Photos from WisCon 39

I tend to forget to take photos at WisCon, except for those I've gotten in the habit of doing-- chiefly of the Aqueduct Press-organized readings. Partly this is because I don't like to take photos without first getting permission from those who will be clearly identifiable in the photo (which pretty much rules out most candid photos), partly because I tend to get so caught up in talking to people that I forget. On our first night at WisCon, I remembered to take a photo of the window of Room of One's Own (which I of course stared admiringly at before entering the store), and a photo of Kath, Arrate, Nisi Shawl, and Margaret McBride at dinner. (Tom was leaning in back in his chair, & so, like me, who was talking the photo, is invisible.)

Hmm. Actually, you can see Tom's arm, the napkin in his lap. The food was Peruvian, and we were all in an exuberant mood and rejoicing at being all together again and attending another WisCon.

Friday, I took a picture of our tables in the Dealers Room. Kim Nash took the photo so that all four of us could be in the photo: this is what it the center part of the table looked like before the doors to the Dealers Room were opened:

Reading on Saturday were Anne Sheldon (who read several poems and an excerpt from Adventures of the Faithful Counselor, Mary Anne Mohanraj (who read from the introduction of The WisCon Chronicles Vol 9: Intersections and Alliances, Jackie Hatton (who read from Flesh and Wires, which Aqueduct Press will be releasing later this year), Andrea Hairston (who read from a novella), and me (who read a portion of "The Forbidden Words of Margaret A., which has just been reprinted in Ann and Jeff VanderMeer's Sisters of the Revolution):

And reading on Sunday were Eleanor Arnason (who read from The Daughter of the Bear King, which Aqueduct recently released in an ebook edition), Nancy Jane Moore (who read from The Weave), Therese Pieczynski (not an Aqueduct author, but one who writes very much in the spirit of Aqueduct and who read a teaser from a story that had everyone on the edge of their seat), and Lisa Shapter (who read from her novella A Day in Deep Freeze, which Aqueduct published this spring, and who prefers not to be photographed).

A storyteller's book

Strange Horizons has a long, thoughtful review of Anne Sheldon's The Bone Spindle, by Sofia Samatar. She remarks, "I would have liked to see more from Anne Sheldon in this book, and I will look forward to reading more of her work" and concludes:

The Bone Spindle includes images as well as words: the illustrations are based on photographs of looms, spinning wheels, yarn and hands busy with knitting or embroidery. They complement the written words and add another thread to Sheldon's tapestry of old, new and reinterpreted stories. This collection would make a beautiful gift for a knitter or weaver, but it's also a storyteller's book, so full of voices that it seems to beg to be read aloud. And of course, when a piece is spoken, the way it's arranged on the page becomes less important. The oral mode, I suspect, is the best way to experience Anne Sheldon's "story-poems."

Those who've had the pleasure of hearing Anne read (at WisCon and elsewhere) would no doubt heartily concur with that.

Aqueductista News

--Nick Mamatas takes a look at "Wacky Will's" claims that Racefail 2009 and particularly coffeeandink led to his novel's being rejected by the publisher then considering it and getting no bids at a subsequent auction.

--Gwyneth Jones, in a post titled Shora to Shari'a, has more to say about the state of feminism today.

--Vandana Singh, in her Strange Horizons column, offers up Living with the Other: Animals, the City, and the Future

--Sue Lange reflects on Education Now and in the Future, in response to Susan Simesnky Bietelia's artwork in the second issue of the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

--Stephen Sohn at Asian American Literature Fans: A Veritable Literary Feast has posted a Small Press Spotlight on Aqueduct Press, which includes reviews of Vandana Singh's Distances and Of Love and Other Monsters, Claire Light's Slightly Behind and to the Left, and Mary Anne Mohanraj's portion of Without A Map.

--Paul Graham Raven reviews Gwyneth Jones's The Universe of Things for Strange Horizons at great and chewy length. He concludes:

And I’ve already mentioned the deftness and space left in Jones's stories, which always leave you slightly wanting; the gaps she’s left are tantalizing, sometimes even infuriating, like the last bit of table peeping mockingly through an unfinished picture-puzzle. It's a powerful play, and has to be handled just right; give too little, and the reader will feel justly cheated. But give just enough, and that missing piece will haunt the reader long after the last page is turned . . . to the point where one finds oneself hand-cutting puzzle pieces at 3 a.m., making minute adjustments to get them to slot into place, worrying at the hangnail question she's planted in your mind. Jones is resolutely anti-consolatory, staunchly contraPanglossian. She fits out every story with enough ideas to power a lesser writer's novel. She will break your heart, and she will make you think. She will challenge what you think science fiction is about, what it is for, and what it can do in the hands of an expert.

