Nishi Shawl on Octavia Butler talk

photo by Caren Corley

Last weekend, I was lucky enough to catch Nisi Shawl giving a talk on Octavia E. Butler at the Woodson Library: a crossover event with One Book One Chicago and Black History Month.

I've been fortunate enough to catch Nisi's talks a couple times, at Wiscon and ConFusion, and it was great to hear her thoughts on Butler. Brief notes below, mistakes all mine:

• Shawl references her interview with Butler in Strange Matings by Aqueduct Press. She first met Butler in 1999.
• Butler believed in living her dreams, how does that translate? Butler's now-famous "I shall be a best-selling writer" and other notes to self. Shawl also talks about Butler's writing advice from "Furor Scribendi" in Bloodchild and Other Stories.
• Butler was the first SF author to get the MacArthur grant, used it to buy a house so she could write without worrying about rent. Butler took many "jobs that didn't make her smile" to support herself as a writer. Shawl talks about the importance Butler placed on persistence.

Maria Dhavana Headley talk @ North Western

author photo by Beowulf Sheenan,

no really that's his name, I checked

This last Wednesday, I was lucky enough to catch Maria Dhavana Headley in a talk at North Western with Dr. Barbara Newman. Part of One Book One Northwestern (they're doing Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale), Headley and Newman talked about The Mere Wife, Headley's recent novel. A modern, feminist take on Beowulf, The Mere Wife was one of my favorite reads of last year. Dream-like, nightmare-like, lyrical: highly recommended.

After some introductory remarks by Juan Martinez, they jumped into a discussion of The Mere Wife, Beowulf, and Headley's forthcoming translation. Brief notes below! Possible spoilers! Good ideas theirs, errors mine:

• Barbara Newman: Gives a brief summary of Beowulf. Talks about the play on "mere" in Headley's novel, asks about what led her to write this.
• Maria Dhavana Headley: First ideas for this novel came from reading, and not being impressed with, Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road. Being from rural Idaho, suburban/commuter vision of America didn't click, and unimpressed with vision of women characters as wholly subservient to male interests. Had encountered Grendel's mother before encountering Beowulf--in a kid's bestiary kind of thing. When she did read Beowulf, intrigued by women's role as peaceweavers. I thought about all the times in women's lives that we're asked to "do it nicely", and thought about women supporting Trump in the 2016 election, signing up to support their own oppression. "Mere" wife as both "water wife" of Grendel's mother, and "little wife" of "unimportant" women, wanted to write about them both as important.

Annalee Newitz @ Women & Children First

pic by CNSC member
Paul Callan (Flickr)

Back in September, Annalee Newitz did a reading at Women & Children First from her newly-launched novel, Autonomous. Brief notes below!

Newitz was joined by partner, fellow io9-cofounder, and All the Birds in the Sky author Charlie Jane Anders for the discussion. After reading  some introductory sections from Autonomous, which follows a scientist-turned-pharmacy-pirate and the robot/human pair of agents sent to stop her, Newitz took questions from the audience:

Taking a few questions about the process of writing the novel, and writing fiction instead of nonfiction:

• Autonomous started while both Newitz & Anders were still working on io9. She started working on it kind of as if it were nonfic, interviewed scientists in relevant fields. The novel is set in a definite near -future (2144), and relies on a fairly well-defined central device, the fictional concentration drug "Zacuity", so Newitz turned to a few different specialists to try to both flesh out the ideas and also avoid "smack your own face" fact errors. She also talked about her own disenchantment with the academic research world informing the novel.

Doctorow @ Printer's Row

A couple weeks ago at the Printer's Row Lit Fest, I got to catch Cory Doctorow in conversation with Mary Robinette Kowal. Mostly focused on his new novel Walkaway, the discussion jumped to some interesting places. Very brief notes below:

Jeff VanderMeer Volumes Talk

Last week, I got to catch Jeff VanderMeer speak again, this time hosted by Volumes Books at the illustrious Chicago Athletic Association.

This was part of the official Borne tour, with a few readings from the novel and then a quick Q&A with Chicago author Jac Jemc.

For some chunkier notes, I'd suggest checking out my scribbles from VanderMeer's talk at DePaul. However, still much of note at this event, so I wanted to record a few things:

Jeff VanderMeer @ DePaul

photo by Kyle Cassidy

This last Wednesday, I was able to catch Jeff VanderMeer's talk, "Area X: Environmental Storytelling in the Age of Trump and the Anthropocene". Hosted by DePaul's Institute for Nature and Culture, his lecture meditated on the material and experiences that went into the Southern Reach trilogy, as well as some interesting post-publication developments. Most fascinating, for me at least, was his exploration of how weird art, philosophy, ecology, and politics intertwine—what we can learn about the world, about storytelling, and about resistance in this deeply weird time we're going through. Lots of discussion of animals and thinking/writing about the non-human.

This talk was delightful and thought-provoking. Annihilation has quickly joined my inner circle of most-important books (most re-read, most recommended, most pondered-upon), and learning some of the nature experiences & philosophical/ecological thought that went into that was really cool—speculative fiction, philosophy, and nature are so central for me, this lecture had me in the clouds.

The Southern Reach has become a touchstone for most of my Chicago book-clubs (it seems Think Galactic's discussion is the only one I have recorded on Positron); his forthcoming novel Borne sounds great, and there's two more chances to hear him talk:

• Monday 4/24 in Dekalb, hosted by Anderson's Books
• Wednesday 4/26 at the Chicago Athletic Association, hosted by Volumes

Brief, incomplete, and possibly-disjointed notes from the lecture below:

Author Talk- Yoss @ City Lit

Last week City Lit Books in Logan Square hosted a cool author event with Yoss, a Cuban science fiction author whose work has started being translated and published in English, to some acclaim.

Despite apologies for his poor English, Yoss was actually quite a fluent speaker, and gave us some cool history on both science fiction in Cuba, and his own personal writing history. He noted that while magical realism has received a lot of attention and praise in Latin American traditions, more speculative forms like science fiction and genre fantasy have largely stayed outside the spotlight.

Notes & Quotes from Neal Stephenson's Printer's Row Talk

Photo from the Printer's Row
Twitter feed.

This past weekend was my first time at the Printer's Row Lit Fest: a lovely affair downtown, lots of books & printed sundries, lots of authors, all kinda good stuff.

I was particularly excited to see Neal Stephenson; I've really dug a lot of his work and recently got a chance to read an advance copy of his new novel "Seveneves" through the good graces of City Lit Books (whose Weird & Wonderful club recently discussed Stephenson's "Snow Crash").

"Seveneves" is truly delightful, particularly for fans of Teh Hard Ess Eff: it opens with a huge bang, Earth basically doomed within a short timeframe, and humans rush to get a viable colony in space. That's the first 500 pages or so--then the narrative jumps five thousand years ahead to show how things are going. It's really gripping if you're into this kind of thing--high amounts of realism, long passages on bits of space tech & orbital maneuvers, lots of brutal/fatalistic/pragmatic bits. And ultimately pretty hopeful, with lots of pleasing weirdness and Stephenson's delightful style--sort of droll and gonzo in equal measures, with some eyeball-kicking metaphor mixed in.

Most of the questions from the audience and "conversation with"-ist Christopher Borrelli revolved around the new novel, with a few others. Just a couple paraphrased highlights: