Taylor Driggers(-McDowall)

Labour is trying to create a permanent underclass who can be treated like dirt and live in permanent bureaucratic limbo.

As Tony Benn said. The way they treat people like this is the way they would treat all of us if they could get away with it.

Surprise! The transphobic obsession of the ruling and media classes aren’t held by voters

My review of QUEER APPROACHES TO TOLKIEN (ed. Robin Anne Reid, Christopher Vaccaro, & Stephen Yandell) is out in the open-access Journal of Tolkien Research.

I had a lot of thoughts on this book, mostly very positive! Thankful to Douglas A. Anderson for commissioning this. tinyurl.com/ezbhcxn7

My review of QUEER APPROACHES TO TOLKIEN (ed. Robin Anne Reid, Christopher Vaccaro, & Stephen Yandell) is out in the open-access Journal of Tolkien Research.

I had a lot of thoughts on this book, mostly very positive! Thankful to Douglas A. Anderson for commissioning this. tinyurl.com/ezbhcxn7

The Unbroken Check out The Unbroken - <b>On the far outreaches of a crumbling desert empire, two women--a princess and a soldier--will haggle over the price of a nation in this richly imagined, breath-taking sapph...

Excitingly, it’s worth noting that The Unbroken ebook is on sale for $2.99 in the US! Maybe in other places, too. And while yes, that means it is on sale at Amazon, it is also on sale at bookshop.org! So if you haven’t started the trilogy that includes straps, threesomes, and crumbling empires…well!

As a multiple language speaker it's also frustrating to see people using AI for translation because the English speaking world tends to treat translators like workers for hire instead of co authors of text and this feels like more of it. Translation at the literary level is creative work.
(2/?)

In fact, let’s do this. Comment with what you’re looking for and I’ll try to recommend a read from a Palestinian author for you from my reading list. I’ll do my best to find you a match.

Authors like Clark, Caldwell, Wilson, Chandrasekera, Hopkinson, etc. dismantle sexual taboos b/c they're invested in dismantling the racial-imperial systems they're enmeshed in. They write in & about contexts that often can't afford to differentiate b/w problematic & unproblematic queers.

It would be interesting to dive further into the reasons for this shift. One possible explanation is post-AIDS anxiety (Flight from Nevèrÿon got Delany dropped from his U.S. publisher). Notably the authors who do still write in that mode are ones w/ explicitly intersectional concerns.

This would have been unheard of to fantasy authors of the '60s, '70s, & '80s (Le Guin, Delany, Lynn, Duane, Butler, early Marks) who deliberately set out to challenge preconceptions of sexual morality. Their intent is not necessarily to endorse particular practices, but to provoke thought.

Everyone’s in Love, but Nobody’s Horny - Reactor C.L. Clark discusses writing sex, desire, and queerness in Nicola Griffith's Ammonite

Partly also influenced by this @clclark.bsky.social essay - as Clark notes we're in a moment where depictions of queerness are evaluated based on how flattering they are to the reader's preconceived sensibilities, often implicitly reasserting heteronormative morality. reactormag.com/everyones-in...

B/c I'm reading THE DANCERS OF ARUN at the moment, it occurs to me that one way to narrate a history of queerness in fantasy could be one in which earlier works that use fantasy to probe at sexual stigmas & taboos on a broad societal scale give way to a modern emphasis on individual validation.

Owen Pallett (2024)
Dead Can Dance (2022)
Björk (2019)
Perfume Genius & Julianna Barwick (2017)
Julianna Barwick (2011)

Photon Torpedoes Break the Space Muqarnas: SFF Audiovisuals and Anti-Muslim Violence Dragon fire on white bodies is sad. Dragon fire on not-Muslim bodies is cheered on the screen. We ache when the scimitar prows of not-Muslim ships cleave through a white human captain’s ship. But b…

In this week’s @strangehorizons.bsky.social, one of my favourite pieces I’ve edited this year — on orientalism from Star Trek to Game of Thrones.

Photon Torpedoes Break the Space Muqarnas: SFF Audiovisuals and Anti-Muslim Violence,” by Tanvir Ahmed —

strangehorizons.com/wordpress/no...

Why I Need the Birds A Love Letters Feature by Amal El-Mohtar - November 2025

Today's Love Letter is a stunning meditation on birdwatching and the loss of a friendship, from the one and only @amalelmohtar.com

stone-soup.ghost.io/love-letter-...

took this stance real early on, have been paying close attention, and i have yet to see a single thing that manages to challenge that opinion even a little bit, rather than solidifying it into diamond-hard conviction

The UK prefers racism over prosperity as Brexit proved

YouTube video by Sub Pop Orville Peck - Dead of Night [OFFICIAL VIDEO]

Call and Response Fun Fact Countdown! 10!

We open with “Femme and Sundance,” queer hustlers turned bank robbers with magical complications.

Fun Fact: the diner in the opening, mean patrons, nasty bathroom, and all resembles a real one in Nebraska.

Song pairing: m.youtube.com/watch?v=q3es...

All of the stories in this collection are, well, fantastic but my personal favourites were "The Beekeeper's Garden", "The Calcified Heart of St Ignace Battiste", & "Canst Thou Draw Out the Leviathan".

Cover of Christopher Caldwell's CALL AND RESPONSE: the title appears in ornate black letters against a swirling light blue, orange, and red background.

19. CALL AND RESPONSE (Christopher Caldwell, 2025)

I found myself lingering over each sentence of these stories, organised as paired dyads in a nested structure. With gorgeous prose, Chris's stories probe at the complex ways Black people & queer people respond to impermanence in a hostile world.

Cover of Christopher Caldwell's CALL AND RESPONSE: the title appears in ornate black letters against a swirling light blue, orange, and red background.

19. CALL AND RESPONSE (Christopher Caldwell, 2025)

I found myself lingering over each sentence of these stories, organised as paired dyads in a nested structure. With gorgeous prose, Chris's stories probe at the complex ways Black people & queer people respond to impermanence in a hostile world.

FYI, folks. There is a link to the signing page at the top of the linked letter.

Ideally somebody who is not me would've written a book about this already that I could just gesture at in a handwave-y fashion, but nobody seems to have done this, hence ... elephant in the room.

Should this rant I have about an ideological elephant in the room of fantasy studies be a footnote, or should I just make it a full-blown tangent in the main body of this chapter? #amwriting

Both my husband and I have worked jobs where we've *had* to use VPNs to comply with data security regulations.

The name of the game for this Labour government seems to be gross violations of privacy that also completely obstruct the basic functioning of society. It's their only move.

My dear friend Sama'a has worked herself to the point of exhaustion to bring her family back to Gaza City, and now she needs our help to feed and clothe them as winter approaches. Please give what you can.

gofund.me/db56c7ce3

It’s particularly important to note that legislation to limit what kids can do and see online also limits what *everyone* can do and see online, censors broad swaths of the internet, further disempowers marginalized tech users, and allows the fascist government to control what is on the internet

It’s disturbing and discomforting to examine but there are several anti-phone and anti-social media initiatives weaponizing murders and suicides of teens, leveraging grieving parents, and exaggerating or inventing causation to try and limit speech online and restrict tech freedoms

A reminder that we're hosting the first European Conference on the Fantastic, Fantasy's Present Pasts, in Glasgow next summer (23rd-25th June 2026). The Call for Papers and Sessions can be found here: fantasy.glasgow.ac.uk/index.php/20.... Closes 12th December. Please do consider submitting!

Very excited for this. Sofia Samatar is one of my favourite living writers so I will be attending!