--Don D'Ammassa reveiws Andrea Hairston's Redwood and Wildfire:

Here’s an unconventional fantasy for you, set within the theater community around 1890. Two very different performers travel to Chicago where they become part of the world of minstrel shows and vaudeville. One is half Native American, the other a voodoo practitioner. There’s a good deal of peripheral magic, some of it ambiguous, involving such things as mind reading and out of body experiences, and these are contrasted with the technological wonders being displayed at the current World’s Fair. It’s also about the role of art in transforming society. This is a very ambitious book, and it’s far enough out of the mainstream of fantasy that it might daunt many potential readers. Comparisons are imperfect, particularly with really original work, but this should appeal to fans of John Crowley or Tim Powers.

--Nancy Jane Moore, in Reading for Fun: The Bone Spindle, reviews Anne Sheldon's The Bone Spindle

Aqueductista News

--Rick Kleffel, at The Agony Column, hosts a podcast with Andrea Hairston talking about Redwood and Wildfire.

--In another podcast at The Agony Column, Terry Bisson moderates a panel discussion with Andrea Hairston, Pan Morigan, and Howard V. Hendrix held on May 9, 2011 in San Francisco.

--Matt Cheney reviews Gwyneth Jones's The Universe of Things for the Summer 2011 issue of Rain Taxi (print only). It begins:

The Universe of Things collects fifteen short stories published between 1985 and 2009, and one of the most remarkable qualities of the colelction is the consistency of Gwyneth Jones's style over that time. With only a few exceptions, the stories, regardless of their point of view, are narrated in an objective, almost affectless tone, the sort of tone that attracts such adjectives as cold, hard, clear, emotionless.

The stories are not emotionless, though; readers' connections to them will depend very much on how well they respond to Jones's style, but the characters often face emotionally wrought situations. In "Grandmother's Footsteps," a woman perceives the house she is renovating to be haunted and a threat to herself and her family. It is a tale of ghosts and madness and maybe something in between, a cousin to Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" and James Tiptree Jr.s "Your Faces O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light"-- but different from those masterpieces because the narrator's perception of the madness-haunting is restrained, almost reasonable, more like a scientist weighing observations than a person in the midst of deeply disturbing phenomena.

Which may, of course, be part of the point: Life is shell shocking.

Faren Miller reviews Andrea Hairston's Redwood and Wildfire for the June 2011 issue of Locus (print only). Her review concludes:

Hairston gives us an intimate view of lives at the nadir, and takes her time crafting an escape to the North and to a city (Chicago) which proves to be no paradise, since even with the best intentions errant humanity can find new ways to fall.

But the book ultimately breaks free from the conventions of social tragedy and the limits of history to immerse its characters in a rich stew of early 20th-century entertainments (Vaudeville! travelling circuses!), where Americans work alongside exotic immigrants, and humdrum existence can suddenly become surreal. There's room here for humor as well as patter, stage magic and true wonders, sex, sensuality and love, invention and revelations-- all driven by the spirit of raw potential that marked urban American in changing times, and the astounding resilience of the human heart.

Storyteller Linda Goodman reviews Anne Sheldon's The Bone Spindle for Tales from the Tapestry. She concludes:

The bone spindle is an instrument capable of bringing both danger and comfort. This is a book that should be kept by your bedside, for those nights when sleep will not come; when you need assurance that even in the darkest hours, beauty can eclipse the pain.

The June 2011 issue of Locus puts the spotlight on Rachel Swirsky, with four Qs & As

Anne Sheldon's The Bone Spindle

I'm pleased to announce that Aqueduct Press is releasing Anne Sheldon's second book with us, The Bone Spindle: Poems and Short Fiction as the thirtieth volume in our Conversation Pieces Series. I suspect that those of you who are into weaving and spinning will be particularly interested in the book's illustrations.

Anne Sheldon's heroines have lowered eyes and seditious smiles. They are people of folklore and fairy tales: Penelope, the Crane Maiden, the Fates. Her heroes are outsiders in their own stories—rumplestiltskin and Arachne's father.

