Category: News

Last Drink Bird Head Awards — I Am A Gentle Advocate

By:  TempestConventions
Last Drink Bird Head Awards -- I Am A Gentle Advocate

I haven’t posted to this blog in a long while, sorry. My job is pretty intense (but awesome) and I have a million other projects and jobs going on, which means my fun time is limited. Or I’m just tired. But some fairly significant things are going on and I’ve been extremely remiss in mentioning them.

A big one is that a few weeks ago Jeff Vandermeer emailed to tell me that I was one of the first nominees for the Last Drink Bird Head Award. This is a new award he and Ann Vandermeer came up with that focuses on service in the genre community. “The purpose of the awards is to celebrate those in the genre community who enrich us with their time, energy, and words, often for causes greater than themselves.” The categories are:

  • Gentle Advocacy
  • Tireless Energy
  • Promotion of Reading
  • Expanding Our Vocabulary
  • International Activism
  • Special Achievement

I was nominated in the Gentle Advocacy category: In recognition of individuals willing to enter into blunt discourse about controversial issues…. The awards were given out at World Fantasy and, despite being up against John Scalzi and Nick Mamatas, I won! Yay!

I actually hadn’t expected to, so I didn’t prepare an acceptance speech, though I did give one. But if I had prepared one, I would have said a lot more stuff. First that my fellow nominees are completely worthy of this award as well. Nick in particular since he’s one of the people who taught me the benefits of being fearless and saying what needs to be said when shit is really wrong in the world.

Second, that the award and the awardees acknowledge that it’s not always easy being a Gentle Advocate, an activist, or someone who repeatedly engages in discussions and debates of heated topics. It does help when people have your back, even if they’re just the lurkers in email. I’m fortunate in that I have many people at my back who aren’t shy about being vocal about it, including the Vandermeers and Scalzi and Mamatas. Having people around you who you’re confident will tell you when you’re wrong and aren’t afraid to back you up when you’re right is the key to sanity. I have tons of people like that, and I appreciate the hell out of all of them.

Last, I’m really proud to be the first recipient of this award and glad that it exists, because there are so many others deserving of it, and I’ll be really happy to see them nominated in the future. And thanks again to Ann and Jeff for the honor and for creating the Last Drink Bird Head Awards.

You can see the list of all the nominees here and the winners here (along with pictures of the award). Everyone listed is well-deserving and awesome.

Doctor Who Marathon This Saturday

By:  TempestEvents
Doctor Who Marathon This Saturday

I have a bunch of things I need to post about but very little time today. I wanted to alert my NYC peeps and those in nearby areas that I’m going to have a Doctor Who marathon this Saturday at my place. We’re going to watch the best episodes of the new series — as many as we can get through before we pass out. The following Saturday I think a Jem & the Holograms marathon is in order.

If you live in NYC and want in, click over to my website and let me know via the contact form if you want directions.

Help, Help, I’m Bein’ Oppressed!

By:  TempestWrite-a-thon

Nick Mamatas is always trying to get me to start some shit so he sent over this link to Kathryn Cramer’s blog1. Normally I would ignore this crazy person, but I figure many others are going to comment on this or may already have, so I’ll throw in my 2 cents.

Cramer is apparently bored or something because she’s decided to stir the fires of RaceFail again. This time she’s proposing a panel for WisCon (a convention she no longer attends because of its “encouragement of Fail fandom”) called “More Oppressed than Thou.” Because, don’t you know, there are two kinds of oppressed people: those who have actually been beaten up by cops and those who only have a theoretical understanding of their oppression. You think I am kidding but I am not.

I’m sure that I, a black woman living in America, have never, ever experienced oppression. Oh no. But I read about it in a book and that makes me all self-righteous and stuff.

I know the answer to this, but I can’t help asking why it is that people like Cramer are always the ones to start up the Oppression Olympics. Next she’ll be whining about how her Irish ancestors couldn’t get a job or something.

You would think that attitudes like Cramer’s (and Shetterly’s — yes, he makes an appearance in the comments) wouldn’t even require a response because they’re so ridiculolus. However, going by reports I’ve heard about a certain other convention2 that I know Cramer and those who agree with her view of Racefail attend, I know that we can’t just trust that right-thinking people won’t be taken in by this nonsense.

If someone really, really needs me to explain why her position is a load of horseshit I will. But please tell me that the majority of my FList already knows…

Footnotes

  1. I did not anonymize the link because I don’t care if she knows I’m talking about her. If you’re clicking from your FList and don’t want to even have your screenname show up on her stats, use this link. [⇧]
  2. yes Fourth Street, I am talking smack about you [⇧]

Enmity Online

By:  TempestNews

No, this is not about online fights.

As many of you know, I have a story in the latest issue of the Hugo award-winning zine Electric Velocipede. The editor asked if he could put my story online in its entirety to tempt people into buying the whole issue. I said yes immediately because I heart having my stories both online and in print.

