Emma Mieko Candon - THE ARCHIVE UNDYING out now!

bawww readercon is high key the con i would most love to visit one day!!

It is again thus strange and somewhat unsettling for the work to be not only read but regarded and recognized. I AM grateful for it. I am just always going to find it disorienting, I think.

So I suppose: if you also find yourself alive, despite yourself, despite everything, Archive is for you too.

I wrote it for me, and I wrote it for my wife, and I wrote it also, I think, for the places my mind had gone while my body was shattered and still somehow breathing. It has been difficult to return to while my body is breaking again.

I did not expect it to be my debut. I hoped, and did not imagine it likely.

I did not expect it to be published by Tordotcom -- or to be edited by Carl Engle-Laird. I thought it worth dreaming about, but thought it fairly outlandish.

On a more personal note: I have always found Archive a tremendously strange book. It also grows, somehow, more personal with the more distance I gain from it. It is carved so deliberately from so many parts of my soul.

I've had my head in the sand re: book stuff almost since pub -- so I am grateful, and humbled, and shaken to be able to say that THE ARCHIVE UNDYING is a finalist in the spec fic category of the Lammys.

I would also like to direct folks to read fellow finalist Vajra Chandrasekera's essay below:

The Saint of Bright Doors is a Lammy Award Finalist THE SAINT OF BRIGHT DOORS is a finalist for the Lammy Awards in the LGBTQ+ Speculative Fiction category.

THE SAINT OF BRIGHT DOORS is a finalist for the Lammy Awards in the LGBTQ+ Speculative Fiction category. I'm grateful for this unexpected and difficult joy. As a Lammy nominee—so very strange!—I have three painful things to say. I'll try to keep it short. vajra.me/2024/03/27/t...

This is the best editorial on the Hugos mess I've read so far.

"But the attitude over the last month has been that we let the riffraff in, and look what happened. Now that we know that WE are the riffraff, our response should change accordingly."

So essentially the white censorship committee penalized Chinese fans for existing and discarded all of these votes as illegitimate, which instantly removed all the most popular Chinese writers from contention and allowed for a US-dominated year in standard fashion. They did TWO levels of censorship.

support, The Ignyte Awards The Ignyte Awards usually cost about $3000 a year to operate.

If you:

1) Are mad about Hugos
2) Have five dollars you could spare - seriously, five (many don't, but if you do)
3) Please put it here

ignyteawards.fiyahlitmag.com/support/

The 2023 Hugo Awards: A Report on Censorship and Exclusion

For the last few weeks I've been working with Chris Barkley @cmzhang42.bsky.social of @file770.bsky.social on a report about censorship in the 2023 Hugo Awards.

Leaked emails and files indicate authors and works deemed “not eligible” for the awards were removed due to political considerations. 1/3

You know the situation is especially bad when CNN actually names Israel as the perpetrator of violence

I want to be clear that when I say this it isn’t just vibes. CNN’s reporting on Israel & Palestine has been deeply scrutinized by other journalists, as in this Jan 4 piece by the Intercept.

theintercept.com/2024/01/04/c...

Exactly this point. One of the things that I'm working on right now is the very idea of a "digital public square" as a powerful, albeit ahistorical, myth that drives everything from platform design to the cultural norms of social media to the ways that users take up the affordances of the platform.

✋!!

Nerds of a Feather 2024 Hugo Award Recommendation List: Part 1 Welcome to the Nerds of a Feather 2024 Hugo Award Recommendation List. As in previous years, this is a 4-part list covering things our write...

Wow, KICKASS rec list! I'm honored for THE WATER OUTLAWS to share it w/ @emcandon.bsky.social @vajra.me @samitbasu.bsky.social @kateelliottsff.bsky.social @wtalabi.bsky.social @older.bsky.social @brentclambert.bsky.social @valerievaldes.bsky.social &more!!

www.nerds-feather.com/2024/01/nerd...

AAAHHH I FEEL RESPLENDENT BESIDE Y'ALL

Bringing up the award run by QWOC when the white folks are fucking up feels an awful lot what happens in every other industry when WOC are uplifted and expected to clean up white people’s messes. LD and Suzan deserve better than that. The Ignytes are tremendous enough all on their own.

Sometimes folks run an award that's like a perfect curated list of everything you know you're gonna like!!

For real tho, the Ignytes have consistently been my personal favorite list for every year they've been running.

Home, The Ignyte Awards WELCOME TO THE IGNYTE AWARDS The Ignyte Awards began in 2020 alongside the inaugural FIYAHCON, a virtual convention centering the contributions and...

Hi! So I'm L, I do a lot in SFF and one of those things I do is run the Ignyte Awards. We're a spec lit award centering the perspectives/contributions of BIPOC in genre. We came about because existing legacy institutions sustain(ed) practices disrespectful or exclusionary of marginalized creators.

What I don't get is, why be such an asshole to folks with predictable and understandable questions? Like, you can totally stick to the script without being a condescending ass about it. Why does condescending assery seem like the way to go?

1. OHHH?? WHOOOA. AAAAH.

2. Congrats to all my fellows on the list!!! I've read so many of these books, and they have brought me SUCH delight!

3. a punchline. they've misspelled my name, but specifically the white name. i can live with that.

THE WATER OUTLAWS is BSFA longlisted!

High five and congrats to the other Best Novel authors, esp @older.bsky.social @mvmelcer.com @wtalabi.bsky.social @emcandon.bsky.social @meganeokeefe.bsky.social @vajra.me @kateheartfield.com @suyidavies.com @rfkuang.bsky.social !!

cc: @tordotcom.bsky.social

IT WAS A GENUINE PLEASURE TO DEVOUR

Agni For the first free-to-read story of the year, Nibedita Sen brings us a brilliant, dangerous world, complex power dynamics, and characters we can’t stop thinking about. ~ Julian and Fran, January 7, ...

The Sunday Morning Transport charges forward into 2024 with the first of four free stories, this one from Nibedita Sen (@hernibsen.bsky.social), a story to light up your new year. Read it for free and enjoy the archives as well!

The Water Outlaws A 2023 Pick for Vulture | The Washington Post | Publishers Weekly | Men's Health | IGN | Polygon | Goodreads | Amazon | Nerd Daily | WeAreBookish | Paste | B...

New Year’s Eve ONLY —

THE WATER OUTLAWS ebook is $2.99!!!!

🗡 Genderdiverse bandits.
🌟 A female protagonist in her 40s.
🏮 Like a Hong Kong martial arts movie, but super, duper queer.

us.macmillan.com/books/978125...

1) i have for a long time collected words for later use
2) i kind of hate having to make up sounds for genre names
3) the book owes an inspiration debt to Friends at the Table, a real play podcast of folks who are MASTERS of the art of real-world-as-name, and who kind of introduced me to the trend!

YOU ARE WELCOME FOR THE THOUGHTS craft talk is catnip for me so i am almost always happy to delve!!

and yeah, there was just a point when i realized that the 2nd person did some excellent stuff for the layered identity crisis and fucky power dynamics

and also it will not surprise to learn that reading Homestuck erased all my trepidation regarding getting funky with second person