The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2021, part 18: Nisi Shawl

 

Untold Tales
by Nisi Shawl

 

 

After a first round of cataract surgery I’m slightly more capable of reading this year. My eyesight has improved--just marginally. But while waiting for the second round of surgery I still limit my reading to what’s required of me. My pleasures still derive from job-related discoveries: texts found during bouts of editing, teaching, and critiquing. Many of the things I’m going to expound on here won’t be available to you. Yet. Since that’s the case, I’ll do my best to recommend suitable substitutes. 

Alas, some of the most exciting writing I’ve come across this year is a far ways from being published. It’s stuff by my students, or by members of my critique group who haven’t quite made the bigtime. A novel-in-progress by Ben Kassman is the latest example of these mss., a lovely and original fantasy about a corkscrew world ruled by memory-burning magic. Ben is thigh-deep in revisions of his 220,000-word opus, currently titled "Spiral." Though they assure me they have lots and lots of work to do on this novel, the excerpts I’ve read are already enchantingly easy on my mind’s ear. Another, less polished example from an earlier class: L.M. Lu’s jolly little account of an eyeball-collecting alien bartender.

In my critique group I’ve been treated to a serial version of Joanne Rixon’s revolutionary anti-Harry Potter novel "The Starfish Banner." It’s awe-instilling! It’s gritty! It’s sweet and loving and hopeful and courageous!

 

And so far, it’s unsold. Thus, in place of a link to a site where you can buy and read "The Starfish Banner," I offer this link to an extract of “Like We Practiced,” a killer short story of Jo’s published in Aurealis Magazine; and this one to the entirety of “What Lasts,” published on the Vice site; and this one to Jo’s website, where you’ll find more links to more stories and story teasers.

It’s because I write that I had the chance to read these great things. My reputation gets me teaching gigs and critiquing colleagues eager to share approaches to our common problems and to help search for their solutions.

It’s because I edit that I had the chance to read a lot of other great things. This year I’m editing "New Suns 2," the sequel to my 2019 award-winning anthology New Suns. Among the submissions I’ve received for that, “Goodnight, Gracie” by the formidable Alex H. Jennings, grabbed me by the short hairs of my imagination and would not let go. And my friend K. Tempest Bradford’s story “The Farmer’s Wife and the Faerie Queen” made me laugh so hard I snorted my soup.

Due to budget and space constraints I won’t be publishing every piece I thrilled to, but while we’re waiting for my final selections to appear, here are a few links to alternative works by my very talented potential contributors. Alex has a new novel forthcoming in June: The Ballad of Perilous Graves. Tempest has a novel coming out soon, too--in a couple months. For now you’ll have to settle for her short story “Enmity,” brought to us courtesy of the Internet Wayback Machine and Electric Velocipede magazine.

 Nisi Shawl is the Solstice-Award winning author of  Filter House, which won the James Tiptree Jr. Award and was nominated for the World Fantasy Award, Something More and More, her WisCon GoH collection, and, with Cynthia Ward, the co-author of the celebrated Writing the Other: A Practical Approach, and the editor of The WisCon Chronicles, Vol. 5: Writing and Racial Identity, all of which are published by Aqueduct Press. Aqueduct Press has also published Strange Matings: Science Fiction, Feminism, African American Voices, and Octavia E. Butler, which Nisi co-edited with Rebecca Holden. Tor released her brilliant alternate history/steampunk novel, Everfair, in 2016. She was awarded the World Fantasy Award as the editor of the wildly successful New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color, which won several awards, including the 2020 Locus Award  the 2020 World Fantasy Award. She is also the editor of the acclaimed anthology, Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany and other anthologies.  She reviews science fiction for the Seattle Times and writes columns for Tor.com and The Seattle Review of Books, is a member of the Clarion West board, teaches writing workshops at Centrum in Port Townsend, WA., and is the reviews editor of The Cascadia Subduction Zone.