The WisCon Chronicles, Vol. 9: Intersections and Alliances

I'm pleased to announce the release of The WisCon Chronicles, Vol. 9: Intersections and Alliances, edited by Mary Anne Mohanraj. As with the seventh volume of the Chronicles, the electronic edition of Vol. 9 includes a good deal more material than the print edition, and will be available gratis to everyone who purchases the print edition. 

"In this volume of the WisCon Chronicles, we find ourselves considering what it means to live at the intersections of various identities, some of them more privileged than others. We ask how we can function as good allies to each other in often challenging situations. We're living through an intense time of social change, and a variety of questions arise as we have these often difficult conversations about feminism, race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, and more. Among them are questions about what leads to positive social change and how best to effect such change in our communities."
 —from the Introduction by Mary Anne Mohanraj

The WisCon Chronicles, Vol. 9: Intersections and Alliances, edited by Mary Anne Mohanraj, includes a mix of essays, fiction, poetry, and roundtable discussion by Nisi Shawl, Samuel R. Delany, Vandana Singh, Kelley Eskridge, Sheree R. Thomas, Michi Trota, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Tobias Buckell, and others.You can purchase it now from Aqueduct's website.

WisCon Chronicles 9: Intersections and Alliances

Call for Materials

Aqueduct Press is seeking submissions that engage with WisCon 38 (2014) and its programming.  (You need not have attended WisCon in order to submit a piece for this anthology.)  We are especially interested in material on the themes of intersections and alliances (although we will consider other responses to the convention). 

We find ourselves considering what it means to live at the intersections of various identities, some of them more privileged than others.  We ask how we can function as good allies to each other in often challenging situations.  We’re living through an intense time of social change, and a variety of questions arise as we have these often difficult conversations about feminism, race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, and more.  Among them are questions about what leads to positive social change and how best to effect such change in our communities. 

We may be in conflict with one another about optimal tactics, yet we share the same goals for positive social progress and a healthy, safe, and welcoming community.  In conversation with each other, we hope this volume will help elucidate some of these difficult but necessary questions.  Passion is welcome, and nuance, even more so.

This will be a mixed-genre volume:  essays, short fiction, poetry, art, comics, are all welcome.  Preferred word length is variable, but ideally 1000 – 5000 words for prose.  We offer contributor’s copies and a nominal payment.  We are also looking for cover artwork, for which we can offer $100.

Submission deadline is October 15, 2014.  E-mail submissions to mohanraj@mamohanraj.com, with the subject line WISCON SUB:  [title].  You may submit up to 3 items.  You may submit in multiple genres if desired.

Mary Anne Mohanraj, Editor

ETA: Mary Anne has extended the deadline by two weeks.

So that was WisCon!

One thing I have learned is that reading about other people’s first time at WisCon has little to do with living it in your own flesh. (And that writing about it is much harder than I had anticipated.) WisCon has been exciting, hectic, challenging at times—and lots of fun.

Living in Europe and being the only feminist sf/f fan I knew, my prospects of ever making it to Madison for the convention were on the limited side. Two years later, my first incursion into the WisCon community has in fact been rather spectacular: being a trainee at Aqueduct is a tremendous privilege, in that it has made it easier for me to meet so many interesting, talented people that I would have been shy to approach otherwise. Not to mention the excitement of linking friendly faces to names whose work I admire and chatting with them as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Which it is.

Visual proof that I was in Madison

A lot of WisCon, I felt, is about sharing a passion for radical ideas in a space that is constantly challenging itself, and about creating situations in which everybody gets to participate in that sharing, discussing, and transforming. Many of the panels I attended (on radical queer politics, on decolonizing science fiction, on Afrofuturism) made clear that we have no final answers; that the conversation is always growing in size, in complexity, in perspectives; and that we will always need at least one more WisCon to figure out what science fiction can do to face and fight oppressive structures in all their current manifestations.

There were at least two panels in which survival was discussed as a form of successful resistance. And, prevalent as this notion is, I was really interested to hear Sheree Renée Thomas, in the context of Afrofuturism, point out her aiming beyond survival—an attitude that I’m excited to encounter in current and future Afrofuturist works. The panel, chaired by Jennifer Marie Brissett (her new novel Elysium is forthcoming from Aqueduct), succeeded in introducing some of the basics to those members of the audience who might have needed it, without losing focus on the challenges and new directions that Afrofuturism may take. What is clear is its power as a theoretical lens, as Thomas put it, through which to look at the black experience, which is, she pointed out, far from monolithic.

