of the Imagination and another in New Pages.
And Mary Rickert’s collection, You Have Never Been Here, came out so late in 2015 that a lot of people read it this year, i.e. Sallis (“Reading a Mary Rickert story quite often is like sinking through layers of such worlds. We begin in one place, blink, and open our eyes to somewhere—something—else.”) in F&SF and William Grabowski in See the Elephant: “Rickert’s work, its superbly subtle handling of deepest human yearning for something to heal the howling void behind our increasingly demythologized world, shows the ineffable power—and value—of fantastical storytelling.”
Quickshots:
— Afrofuturism? The Liminal War
— Density? Prodigies
— The underworld? Archivist Wasp
— Digging a hole? Secession? Sherwood Nation
— Middle grade ecothrillers? The Fires Beneath the Sea
Toodles!
Boom! New Books for 2017
Wed 7 Dec 2016 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Christopher Rowe, Kij Johnson, Laurie J. Marks, Sarah Rees Brennan, Sofia Samatar| Posted by: Gavin
Should democracy survive in this sometimes lovely country in 2017 we will publish these books:
1. Sofia Samatar, Tender: Stories
This is a ridiculously good book. Twenty stories including two new stories which — POP! there goes my mind.
2. Laurie J. Marks, Fire Logic and Earth Logic in paperback. The ebooks are out but these trade paperbacks coming out is us building toward publishing the fourth and final Elemental Logic novel, Air Logic.
3. Kij Johnson, The River Bank: A sequel to Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows. Illustrated throughout by Kathleen Jennings.
A book that came to us out of the blue and a reminder that there can be joy in the world.
4. Christopher Rowe, Telling the Map: Stories
Sometimes you wait a long time and then a good thing happens. This book ranges out from now in Kentucky to who knows where or when. And: wow.
5. Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands: a novel
This is the funniest epic-not-epic fantasy you’ll read next year.
None of the covers are 100% final.
And, fingers crossed, there will be more books later in the year.
I owe an apology and a great debt of thanks to the authors for their immense patience as work slowed and stalled during and after this most recent election. Sorry. Putting out a new issue of LCRW helped with getting me back into doing things and not just calling senators and despairing.
I feel silly and melodramatic to be worried about democracy — not perhaps the best form of government, but the best I’ve seen yet — and to think that I and others can work to keep this country from becoming a militarized plutocracy/kleptocracy. This election that among others things was influenced by the Russian government…
Rep Schiff to @halliejackson: Trump “knows better” than to say Russia wasn’t involved in US election hacks. https://t.co/UhNDsAd07l
— Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) December 7, 2016
…(oh that that were a conspiracy theory), this convulsion away from liberalism and toward a much darker, narrower future is horrifying and must be fought.
For now, we will fight one book at a time.