It’s the beginning of listy-season, and looking back on 2019, here’s everything I had wrote & edited in the past year. Again, I am eligible for the Hugo for Best Editor, Long Form, but moreover, I invite you to consider my authors as well for this year’s nominating season (especially new titles which are eligible for the Hugo for Best Graphic Novel and Best Series, which I highlight below, but *any* can be nominated, of course!). Full details are below the jump, and I appreciate your time. 🙂
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This fall, I have a series of travels lined up. Details below!
Next weekend, I’ll be a special guest at Chicago Steampunk Exposition, where my schedule is part of their A-List programming, so folks with have double the opportunity to see my panels.
Friday, September 27
So You Want to Publish Your Steampunk Book
6:00 PM in Lakeshore A
Saturday, September 28
Steam Around the World: Steampunk Beyond Victoriana
1:00 PM in State
Envisioning a Better Steam Society: Social Issues & Steampunk
4:00 PM in Madison
Sunday, September 29
Steam Around the World: Steampunk Beyond Victoriana
11:00 AM in State
Envisioning a Better Steam Society: Social Issues & Steampunk
3:00 PM in Division
Next, I’ll be moderating for the seventh year in a row at New York Comic Con!
Geeks of Color VII – Not Another Race Panel Edition
1:30 pm – 2:30 pm
Room 1B03 – Javits Center
Geeks of Color is the premiere NYCC panel on career-building in comics, book publishing, gaming, animation, and film/TV, now in its 7th year! Many professionals of color are tired of answering Diversity 101 questions. So here’s where we geek out about our jobs, instead! Featuring Locus & Nebula Award-winning author P. Djeli Clark, Prof. Sargon Donabed, cosplayer Jay Justice, comic author/ editor Nadia Shammas, and comic author/artist Wendy Xu. Moderated by Hugo-Award nominated editor Diana M. Pho.
Fighting Fascism in Fandom Aka We Really DO Care: Protecting Fandom from Bigotry
12:15 pm – 1:15 pm
Room 1A02 – Javits Center
During this current political moment, pros from across geek media talk about how we can protect fandom spaces from hatred and bigotry while also celebrating the geeky things we love. Featuring #1 NYT bestselling author Wesley Chu, writer/podcaster Jay Edidin, multiple award-nominated author P. Djeli Clark, Hugo-winning author / disability advocate Elsa Sjunneson-Henry, mental health advocate / author Zin E. Rocklyn, and Hugo-winning journalist/editor Mimi Mondal. Moderated by editor Diana M. Pho.
At the 18th Annual Florida Writers Conference, I’ll be taking pitches, teaching a workshop and speaking on panels:
Workshop
Writing Outside Your Comfort Zone
Writing is hard but writing the other is even harder. Cultural appropriation, diverse books, and more — these buzzwords abound in publishing today. What do they mean, and can you write the unfamiliar?
Panels
Diversity in Publishing
Writing the Other
My travels end at the Sirens Conference in Denver, from October 24–27, 2019. This will be my first time at this writers conference, which focuses on women writing fantasy, and I’ve only heard terrific things from past attendees. The line-up for this year is especially exciting:
“Our 2019 guests of honor are brilliant, each with incisive, thoughtful achievements in her field: Mishell Baker, Ausma Zehanat Khan, Rebecca Roanhorse, and for the first time, a scholar, Dr. Suzanne Scott, and a Sirens Studio guest of honor, Roshani Chokshi. And while perhaps only a few of our thousand conversations in 2019 will analyze heroism, gender and progress in fantasy literature—while the rest address the other million topics related to gender and fantasy literature—we think that you’ll find both our guests and their work critical to any discussion of heroism and gender representation in fantasy literature.”
If you’d like to grab a coffee and a chat while I’m there, feel free to reach out and schedule a meeting.
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Earlier this year, I was invited to submit a creative work for the Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement, and right before WorldCon, I was notified of its publication. Huzzah! This is the first piece in a very long time that comes back to my playwriting roots before steampunk (gasp) and academia were serious ventures. But it’s still all about queer girls, time travel, and exploring nuances of Asian American identity. A snippet about the piece is below, and you can read the short play online for free!
This short play is inspired by the author’s lived experience as a queer Vietnamese-American woman in academia and in US society. This theatrical piece, centered around two young women meeting for the first time after several years, reflects upon the mutable divergence of shared memory, while also exploring intersectional feminist theory and the Vietnamese-American community. This is also a critique of US-based stereotypes about young Asian-American women, and how social prejudices and microaggressions can result in internalized anti-Asian misogyny. Like the range of identities and life experiences that characters Laurel and Mattie have, the Asian diasporic experience in the United States contains multitudes.