Hiromi Goto’s and N.K. Jemisin’s Guest of Honor speeches, powerful and extremely relevant to the current situation in sf/f publishing and fandom, had a lot to say in this respect. They confirmed once and for all why I want to keep doing what I’m doing. Both authors’ readings at A Room of One’s Own also turned me, inevitably, into a fan.

Not all was political debate, however: there were other things apart from radical change to celebrate. Aqueduct’s 10-year anniversary party was a blast. Raffle tickets were drawn, prizes were won, cake was eaten, wine was drunk, and the party wrapped up nicely around the time several Aqueductians hoped to retire, satisfied, to their rooms, while some of us continued our journey down the conveniently plastic-covered party corridor.

WisCon has room for plenty of different things, including ukuleles, dozing, tapas(!), tiny party hats, and compulsive book buying. It also has all the room in the world for making friends. Many people happily assume that we are all coming back next year and, whether they last a couple of minutes, hours, or days, the conversations started will probably continue then—which is just as well, because I wouldn’t miss WisCon 39 for the world.

Hitting the Road to WisCon

Yesterday we loaded Kath's car with Aqueduct Press books, and off she drove, heading for Madison. This year at WisCon Aqueduct will be marking its 10th anniversary. Tom tells me that if most humans didn't grow ten fingers and ten toes, 2014 would just be another year for Aqueduct. And part of me feels that it is just another year. But part of me has been hosting the persistent idea that a tenth anniversary is a time for stock-taking--and looking forward. Will Aqueduct exist in another ten years? (When we started, I couldn't imagine our getting to be ten years old.) We have a lot of forward momentum, but the three of us who mostly run the press are in our sixties. So that's something I'm thinking about, too.

To celebrate, we'll be hosting a party on Sunday night. We'll be holding drawings for three prizes: a complete set of the Conversation Pieces series to date; a subscription to The Cascadia Subduction Zone; and a set of two Gwyneth Jones collections-- The Universe of Things and Imagination/Space. We'll also be raffling off a wall hanging made by Kath, celebrating Aqueduct authors and their books, with autographs signed by the authors. (See the photo below of the quilt hanging on one of Kath's looms; it unfortunately doesn't come close to capturing the hanging's charms. We'll be displaying it in the Dealers Room, at our table.) The proceeds from the raffle will be donated to the Carl Brandon Society and the James Tiptree Jr. Award Council. The party will offer other delights as well, including, lubricating beverages and, of course, conversation of the feminist kind (which is not exactly hard to find at WisCon).

Many of Aqueduct's authors will be attending the con, and most of those will be reading. Some of them will be reading together--  Eleanor Arnason, Jennifer Marie Brissett, Nancy Jane Moore, and Sarah Tolmie for the reading titled "Renaissances" in Conference 2, Saturday at 10 a.m., and Liz Henry, Alexis Lothian, Katrinka Moore, Anne Sheldon, and I for the reading titled "Time Cracks" in Conference 2 on Sunday at 1 p.m.

We'll be launching three new books at WisCon this year-- Andrea Hairston's Lonely Stardust, The WisCon Chronicles, Vol. 8: Re-Generating WisCon edited by Rebecca Holden, and Hiromi Goto and N.K. Jemisin's Systems Fail, a numbered, limited-edition chapbook in our GoH series. We'll also be distributing a new issue of the Aqueduct Gazette, which Arrate edited. This issue includes a new essay by Gwyneth Jones, reflections on change at WisCon, interviews with Andrea Hairston and Sarah Tolmie, and "September 1, 2024: A Speculation" by Joan Haran, Kristin King, Josh Lukin, Annalee Newitz, and Kiini Ibura Salaam. We'll be posting a pdf of the issue on Aqueduct's site for free download, after WisCon.

The editor of the next--the ninth!--volume of The WisCon Chronicles will be Mary Anne Mohanraj. Her thematic focus isn't set yet, but she is thinking about intersections and allies, and about living through times of social change, what leads to change (including the frustrations), how we effect change, the strategies for managing change without too much destruction in the process, whether sometimes destruction is necessary, etc.

And finally, I'm pleased to say that Arrate will be joining us this year, for her first WisCon. You'll see her at our table, at the party, and out and about at the con. As you might imagine, I'm looking forward to hearing her comments on the experience.