For a few years now, I’ve been living a semi-nomadic life, making my home in Wisconsin, in Scotland, in Colorado–wherever life and work has taken me. But 2012 was a year of stability. I didn’t travel much. I didn’t divide my time between two homes. I stayed in Colorado long enough to raise a puppy, […]
Category Archives: Reading
CONvergence 2012
I’ve just returned from CONvergence, one of my favorite science fiction and fantasy conventions. The heat index in Minneapolis was 104 degrees, so I didn’t bother with my steampunky costume. But I did serve on two panels: “New Roles for Female Characters in YA Fantasy,” with Penguin editor Sharyn November, my friend Mike Levy, and […]
Anomaly Con
Despite keeping busy with our little puppy, we managed to attend AnomalyCon in Denver, where I got a chance to a.) pose with a giant TARDIS and b.) meet Nebula nominee Genevieve Valentine, whose dark steampunk circus fantasy Mechanique is exquisitely crafted, brilliantly non-linear, and unbearably happy/sad.
Among Others
I’ve been reading Jo Walton’s evocative novel Among Others. A fantasy story set in Wales during the late seventies, it positively resonates with compassion for teens, geeks, outcasts–our younger selves. The book’s compassionate tone is established by the epigraph–a quote from critic Farah Mendlesohn, who offers this advice to her younger self: “It’s going to […]
Steering the Craft
Last night I sat up reading Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1998 book Steering the Craft, a collection of writing exercises for the “Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew.” I’m currently a lone navigator, getting used to being alone with my craft, so I marked a number of Le Guin’s writing exercises to try out later […]
WisCon 35
Memorial Day weekend, we drove east to WisCon, Madison’s one-and-only feminist science fiction and fantasy convention. WisCon is my favorite con: great programming for fans and academics and writers, a strong and very real sense of community, and lots of old friends. And there was cheese! (More about that later.) WisCon 35 was really the […]
The Magicians
Lev Grossman is the kind of fantasist who refuses to give readers what they want, which probably explains why his brilliant new fantasy novel The Magicians is so polarizing. Some readers hate Grossman’s sobering take on the whole Harry Potter genre: they expect a charming Hogwarts-like school with earnestly heroic young wizards fighting high-stakes battles […]
Poetry Fix: W.S. Merwin
Another Merwin poem, this one filled with visionary longing. Vision What is unseen flows to what is unseen passing in part through what we partly see We stood up from all fours far back in the light to look as long as there is day and part of the night.