These fourteen story-poems and stories focus on the work that women do with spinning wheel, spindle, and knitting needles. They are accompanied by evocative images of these instruments and the cloth they yield

In addition to reworking well-known fairy tales, she has several shining tales of her own making. Under the fluid sign of danger and domesticity—Anne Sheldon explores earthly and ethereal regions of the feminine.

The Bone Spindle is now available through our website for $9, here. And she will be reading some of these delicious tales for us at WisCon.

Readings at WisCon 32

WisCon offers a wide variety of programming across eighteen (gasp!) tracks. Although there are two single-author readers by the year's Guests of Honor, all the rest of the readings are group presentations by four or five authors (or, in the case of the unique Broad Universe Rapid-Fire Reading, by numerous authors offering brief tantalizing bursts of their work). Most of these readings take place in a conference room equipped with several armchairs rather than straight chairs and a table with microphones facing the audience, which gives the room a slightly more comfortable and informal feel. This year, though, a few of the readings were held in other venues-- viz., Madison coffee shops. I wish I'd been able to get out to those, 'cause I love cafe readings. (Maybe next year?) I typically attend several readings in the course of the con, but this year I was able to attend only one, the second of the two groups of Aqueduct authors reading.

Kath and Tom attended the first one (which was held at the same time as one of my panels), though, and got some photos of Aqueduct's authors.

Here is Carolyn Ives Gilman, reading from Aliens of the Heart.















Nisi Shawl read from Filter House.





Anne Sheldon read from Adventures of the Faithful Counselor.



















Wendy Walker also read.


















And Sue Lange read, too.



I was able to attend the second group of Aqueduct authors reading, though. Eleanor Arnason has a few things to say about it in her posts on WisCon, which you can find on her blog. As she notes, she read a very short piece-- and she also announced that she was working on a rewrite of her sequel to A Woman of the Iron People, "Hearth World," for Aqueduct, which evoked a great, roaring cheer from the audience.

















Vandana Singh read the opening of her novella, Of Love and Other Monsters (which resulted in Aqueduct's selling out all the copies of it that we brought to the con by late Sunday afternoon). I know that text well; it was a pleasure hearing the author's own voice speaking it.










Nancy Jane Moore read the dramatic conclusion, rather than the opening, of one of her stories in her new collection from PS Publishing, Conscientious Inconsistencies.






Eileen Gunn read a tantalizing fragment of a story set on Christmas Day, involving elves, that was bizarre, frightening, and heartbreaking and literally had me sitting forward on the edge of my seat, waiting to see what would happen next. And later, after everyone had finished reading, she read her short, stunning poem "To the Moon Alice," which can be found in LCRW #22.

And finally, Andrea Hairston, who is hands-down the best reader I've ever had the pleasure to hear read, offered us the vivid, harrowing first chapter of her new, as yet unpublished novel, which opens in the late-19th-century American South.

I could fairly feel the audience around me shivering (and not just from the room's freezing air, which necessitated Andrea's wearing the jacket that an audience member kindly loaned her).


I loved the reading, I loved the thought that these authors and their fine work are what Aqueduct is all about. What a joy to be in such company!



The format and setting of WisCon's GoH readings are quite different from that of the group readings, for they feature a single author in a 75-minute time slot. I wanted to attend Maureen's, but alas, it was not to be. I can, though, tell you about my own. First, I should probably mention that it was held in one of the larger rooms, where a long table with microphones is placed on a dais in front of many rows of chairs with an aisle between them. This is not a good setup for a reading. For one thing, I prefer to stand when I read. For another, I had no wish to be elevated and distant from the audience. My solution was to detach a microphone from one of its holders and stand on the floor, holding the mike in one hand an the book I was reading from in the other. This was a bit awkward, but it worked as long as I was holding a conversations pieces volume in my hand. (See the photo, which Kath took.) It couldn't work, though, for one of the books of the Marq'ssan Cycle (even the smallest of which are too heavy to hold open in one hand). So then I tried just projecting my voice, without a mike, and found that it worked.



I began by reading "Dear Alice Sheldon" from Talking Back: Epistolary Fantasies. (I have Lena de Tar to thank for having suggested that I read both nonfiction and fiction.) I then read a couple of nonspoilery scenes from Stretto, the last book of the Marq'ssan Cycle. I had prepared other things to read, but I thought, given the excellent composition of the audience attending, that a Q&A might be better. In fact, the Q&A turned into a lively, interesting conversation to which numerous audience members contributed. I'm still thinking about some of it.