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Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward: Midwifing the Other: Nurturing Diversity in Weird and Speculative Lit | The Outer Dark: Episode 31 — FEBRUARY 17, 2016

February 17, 2016 / / 0 Comments

writingtheotherAuthors/editors Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward join Scott for a very special show focusing on diversity in Weird and speculative fiction. They start by recounting the story behind the origins of their Writing the Other workshop/book, its connections to Clarion West, the next set of upcoming online classes (March 13), its impact on spec-lit writers over its 25-year history, and their hopes for an updated book to reflect new language and examples. The conversation proceeds to positive directions with diverse characters, how writers need not to be afraid to write what they don’t know but they do need to research, the concept of “parallax” and W.E.B. DuBois, writing the other as a collaborative process, why treating equally or fairly doesn’t mean not seeing color, gender or other differences, rewarding examples of people who learned and gained courage from the Writing the Other program to increase Lost Trails Forgotten Tales of the Weird West Final Cover 6-26-2015their own representation of people of color as characters, teaching the “reptile brain,” the good example of Joe R Lansdale, and midwifing works by Sarah Smith and South African writer Nick Wood (Azanian Bridges. NewCon Press, Nov 2016). Cynthia and Nisi also talk about some of their own written and edited works. Cynthia discusses her edited anthology Lost Trails: Forgotten Tales of the Weird West, which features stories about non-white characters on the frontier, in the context of growing interest in the Weird Western in books, film and graphic novels, a second volume on the way, and several novels in progress, including Night Rising, the first in The Return of the Dark trilogy, an apocalyptic magic story set in Tucson which she calls a “cozy catastrophe.” Nisi reveals some of the back story about Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delaney, which she co-edited with Bill Campbell (Rosarium Publishing), which has received everfairconsiderable praise, as well as contemplating her interaction with horror and exploring a different relation to death and the status quo in the African diaspora in her 2008 James Tiptree Jr.  Award-winning collection Filter House, confronting steampunk’s embedded imperialism in her upcoming Belgian Congo set novel Everfair (Tor, Sept. 2016), encountering ghosts in her middle grade novel Speculation, and much more. The conversation concludes with their recommended writers including Bill Campbell, J. Comer (Planetary Stories), Ayize Jama-Everett ( whose works include The Liminal War and The Entropy of Bones), Australian feminist writer Sylvia Kelso (The Blackston Gold and The Amberlight series), Aqueduct Press’s L. Timmel Duchamp (The Red Rose Rages Bleeding, The Marq’ssan Cycle, and more), Nigerian writer Tade Thompson (Making Wolf and Rosewater, Sept. 2016), Matt Ruff (Lovecraft Country) and Amy Wolf (The Misses Bronte’s Establishment).

gamutNews From the Weird: Special Guest Richard Thomas gives The Outer Dark listeners an exclusive sneak peek at the exciting plans for his highly anticipated new neo-noir spec-lit fiction magazine Gamut, featuring a who’s who of writers, artists and staff, and its Kickstarter campaign.

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.

Next week’s guest: Will Ludwigsen, author of In Search Of and Others (Lethe Press).

Please vote for The Outer Dark in the People’s Choice Project iRadio Podcast Awards. https://www.projectiradio.com/podcast-awards/

storiesforchipOrder The Outer Dark T-shirts at SkurvyInk: https://skurvyink.com/products/outerdark-shirt

More Links:

Bert and I: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPGf77t9hRA

Stagecoach Mary: https://www.blackcowboys.com/maryfields.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Leopold%27s_Ghost

Review of Lovecraft Country by Nisi Shawl: https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/books/matt-ruffs-lovecraft-country-horrors-in-1950s-america/

https://www.thedarkhousepress.com/

lovecraftctryShow credits:

Host/Executive Producer: Scott Nicolay

Co-Host, News From the Weird/Producer: Justin Steele

Associate Producer/Show Notes/Publicist: Anya Martin

Logo Design: Nick “The Hat” Gucker

Music: Michael Griffin

Simon Strantzas: The World Through a Dark Lens | The Outer Dark: Episode 30 — FEBRUARY 8, 2016

