WisCon Chronicles Vol. 11: Call for materials

I'm pleased to announce that the editor of the next volume of the WisCon Chronicles is Jaymee Goh, and she's eager to receive submissions. Here's her call for materials:

Call for Submissions

The WisCon Chronicles, Vol. 11: Trials by Whiteness

WisCon40 followed a seismic shift in the demographics of the convention. Following the success of the POC Safer Space, there is now a Genderqueer/Trans Lounge, and a Disability Lounge. Programming actively seeks a diversity of panelists. How have these changes come about, and what have their ramifications been?

The theme, "Trials by Whiteness," examines how what bell hooks calls the white-supremacist capitalist (cishetero)patriarchy has affected the feminism of WisCon and created difficult confrontations and conversations on the clashing perceptions of attendees. "Whiteness" refers to the position from which white supremacy operates. It has constantly moving goalposts by which everyone is measured. Whiteness does not refer only to white people; non-white peoples can also identify with this position and perspective. "Trials by whiteness," therefore, refers to all the problems people have to go through as a result of white supremacy, on various scales from microaggressions to abuse, whether institutionally or through individual behaviours.

I welcome essays and contemplations on the following:

·         the changing faces of WisCon;

·         the challenges in transmitting and sharing knowledge across generations;

·         clashes of ideology, theories, and/or practices as feminism grows; 

·         panel reports;

·         nice listicles, for example suggestions for how to ally with (and not over!) the various folks that come to WisCon!

I encourage personal essays, poems, or roundtable discussions that deal with any of the following, especially in the context of WisCon and within the SFF industry:

·         dialogs and difficult conversations about the rising discomfort of white SFF fans; 

·         intra-community conflicts within marginalized groups, which we fear to discuss because we fear whiteness turning these conflicts against us;

·         spillover of hegemonic whiteness onto other forms of oppression, such as disability, class, and gender expression;

·         productive outcomes of difficult conversations, e.g. Nalo Hopkinson's Lemonade Award;

·         what DID happen over the summer before WC39? for good or for ill, how did that affect WisCon40?

Further afield, I am a big fan of Academic Lite articles and welcome experimental and non-academic forms discussing the following topics:

·         how POC and conditionally white people are treated by people comfortably entrenched in whiteness;

·         the internalization of white/Eurocentric standards and difficulties of unlearning them in order to recognize oneself, whether as part of the system, or apart from it;

·         the challenges of being a white person confronting whiteness and demonstrating solidarity and good allyship, earning trust;

·         uncovering whiteness, the ramifications of naming it and dealing with the cognitive dissonance that it demands.

While this anthology does center the POC gaze, I am also interested in white essayists interrogating these difficult subjects from the intersections of their identities as well.

Don’t reject yourself—that’s my job!

I am particularly interested in articles that are conversations, especially between newer and older attendees, between attendees who identify differently, or in response to WisCon events. For example, attendees of color and white attendees who attended the Hamilton Sing-Along. Pitch me!

Send pitches and submissions to jhameia.goh@gmail.com with "WCC11: [title]" in the subject line. DOC / DOCX / RTF. Submissions open Aug 15, and close Oct 31. All pitched articles should be in by November 15.

Aqueduct Press readings at WisCon 40

Three groups of Aqueduct Press authors read this year at WisCon. We all read in Conference 2--and for the first time in that room were furnished with a mic, which we dutifully used. I reaped a lot of compliments for the readings (as, I hope, did the individual authors) and often heard people marveling at the sheer variety in voices and stories. Given that that's a part of the point of Aqueduct's existence, such comments gratified me immensely.

The first group read, on Saturday afternoon, under the title "We Sing the Body." This is an expression that is usually taken metaphorically, but in this case it applied literally as well as metaphorically. Nisi Shawl, who read from Everfair (forthcoming from Tor in September), began, as is her wont, with a song sung a capella, and taught the audience (and her fellow authors) to sign the refrain along with her. Pan Morigan followed by reading from unpublished work and, accompanying herself on banjo sang a song from her forthcoming album, Storm Hand. Andrea Hairston read the opening pages of her novel, Will Do Magic for Small Change. And I talked about and read Chapter Zero in The Waterdancer's World (a novel forthcoming from Aqueduct in October).

The second group read on Sunday afternoon under the title "Definitely Not Damsels," immediately following the first group, in the same room.  Jackie Hatton read from Flesh & Wires (which Aqueduct published last fall). Mary Anne Mohanraj read from "Webs," a story forthcoming in the July issue of Asimov's. Eleanor Arnason read a short tale from Hwarhath Stories: Transgressive Tales by Aliens. And Lesley Hall read from her delicious, on-going regency pastiche, The Comfortable Courtesan (available here).