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Today, I got a pleasant and long-awaited email: Neo-Victorian Studies published their special issue about “Neo-Victorian Asia”, which is guest edited by Elizabeth Ho, Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong. My contribution,”Analog Incarnations: Steampunk Performance Across Time” focuses on the power of marginalized performance in steampunk subculture, and it includes the short, one-person play I wrote as my final project for my Masters. Analog Incarnations is weirdly fun, with a Doctor-Whoish-timey-whimey angle, a liberal use of Power Point and Nerf guns, and an imagined video/FX budget beyond my means. It’s exactly why this is a published play and not a produced one. It also presents, for the first time online, the origins of Ay-leen the Peacemaker, my Tonkinese Buddhist assassin-for-hire steamsona.
Looking through my photos for a good one to include in this post, I realized that next month will mark my decade-long anniversary involved in the steampunk community! Here’s one of the very first pictures of me as Ay-leen the Peacemaker, taken in May 2009 (credit to Bob Nittoli). I don’t make it out to as many cons and events as I used to, due to travelling to cons and conferences for my editorial life, but I still keep in touch with many fellow steampunks I’ve met over the years. Of course, the Peacemaker has a special place on my living room bookshelf. Alongside the steampunk/ steam–tangental books published during my time with Tor.
It’s amazing how much time flew by like it was nothing. Or maybe time just flies when you’re having fun!
Check out the special issue, and enjoy the range of wonderful intellectual goodies it contains. The complete table of contents are—
Articles
Introduction: Neo-Victorian Asia: An Inter-imperial Approach by Elizabeth Ho
Japanese Neo-Victorian Fictions: Looking Back to the Victorian Age from Japan by Yui Nakatsuma
Japanese Dandies in Victorian Britain: Writing Masculinity in Japanese Girls’ Comics by Waiyee Loh
Last Empress Fiction and Asian Neo-Victorianism by Elizabeth Ho
The Neo-Victorian Chinese Diaspora: Crossing Genders and Postcolonial Subversion in Pacific Gold Rush Novels by Barbara Franchi
Analog Incarnations: Steampunk Performance across Time by Diana M. Pho
A Therapeutic Mangle of History: Towards a Politics of Reconciliation in Arjun Raj Gaind’s Empire of Blood by Kurian Therakath Peter
Secondary Pleasures, Spatial Occupations and Postcolonial Departures: Park Chan-Wook’s Agassi/The Handmaiden and Sarah Waters’s Fingersmith by Park Heebon, Julie Sanders, and Chung Moonyoung
Reviews/Review Essays
Neo-Victorian Adventures for Young Readers: Review of Sonja Sawyer Fritz and Sara K. Day’s The Victorian Era in Twenty-First Century Children’s and Adolescent Literature and Culture
Review by Sandra Dinter
The Other (Neo-)Victorians: Review of Laura Helen Marks, Alice in Pornoland: Hardcore Encounters with the Victorian Gothic
Review by Saverio Tomaiuolo
The Hauntings of Charlotte Brontë: Review of Amber K. Regis and Deborah Wynne (eds.), Charlotte Brontë: Legacies and afterlives
Review by Catherine Paula Han
(And if anyone wants to produce my show, you know how to reach me 😉 )
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Signal boosting an awesome organization that I’ve mentioned a couple of times before, Con or Bust! For those unfamiliar with them, they are a non profit who provides financial assistance to fans of color to attend SFF conventions. They’re looking for new Board members* to help manage their workload for the coming year and are receiving applications for those interested in participating. Some description below, and full details can be found on their website about supporting a great cause.
If you value Con or Bust’s work, now’s a great time to get involved: at the end of January, up to four people can join Mark Oshiro, Tanya DePass, and Lulu Kadhim on our Board of Directors. I will be stepping down on the grounds that a decade is long enough (obligatory Grosse Pointe Blank reference), so this is a genuine opportunity to shape Con or Bust’s future and help it continue its work.
If you’re interested, please read on, and then email a short statement of interest to info@con-or-bust.org by Friday, January 25, 2019.
*Full disclosure: I served a term on the Board in the past, but am no longer involved on the Board.
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Ringing in 2019 with a retrospective list of what I edited last year. For those wondering, I am eligible for the Hugo for Best Editor, Long Form again but I invite you to consider my authors as well for this year’s nominating season. You can look into more info on my year’s work below the jump, and thank you for the time! ^^
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Back in 2016, editor Melanie Meadors reached out about my interest in being involved in an anthology she had in the works focusing on stories that defy female stereotypes. I gladly signed on, and later that year in the weeks after the election, I turned in my contribution: a pistol shot of an essay titled “Anger is a Friend to Love.” I’m pleased to know that later in 2018 this essay will be released to the world as part of this amazing collection of fiction and non-fiction.
HATH NO FURY, edited by Melanie Meadors and J.M. Martin, features an introduction by Margaret Weis, a foreword by Robin Hobb, and all-new material from Seanan McGuire, Carol Berg, Lian Hearn, Elaine Cunningham, Gail Z. Martin, Nisi Shawl, William C. Dietz, Bradley P. Beaulieu, Elizabeth Vaughan, Dana Cameron, Philippa Ballantine, and many more.