February 8, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Strantzas-BBSAuthor/editor Simon Strantzas returns to discuss the reissue of his Shirley Jackson Award-nominated 2015 collection Burnt Black Suns in a leather-bound special edition by Dark Regions Press, generational shifts and rising momentum/progression in the Weird Renaissance, readers who evolve into editors and publishers such as Justin Steele and Sam Cowan (Dim Shores), theme/atmosphere and composing his earlier collections Beneath the Surface, Cold to the Touch and Nightingale Songs, scientific fieldwork as a story topic, the landmark editing of Joe Pulver and phenomenal weird/fabulist writing of Helen Marshall, the art of public reading, the True Detective bump, the dynamic between the Aickmanesque Strange and the Weird, the journal Thinking Horror which he co-edits with sj bagley, taxonomy as applied to insects and literature, reading back to understand aickman1-200x300the tapestry of the genre and how to bend/twist/add to it in a different way, writing as a puzzle, the revolutionary force of T.E.D. Klein, creating/curating the unofficial Website of Terry Lamsley, the British quiet and ghost story renaissance in late 90s/early 2000s horror, other brilliant authors who have not published much lately such as Don Tumasonis and Matt Cardin, the intersection between Weird and Horror, evolving trends and fusion in Horror, collaborating with Michael Kelly on editing Year’s Best Weird Fiction 3, the importance of and challenges to featuring lesser known and diverse writers in collections, Aickman and Ligotti as two writers who (like Lovecraft) opened new territories, Stephen King and Peter Straub, his reading recommendations including Nadia Bulkin and Lynda E. Rucker, an Italian edition of Burnt Black Suns in Edizioni Hypnos’ Modern Weird series, and the globalization of the Weird.

splittonguesNews from the Weird: Arkham Digest columnist/Strange Aeons fiction editor Justin Steele and special guest Sam Cowan, editor/publisher of Dim Shores Press, join Scott for the latest news including more about the exciting line-up for Year’s Best Weird Fiction 3, what’s next with Dim Shores, Lovecraft eZine Press, Egaeus Press, Lost Signals, Gamut Magazine and a listener contest to win a free Garrett Cook book! Plus Justin reviews Split Tongues by Kristi DeMeester, Dim Shores’ fifth and latest chapbook.

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.

Next week’s guest: Authors/editors Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward of the Writing the Other workshop and book.

Please vote for The Outer Dark in the People’s Choice Project iRadio Podcast Awards. https://www.projectiradio.com/podcast-awards/

Also there wasn’t anything like this in the Levitra precautions found online, but still that’s my health, and I don’t want to end up with heart attack or anything similar.

Strantzas-NightingaleMore Links:

https://www.projectiradio.com/s-j-bagley-and-simon-strantzas-thinking-horror-in-the-21st-century-before-and-beyond-the-outer-dark-episode-10-september-8-2015/

https://necronomicon-providence.com/enter/

Robert Dunnell, Systematics in Prehistory: https://www.amazon.com/Systematics-Prehistory-Robert-C-Dunnell/dp/1930665288

https://www.jethrolentle.com/

Show credits:

Host/Executive Producer: Scott Nicolay

Co-Host, News From the Weird/Producer: Justin Steele

Associate Producer/Show notes/Publicist: Anya Martin

Logo Design: Nick “The Hat” Gucker

Music: Michael Griffin

Henry Lien: The Elegant Art of the Literary Duel | The Outer Dark: Episode 25 — DECEMBER 30, 2015

December 30, 2015 / / 0 Comments

TODA25-Henry Lien The Elegant Art of the Literary Duel

There’s no one quite like Henry Lien in spec-lit today. He has generated major buzz with just six unique stories. His first published story ‘Pearl Rehabilitative Colony for Ungrateful Daughters’, which features “an art form that combines figure skating with kung fu”, made the cover of the December 2013 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction (Henry even pitched cover artist Alexandra Manukyan) and went on to be a Nebula Award nominee. His latest, critically acclaimed ‘The Ladies’ Aquatic Gardening Society’ (Asimov’s, June 2015), perhaps his most distinctly Weird tale, is about two Gilded Age grandes dames dueling for Newport high society dominance via their increasingly outrageous and environmentally devastating theme gardens. On this episode of The Outer Dark, Henry pulls back the curtain on his creative process starting with the rigorous questions he asks himself before moving forward with an idea (0:03:00), diving into stories as “thought experiments”, putting pressure on his writing and matching concept with format, the importance of humor in “humanizing” and “bridging centuries and miles”, the potential for “wonder in modest concepts” and exploring them to their logical conclusion and how he pushes outside himself to tell stories from the viewpoint of girls and women. A self-described “one-man movie studio”, he also waxes enthusiastic about the joy he gets from indulging his multimedia muse including the “crazy fun” and “intense satisfaction” of handing a story over to an artist, voicing his characters in audio rendition, and even dabbling in writing music to accompany his stories. The madcap conversa

"Pearl Rehabilitative Colony for Ungrateful Daughters" (Cover story, Asimov's, Dec. 2013). Art by Alexandra Minukyan.

