Scott Nicolay
Ana Kai Tangata
Tag: comics
Rios de la Luz explores the “inner workings that were happening in her brain” while writing her first collection The Pulse Between Dimensions and the Desert, and Scott’s suggestion that her stories resemble the Martian gemstones depicted within–each unique, energetic, fresh, multifaceted, and yet interconnected. Notions of magic realism, time travel, science fiction, Junot Diaz, Ray Bradbury, Lucius Shepard, Star Trek, Doctor Who, and her love of outer space and comic books, especially Los Bros Hernandez’s Love and Rockets, emerge, as well as working with her publisher Ladybox Books, a rising imprint of Broken River Books and being part of the dynamic small press community in Portland, Oregon. The discussion also explores diversity as a rising force in both authors and audience for spec-lit, including Rios’ identity as a “Latina-Chicana-Bruja” writer but “mostly just a strange brown girl,” as well as using Spanish to reset rhythm in her narratives, growing up in El Paso, discovering her favorite writer Sandra Cisneros and her passion for creating young characters like herself, including her excitement in seeing female, African and Guatemalan leads in Star Wars and a black Hispanic super-hero in Spider-Man Miles Morales. Another ever-present element in her writing is the guardian abuela, reflecting the importance of her grandmother and great grandmother to whom she says she “owes so much.” Also queer characters, the awkwardness of puberty (“Church Bush”), disappeared women, dead children (“La Reina”), her complicated feelings about borders and a short reading of her hauntingly beautiful story “Marigolds.Hey bros out there. For your own sake, don’t ever take two big Levitra Generic.” Finally, Rios talks about what’s next for her including flash fiction, zines, two horror stories, a bizarro tale and a novel, as well as recommending poet Yesika Salgado, aka Yesika Starr, fellow Ladybox Books author Meliza Bañales, aka Missy Fuego, and Vanessa Mártir.
News from the Weird: Ladybox Books Head Editor/Curator Constance Ann Fitzgerald joins Scott to talk more about this innovative women-run press/collective, how it got started, its exciting slate of “fiercely talented” authors, the rebirth of the zine and the current dynamic and label-defying small press scene.
Next week’s guest: Garrett Cook, author of You Might Just Make It Out of This Alive (Eraserhead Press)
More links:
Yesika’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/yesikastarr
One of Meliza’s short stories: https://ladyboxbooks.com/2015/02/08/story-of-the-week-face-lift/#more-131
https://www.facebook.com/States-of-Terror-289014071299287/?fref=ts
News From the Weird:
https://ladyboxbooks.com/2014/09/27/ladybox-on-sale-october-15th/
The Punk Singer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwrXC5OXqgc
Date: October 4, 2015, HP Lovecraft Film Festival, Portland, OR
Moderator: Andrew Fuller (Three-Lobed Burning Eye Magazine). Panelists: Ross Lockhart (Word Horde), Richard Lupoff (Ramble House, Surinam Turtle Press), Scott Nicolay (The Outer Dark), Rose O’Keefe (Eraserhead Press, Deadite Press, Fungasm Press), Kelly Young (Strange Aeons magazine)
Description: Panelists discuss everything that publishers face in this genre, including topics like “Where does the money come from?” “Building a table of contents” and “Print vs E-publication.”
Note: There are some sound issues at the very start due to people talking near the camcorder, with Rose and Ross particularly hard to hear, but this clears up after the first couple minutes, so please hang in.
An overarching Small Press Renaissance has been pivotal to the current Weird Fiction Renaissance. In this panel from the 20th annual HP Lovecraft Festival, editors and writers discuss trends in spec-lit small press publishing from the 1950s when Richard Lupoff started publishing fanzines to the present including technology advances in print-on-demand and ePublishing that have sped up and made production more affordable, how these changes have fueled the creative side to go “bonkers,” the collaborative process and freedom of small press publishing among editors, authors and artists, Scott Nicolay’s poetry small press roots, the Heavy Metal-inspired origins of Strange Aeons, Ross Lockhart’s road from reader to publisher, how Eraserhead Press started as a collective of authors and the birth of Bizarro as a publishing category, what’s changed in the kinds of stories editors are looking for, the market for publishing out-of-print spec-lit classics, the thrill of supporting a great author to get into print, demographic changes and connecting through social media with writers and readers, the small press boom creating a fertile ground across all literary categories, the driving force of a more diverse readership, the creation of opportunity due to current risk avoidance attitude of the big five houses, how technology is continuing to change at a fast pace, a DIY punk ethos, ongoing challenges and strategies for marketing and distribution, and what’s next!
Once I also bought it at https://tramadolhealth.com and tried to take Ultram, when I had terrible stomachache.
This archival episode will be available again at This Is Horror soon. In the meantime, subscribe at iTunes or Blubrry to make sure you don’t miss an episode.
More Links:
https://christopherconlon.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Eklund
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Jameson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Belknap_Long
Next guest on Dec. 3: Robert Levy, author of The Glittering World.
Moderator: Ross E. Lockhart. Panelists: Garrett Cook, G. Arthur Brown, Mike Griffin, Rios De La Luz.
Writers and editors working in Bizarro and Weird discuss the Germanic origins of the word “weird” in “wyrd” and how its association with fate and destiny continues in the contemporary Weird narrative form, whether Weird and Bizarro grew out of same sense of the Weird or are unrelated movements, authors who have walked between the lines of Weird or Bizarro in mind-blowing works of fiction, film and comics, the importance of dream realms and logic in Bizarro Weird fiction, if New Weird and Bizarro are different blurry wings on the same creature, similarities to the loud versus quiet horror rift, artificial taxonomies and bleed-through, slipstream as literary effect, Bizarro as a movement and a community, irreality versus surreality and how it might relate to Weird, objective vs. subjective lies, magic in fantasy versus Bizarro, and more.
Thanks to Helen Hopley for the panel photo.
This archival episode will be available again at This Is Horror soon. In the meantime, subscribe at iTunes or Blubrry to make sure you don’t miss an episode.
More Links:
https://www.fedoganandbremer.com/products/ana-kai-tangata-deluxe-limited
https://cafeirreal.alicewhittenburg.com/index.htm
Next on Nov. 11: Orrin Grey, author of Painted Monsters & Other Strange Beasts.
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