The third Aqueduct Press group read on Sunday, under the title "Elsewhere." Susan diRende read from "Unpronounceable," which Aqueduct released in April; Brit Mandelo read from "The Pigeon Summer," recently published online at Tor.com (available online here); Nancy Jane Moore read from The Weave (which Aqueduct published last summer); and Sarah Tolmie read from Two Travelers (which Aqueduct has just released). Prompted by a question from the audience, the reading finished with a discussion of... editing (!).

WisCon 40 panel report-- "Our Stories Matter"

One of my favorite panels at WisCon 40 was "YES, Our Stories Matter: Encouragement and Support for Creators with Marginalized Identities." It was held on Friday afternoon at 4, in a small room (University C), moderated by Jaymee Goh, featuring panelists Susan Simensky Bietila, Alex Jennings, Mark Oshiro, and Riley. More people attended than WisCon's programming mavens anticipated (I imagine that most of the time, estimating attendance for a particular panel is a crap-shoot), resulting in attendees standing against the back wall and sitting on the floor in the aisle.

The panel's topic was one that many of us have been thinking about for a long time now; certainly it's one that writers and other creators attending WisCon are likely to be grappling with or have in the past grappled with. What strikes me as new about the subject, though, is an accumulating understanding of and greater consciousness all around that people with marginalized identities are likely to meet with an additional set of obstacles when attempting to sell and otherwise disseminate their work. For most of my life I found it difficult to articulate this problem without finding myself thrust into a scripted defensiveness. Founding Aqueduct Press allowed me, for the first time, to escape that script. I'm more pleased than I can say that many, many people are now getting it. And I was delighted to find that the discussion afforded by this panel was both practical and sophisticated. Here's the official description, taken from the Pocket Program Book:

Marginalization affects our success as creators, oppression impacts our ability to create and can grind us down. At the same time, encouragement can come in many ways, from reader comments to supporting each other as marginalized creators. Let's discuss issues like: Why do you keep creating? When do you know you've touched someone with your art? How do you recharge after a setback? How can we support each other within and between different marginalized groups? When it feels like the whole world is telling you that your story doesn't matter, where do you find the strength to pick up the pen?

The notes I took are, I'm sorry to say, sketchy, perhaps because so much of the discussion was rooted in very particular experiences I felt I couldn't abstract generalizations from lest the lack of context introduce distortion.

First: I found the composition of the panel a great advantage. Sue Bitelia drew on her experience of her long struggle to get around the barriers confronting her in the 1960s when she began her career as an artist, an experience that at many points resonated with the experiences of the three younger members of the panel--offering, I think, some hope, since Sue has, after decades, achieved gratifying recognition. Alex, Riley, and Mark, working in twenty-first century media as they are, face different circumstances but are, in the main, grappling with some of the same issues Sue had to take on to pursue a career in art. The one generalization I can safely make is that for all of them, engaging in some degree of Do It Yourself has been essential. This makes great sense to me, of course, not only because of my having founded Aqueduct Press (a prime example of DIY, if I do say so myself), but also because when I was 19and still composing music I understood that organizing performances without official sanction was the best chance I had of getting my music performed and heard. (This only stopped working for me when I lost all confidence in myself as a composer; many of this blog's readers will be familiar with the story of how I lost confidence, which I described in my WisCon 32 GoH speech.)

Perhaps the most striking moments of the panel came when the panelists discussed networking. For decades now, "networking" has been offered up as the most important thing young creators (or even academics) can do. But as one panelist noted, networking with people who have said horribly racist things on panels is horrifying. Conventions--including science fiction conventions-- often (usually?) serve up boundaries and obstacles creators with marginalized identities can't escape. "The whole weekend at most conventions are a nightmare for me of one bad experience after another," one panelist said.

I should also point out that Sue, Alex, Mark, and Riley all noted the importance to them of feedback from individuals who appreciate their work. Creators who are out of the mainstream for one reason or another don't receive the public notice mainstream creators do; that makes extra-institutional (and here I'm using "institutional" so broadly as to include reviews in periodicals) feedback of greater import than it might be. (Which is a hint, by the way, for all of us to make the extra effort to offer that kind of support when we can.) 

 Finally, I'll end by confessing that my notes come to an abrupt halt with the intriguing phrase "leveraging with language." I have some memory of what this refers to but not enough confidence in that memory to try to expand on it. If anyone who attended that panel is reading this and can expand on it, please do so in a comment. The more illumination we have on this subject, the better.