“Pearl Rehabilitative Colony for Ungrateful Daughters” (Cover story, Asimov’s, Dec. 2013). Art by Alexandra Manukyan.

tion touches upon all his stories from the two aforementioned tales (‘Pearl’, 0:14:45) (‘Ladies’, 1:01:30)to the simple, elegant, tragic ‘Supplemental Declaration of Henry Lien’ (Interfictions, Nov. 2015)(0:24:30) and the life-changing experience at its heart that propelled him into writing spec-lit, the poignant dolphin conservation advocacy tale ‘Bilingual’ (F&SF, March 2015) (0:34:55) told unexpectedly all via Twitter, ‘The Shadow You Cast Is Me’ (Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, May 2015) (1:38:30) in which he explores the uncomfortable topic of a dysfunctional marriage, and ‘The Great Leap of Shin’ (Analog, Jan. 2015) (1:50:45). His Clarion West instructors Chuck Palahniuk and George RR Martin receive some heartfelt appreciation, “worlds that can be held in a pocket” are mused upon, and there’s a Karel Čapek interlude (1:17:00), plus ruminations on the rapidly diversifying audience for spec-lit, why Henry is done with short stories for the time-being, his just-completed novel which he says is “the best thing I have written”, why it’s OK to be proud of your stories, why he supports bringing back legal dueling to resolve world conflicts (1:51:30), his own ultimate duels, his ‘Radio SFWA’ recruitment anthem performed at the 2016 Nebula Awards (2:00:00), and his recommended living authors (2:05:20) James Robert Herndon

Bilingual-CarolineSirounian2

“Bilingual” (F&SF, March 2015), art by Caroline Sirounian.

and Lian Hearn.

News From the Weird

(2:13:10) With Arkham Digest columnist and Strange Aeons fiction editor Justin “Steely J” Steele. Reviews of two of the best weird fiction chapbooks of 2015: These Last Embers by Simon Strantzas, from Undertow Publications, and The Visible Filth by Nathan Ballingrud, from This is Horror.All day Levitra is great and works fine. Plus Scott and Justin look ahead to 2016, which promises to be another big year in the Weird including another author reveal from the table of contents of the much anticipated Lost Signals anthology (ed. Max Booth III/Perpetual Motion Machine Press).

This archival episode is available at This Is Horror here.

Additional Links

Caroline Sirounian

Kurt Huggins

‘Swim Wants to Know if it’s as Bad as Swim Thinks’ by Paul Tremblay

Sidecar Preservation Society

TheGreatLeapofShin-KurtHuggins2

“The Great Leap of Shin” (Analog, Jan. 2015). Art by Kurt Huggins.

Show credits

Host/Executive Producer: Scott Nicolay

Co-Host, News From the Weird: Justin Steele

Associate Producer/Show Notes: Anya Martin

Logo Design: Nick “The Hat” Gucker

Music: Michael Griffin

Robert Levy: A Secret Psychological Diary in Blue | The Outer Dark: Episode 22 — DECEMBER 3, 2015

