2013 Galactic Suburbia Award

Galactic Suburbia's Alex, Alisa, and Tansy have announced the 2013 Galactic Suburbia award for activism and/or communication that advances the feminist conversation in the field of speculative fiction! Here's the list:



Honor List

Malinda Lo's continuing statistics gathering on LGBT YA books 

  Foz Meadows for her blogging generally, but particularly "Old Men Yelling at Clouds." 

  Anita Sarkeesian - Tropes vs Women in Video Games (Damsel in Distress 1 & 2, Ms Male Character) 

  Kameron Hurley, ‘We Have Always Fought’: Challenging the Women, Cattle and Slaves Narrative,” at A Dribble of Ink. 

  The Doubleclicks - Nothing to Prove music video 

  Cheryl Morgan - The Rise & Fall of Grimpink 

  Deb Stanish for her essay in Apex magazine: "Fangirl isn't a Dirty Word." 

Honorary shortlistee (the Julia Gillard Award):

  Wendy Davis for her amazing filibuster

Joint Winners this Year!!! (drum roll please) 

  NK Jemisin for her GoH speech from Continuum (link) 

  Elise Matthesen for her essay "How to Report Sexual Harassment at cons" (link) 

But do go listen to the podcast, which announces and discusses the winners and honor list, here.

Do book publishers' slush piles have much relevance to gender issues in sf/f publishing?

The latest Galactic Suburbia podcast-- episode 85, July 21, 2013-- is a must-listen for anyone interested in the on-going conversation about sexism in sf/f publishing. The podcast series as a whole, of course, is acutely tuned in to gender issues in our field,  but I was particularly happy with this episode for tackling Tor-UK editor Julie Crisp's post focusing narrowly on the failure of women writers to send out as many slush submissions as do men writers--an thus implying that that failure is the reason for the under-representation of women's work in the field. Alex notes in the podcast that the word she would use to characterize this post is "surface," and Tansy suggests that the post is "a bit disingenuous." The fact is, as Alissa reminds us, slush accounts for a minuscule portion of what gets published-- a fact Crisp neglects (or perhaps takes care not) to mention in her post. (She does not, after all, give any figures for how many slush submissions actually get published, or what proportion of published books were unsolicited submissions.) Sadly, a lot of people have hailed Crisp's post as a credible explanation for why so little women's work gets published in the UK-- as though slush has much bearing on anything other than itself. For a thorough discussion of Crisp's post and the context needed for evaluating it, I urge you to listen to episode 85.

The 2012 Galactic Suburbia Award

Have you heard? The f/sf field now has a feminist award! It's called The Galactic Suburbia Award for activism and/or communication that advances the feminist conversation in the field of speculative fiction in 2011. The women of Galactic Suburbia, Tansy, Alex, and Alisa, have just announced the first year's winner and Honours List.


Honours List"

Carrie Goldman ad her daughter Katie, for sharing their story about how Katie was bullied at school for liking Star Wars, and opening up a massive worldwide conversation about gender binaries and gender-related bullying among very young children http://www.chicagonow.com/portrait-of-an-adoption/2010/11/anti-bullying-starts-in-first-grade/

Cheryl Morgan for "Female Invisibility Bingo" ( http://www.cheryl-morgan.com/?p=10805 ), associated blogging and podcasting, and basically fighting the good fight

Helen Merrick, for the "Feminism" article on the SF Encyclopedia: http://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/feminism (i think its a rewrite not new)

Jim C Hines for “Jane C Hines” and associated blogging, raising awareness of feminist issues in the SF/Fantasy publishing field. - http://www.jimchines.com/2011/09/jane-c-hines/

Julia Rios, Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond for episode 11 of the Outer Alliance podcast (The Writer and the Critic special episode)

http://blog.outeralliance.org/archives/875

L. Timmel Duchamp - for continuing to raise issues of importance on the Ambling Down the Aqueduct blog [I'm sure they mean Ambling Along the Aqueduct--td] and various Aqueduct Press projects
http://aqueductpress.blogspot.com/


Michelle Lee for the blog post “A 7-year-old girl responds to DC Comics’ sexed-up reboot of Starfire” http://io9.com/5844355/a-7+year+old-girl-responds-to-dc-comics-sexed+up-reboot-of-starfire


Winner

Nicola Griffith - for the Russ Pledge, and associated blogging http://asknicola.blogspot.com/2011/06/taking-russ-pledge.html

The winner will receive a Deepings Doll (www.deepingsdolls.com) hand-painted figurine of a suffragette with a Galactic Suburbia placard.

Congratulations, Nicola!

If you have ideas for the Honours list for 2012, please email Tansy, Alex, and Alisa at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com or tweet @galacticsuburbs