Book description
Mother. Warrior. Caregiver. Wife. Lover. Survivor. Trickster. Heroine. Leader. Hath No Fury contains approximately 20 meaningful stories that defy the stereotypes. In this anthology, readers should expect to find super-smart, purpose-driven, ultra-confident heroines. Here, it’s not the hero who does all the action while the heroine smiles and bats her eyelashes; Hath No Fury’s women are champions, not princesses in distress. Embracing the strong warriors to the silent but powerful, to even the timid who muster up the bravery to face down a terrible evil, the women of Hath No Fury will make their indelible marks and leave you breathless for more.
The book comes out in July 23, 2018, and people can pre-order it here.
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It’s that time of year for award nominations, and so, for your consideration, here is a list of all I edited in 2017. Some books are steampunk, some are not, but all are simply fabulous!
I appreciate any support for my authors; several of them have made the 2017 Locus Recommended Reading List (huzzah!) This is also the first year that I qualify for Best Editor, Long Form, and hey, if you liked several of my titles, little hat tip in this direction goes a long way. 🙂
After the jump, read more about these books, (listed in publication order) and, perhaps, check these out at the bookseller of your choice.
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Boosting! For the fifth year, the Airship Ambassador is hosting Steampunk Hands Around the World.
Check out the link list & follow along on social media all month long!
Welcome to the fifth year of sharing the unity, camaraderie, and amazing creativity of our global steampunk community!
This year, we’re taking to the roads and rails, the seas and the air as we head around the world on a steampunk road trip!
Follow along here for the daily link updates.
Follow on Twitter, using the hashtag #SteampunkHands
Follow on the Facebook Event page
We recommend using a translation service, such as Google or Bing (and several others), to access those pages not in your native language.
The Firefox and Chrome browsers have a built-in, right click menu option to translate selected text of a page using Google Translate.
Begin your travels here!
February 1
Airship Ambassador – Welcome!
The Countess – Steampunk Hands Around the World Eads Bridge (YouTube)
The Countess – Steampunk Hands Around the World, The Eads Bridge, St. Louis, MO
February 2
Karen J Carlisle –
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This January, I have the pleasure of attending two conventions I’ve never been to before. The first is Arisia in Boston,, where I’ll be on the following panels:
Diversity: Still Knows What We Did Last Summer
Marina 2 – Sat 1:00 PM
Last summer, Fireside Fiction found that of 2039 short stories published in the US in 2015, 38 were written by black authors. As we talk about diversity in SFF, what happens when good intentions on the part of major outlets fail so spectacularly? How does a POC author get their stories to the audience? Have things improved? Our panelists will be looking at how to get stories by diverse and representational authors to market, and what still needs to be done to address this ongoing problem in SFF.
SFF Relationship Goals
Bulfinch – Sat 4:00 PM
SFF doesn’t always have the best reputation when it comes to depicting romantic relationships, but that doesn’t mean that respectful, loving partnerships are nowhere to be found. In this panel, we will explore the good ones, where to find them, and what commonalities they might share. What can authors do to feature good relationships in their stories?
Policing Diverse Creators
Marina 1 – Sun 1:00 PM
Lately there have been many instances of diverse creators, both writing #ownvoices and not, who are subject to more scrutiny in things such as reviews and commentary about their works than white, non-#ownvoices authors who write about the same. What can we do to mitigate this? And how do we criticize problematic aspects while remaining aware of the power differential?
Beyond Metaphor: Explicit Representation in SFF
Faneuil – Sun 8:30 PM
There are many SFF works that talk around an issue, rather than facing it head-on. What works are there that directly talk about race, sexuality, gender identity, disability; things that have been addressed in the past mostly as metaphor? Are there any ways we are moving away from only being able to imagine ourselves in our protagonists in vague and subtle hints? What still has to happen before explicit representation works properly for everyone?
Next I’ll be attending the Festival International de la Bande Dessinée in Angoulême, France. The Festival is the third largest comics convention in Europe, and I’m there most scouting for new talent to US audiences and seeing what comics looks like on an international level.
Speaking of an international scope, I am also honored to be selected as the Editor Reviewer for the Salam Award for Imaginative Fiction for 2018. The goals of this award is best explained on their website:
The Salam Award for Imaginative Fiction is a tribute to Dr Abdus Salam, and an effort to promote science fiction writing in Pakistan.
Since inception Pakistan, as a nation, has struggled with conformity as a result of mass repression and suppression. Entrepreneurship, art, literature and innovation have all suffered from provincialism and orthodoxy. Challenging the boundaries of traditional thinking and ideologies is, we believe, one of the core competencies of any progressive society. The Salam Award is a small effort by a few concerned individuals to change that and encourage our populace to be more imaginative.
I’ll be joined by the Award Judges Elizabeth Hand, E. Lily Yu, and Anil Menon, and Agent Reviewer Jennie Goloboy of Red Sofa Literary.
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Contributor in Sarah Hans's Steampunk World, Winner of the 2015 Steampunk Chronicle's Reader's Choice Awards for "Best Fiction"
Winner of SteamCon's 2013 Airship Award for Community Contributor
Visitors from Around the Globe in Real-Time
Beyond Victoriana 