December 3, 2015 / / 0 Comments

glitteringworldRobert Levy unveils and explores the secret origins of his novel The Glittering World from his own personal experiences in Cape Breton, Canada, or, in other words, “taking a great memory and completely destroying it,” similarities between the old lore behind fairies and alien abduction mythology, his ambivalence about but recognition of genre marketing in the publishing business, how a genre-defying and Weird first novel got placed with a major publisher, other authors like Jeff VanderMeer and Paul Tremblay who are breaking the Weird into big publishing, structural similarities in The Glittering World to two Alfred Hitchcock classics, the Weird’s transition from shorter modes into the novel, the short story and novels as different forms, how the book sheds its skin as the main characters unfold the narrative akin to a four-course meal, when the glitter fades–his exploration of transitioning from the club scene fantasy lifestyle to adulthood, the title’s unexpected relationship to the tradition of Navajo emergent/creation robertlevystories, altered states as a form of escape, insects, parallels to the iconic relationship in Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, his fascination with people who are “right on the edge of oblivion or failure,” a stolen paperweight and life as a bizarre sequence of coincidences, storytelling as one way we try to give our life meaning, choice as the “anxiety of freedom,” taking his time to write a novel, fiction as a diary, future works which might have something to do with cults and found manuscripts, and his reading recommendations of other contemporary writers to watch including Livia Llewellyn, Desirina Boskovich, Dale Bailey, and Molly Tanzer.    

News of the Weird Special Guest: Writer/editor Mike Allen reveals the table of contents for Clockwork Phoenix 5 in another exclusive The Outer Dark announcement.

And Justin Steele joins Scott to review The Glittering World.

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.

Next week’s guest: John C. Foster, author of the Libros de Inferno trilogy (Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing) which starts with Dead Men.

More Links:

Book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7RgOVF0XG0

https://www.trailpeak.com/trail-Fairy-Hole-Hiking-Trail-Cape-Dauphin-near-Baddeck-NS-6019

Footage of the Fairy Hole cave: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCZovMZlUas

Rear Window timelapse: https://vimeo.com/37120554

https://navajopeople.org/blog/navajo-creation-story-nihalgai-the-glittering-or-white-world/

https://www.amazon.com/Din%C3%A9-Bahane-Navajo-Creation-Story/dp/0826310435

https://www.francnewcomb.org/

https://www.strange-aeons.com/

Old Weird, New Weird or Just Plain Weird? Panel at World Fantasy Convention 2015 | The Outer Dark: Special Presentation — NOVEMBER 13, 2015

November 13, 2015 / / 0 Comments

November 7, 2015, World Fantasy Convention, Saratoga Springs, NY

Moderator: Thomas F. Monteleone. Panelists: Ellen Datlow, Michael Kelly, Anya Martin, Maura McHugh, Scott Nicolay

Description: When and where do they converge and converse?

weirdpanel-wfc2015Writers and editors discuss the roots and history of Weird fiction back to Weird Tales, 19th century authors and even The Iliad, editors’ perspectives on the Weird in their own work experiences, the Weird tale as independent of tropes, early definitions of the Weird by Le Fanu as a gothic supernatural tale and Lovecraft as dread-ridden cosmic horror, its evolution to an increasingly fluid and open vision and variety in the explosion of Weird fiction today, tapping into the strangeness of reality and the element of the unexplained but why not all odd stories are weird stories, where Weird tapers and becomes surreal, whether Weird fiction needs darkness as an ingredient and when fantasy and science fiction becomes Weird, writer Gemma Files’ suggestion from the audience that the nuance may lie in how the characters react to the Weird in the story, scares versus unease, David Lynch as Weird filmmaker, why keeping a wide open definition is better for nurturing the Weird, a peek inside the editorial process behind The Year’s Best Weird Fiction and the value of changing editors every year, the growing interest in the weird outside the spec-lit community and the upcoming Wave from Hollywood and mainstream publishing, a possible danger in letting the outside world define the weird, keeping the door open as long as we can, the role of the small presses in driving the Weird explosion, Weird as a pre-existing condition, Weird fiction in the novel form, the future of Weird fiction, the recurring theme in weird fiction of the environment rising up including when the environment is a house, when ghost stories can be weird stories, the etymology of the word “Weird” in the Anglo-Saxon “Wyrd” and its many connotations including fate/destiny/transformation, why the word “Weird” is Weird itself, following the River to an inevitable destiny versus appeal of unpredictability to the reader, Jack Spicer’s Martian, and many, many recommended authors from the 19th century to now.

However, as these drugs cause addiction and their action becomes less expressed, Tramadol 100mg is just a step between the NSAIDs and narcotic analgesics.

Thanks to Stephen Barringer 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://borderlandspress.com/

https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/essays/shil.aspx

https://weirdfictionreview.com/2011/11/dogme-2011-for-weird-fiction-by-scott-nicolay/

https://weirdfictionreview.com/2014/11/the-expanding-borders-of-area-x/

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