Today it went live, so you can check out Enmity on the EV website. I hope you enjoy. This was my first Mythpunk story (before I even knew what Mythpunk was!). I was inspired by the stuff I learned in my creation myths class. Like Black Feather, I drew from many different versions of myths and many different myth traditions. It’s pretty cool the connections you can find by just looking for common elements and symbolism.

This is why I don’t go to WorldCon

By:  TempestGeekitude
This is why I don't go to WorldCon

I used to go to WorldCon every year without fail, kind of like the way I go to WisCon now. But long ago WorldCon chafed on me, and I realized that it was far more expensive than other cons and more of a trip to see my friends than an enjoyable con experience. Beyond that, though, it got to be more than a little annoying to deal with the cluelessness around race. WorldCon is big — not Comicon big, but big. Therefore you cannot predict from what quarter the crazy might come at you and thus avoid it.

So when I read posts like Karnythia’s about her first WorldCon experience, it just reinforces my conviction that being there would not be healthy for me. That’s a big ball of fail right there.

I know that I will go back to WorldCon someday. When I have a book out I’ll need to promote it. And when I’m nominated for a Hugo I want to be on the scene in case I win. And I acknowledge that the entire con is not some huge, writhing mass of fail. Like anywhere there are good parts and bad parts and neutral parts and there’s usually a squid, too. But for the amount of money it costs, plus the energy it drains, I’m better off making WisCon and World Fantasy my must-go conventions with a happy dash of ReaderCon on the side.

2009 Hugo Award Night of Win

By:  TempestConventions
2009 Hugo Award Night of Win

Though I am not fond of WorldCon, I do wish I could be there tonight to party with the Hugo winners. Many people I know and love to pieces won tonight:

  • BEST NOVELLA: “The Erdmann Nexus” by Nancy Kress (Asimov’s Oct/Nov 2008)
  • BEST SHORT STORY: “Exhalation” by Ted Chiang (Eclipse Two, also: audio version)
  • BEST RELATED BOOK: Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008 by John Scalzi (Subterranean Press)
  • BEST EDITOR, SHORT FORM: Ellen Datlow
  • BEST SEMIPROZINE: Weird Tales edited by Ann VanderMeer & Stephen H. Segal
  • BEST FAN WRITER: Cheryl Morgan
  • BEST FANZINE: Electric Velocipede edited by John Klima
  • BEST FAN ARTIST: Frank Wu

I seriously don’t think I’ve ever seen a Hugo winner list made of more win. Special congrats to Weird Tales for breaking the million-year Locus winning streak and to my main man, John Klima, for his fanzine win. I am dancing in my living room and singing at the top of my lungs in praise of all y’all.

Two Things Make a WIN

By:  TempestNews
Two Things Make a WIN

These two things have nothing to do with each other, I just happen to be posting about them at the same time.

1 — io9 reviewed Federations and Charlie Jane liked it quite a lot. She had nice things to say about my story specifically:

There are also a few delightfully snarky stories which deconstruct, and in some cases satirize outright, the idea of a civilization made up of civilizations, and these are among the book’s standout stories. … K. Tempest Bradford’s “Different Day” imagines the Earth being contacted by not just one, but three different alien races within the same interstellar group, each with its own agenda.

I think I will make a button that says “delightfully snarky.”

2 — Also, the World Fantasy nominees have been announced and you should just click here to see, because the awesome on this list is very strong. I will call out some things I’m particularly happy to see: Filter House, Paper Cities, and “A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antarctica”. Yay for Nisi and Ekaterina and Catherynne, but they are not the only ones. The special awards pro and non-pro have some really, really extraordinary names competing.

This ballot is something to get excited about, unlike certain others I could name.

And… that’s it!

And Others

By:  TempestReadings

Our reading tonight was listed in this week’s Time Out New York, both in print and online. Nora and I are “and others”, ha! I’m just glad they listed it. And in the print version we are right next to the review of Bayou, so I think the layout person may have been paying some actual attention. Awesome.

Looks like there will be a sizable crowd there tonight. Hooray! I’m sure there are some people we won’t see who actually need to be there the most. Ah well.

Carl Brandon Society Award Nominations

By:  TempestNews
Carl Brandon Society Award Nominations

The Society would like me to inform/remind you that nominations for their 2008 awards will be open until September 1st. CBS administers two awards, the Parallax Award is for an outstanding speculative fiction work by a self-identified writer of color and the Kindred Award is for an oustanding speculative fiction work dealing with race and ethnicity. You may nominate the same work for both awards.

To nominate, click here.

I urge you to check out this list of stories published in 2008 on the CBS wiki. It’s still growing, and some of the work listed there is available for free online. I will also sneakily mention that I had a story pubbed in 2008 which is, yes, available to read for free online.

Reminder: Reading this Thursday

By:  TempestReadings

A gentle reminder that the Diaspora of the Fantastic reading is this Thursday. I’ll be reading alongside N. K. Jemisin, Alaya Dawn Johnson and Linda D. Addison at Bluestockings. Details here.

I am going to read from my Electric Velocipede story, Enmity, because I’m not sure if I’ll ever get the chance to read it for an EV thing. Plus, it was the first mythpunk story I ever wrote and I have longed to show off my mythpunkiness.