World Fantasy Con‘s Programming has been released and I can proudly announce I will be doing a reading.
Pacific 6/7 on Saturday at 3pm.
I think I’ll do The Rugged Track if it’s a new bunch of people.
If it’s people who’ve heard me read before I think I’ll do “Maia Blue is Going Home” – it’s coming out in Anywhere But Earth in early November… though I can be swayed by requests and will have more with me.
Strange Horizons, spec fic magazine of gorgeousness (and publishers of my story “The Rugged Track“) are in the big meaty part of their fundraising drive. Strange Horizons are offering prizes to people who donate (and as an indicator of the other sorts of people who <3 SH, Ursula K. Le Guin has donated a signed copy). If you have money to spare this is a great way to support inclusive, interesting, thought-provoking fiction, and plenty of swag looks more than a little tasty.
Strange Horizons is staffed entirely by volunteers, so everything you donate goes towards the running of the magazine. At the moment, our costs break down something like this:
* from http://strangehorizons.com/fund_drives/2011/main.shtml
The full programming will be available on the Renovation website in a day or two (This year’s Worldcon is in Reno this year from August 17-21).
I’m super excited and grateful to be on a range of panels with some fantastic company. I have a reading of my own on Sunday. I hope you can join me for my convention solo reading debut.
Wed 14:00 – 15:00, Breaking into Comics (Panel), A01+6 (RSCC)
So, you want to be a comic writer or artist? Are you prepared enough to enter the field? Is reading 50+ comics per week enough prep?
Liz Argall (Moderator) Bill Willingham, Phil Foglio, Tanglwyst de Holloway and Winona Nelson
Wed 15:00 – 16:00, Finding Your Home in the Art World (Panel), A02 (RSCC)
Book and game illustration, concept art, comics, theater and film… There are many directions an artist can explore. How do you choose? Do you have to? Hear from the voice of (widely varied) experience.
Lee Moyer (Moderator) Kaja Foglio, Liz Argall and Bridget Duffy
Thu 14:00 – 15:00, What to Do in a Disaster (Panel), A04 (RSCC)
Fire? Hurricane/Tornado? Earthquake? Tsunami? Nuclear incident? Are we as prepared as we can be, either individually, regionally or as a nation when a big event strikes?
Kay Tracy (Moderator), Gary Ehrlich, Liz Argall
Thu 22:00 – 23:00, Figure Drawing and Life Modeling (Demonstration), A13 (RSCC)
Experienced life model Liz Argall demonstrates how to get the most out of figure drawing with award-winning artist Bridget E. Duffy-Thorn.
Liz Argall and Bridget Duffy
Fri 11:00 – 13:00, Art Portfolio Reviews (Workshop), A18 (RSCC)
Art GoH and Art Directors review portfolios of aspiring Artists. Advance Registration Required – email art@renovationsf.org
Jon Schindehette, Lou Anders, Boris Vallejo, David Palumbo, Irene Gallo and Liz Argall
Fri 14:00 – 17:00, Painting Demo with the Vallejos (Demonstration),Hall 2 Demo5 (RSCC)
An on-going painting project; stop by to see artists in action between 2 and 5 on Friday afternoon
Julie Bell, Boris Vallejo, Anthony Palumbo, David Palumbo, Winona Nelson, Liz Argall (model).
Sat 11:00 – 12:00, Building Your Art Portfolio (Panel), A16 (RSCC)
Whip together all of your art pieces and voila! You have your art potfolio all ready to go! It’s that simple, right?
Jon Schindehette, David Palumbo, Liz Argall, Lee Moyer, Karen Haber
Sun 11:30 – 12:00, Reading: Liz Argall (Reading), A15 (RSCC)
Liz Argall reads stuff to you! If you have a particular story of mine you’d like drop me a line and I’ll see what I can do (so many choices, shall I do several shorts? one complete longer work? hmmmmm).
So I’ve written a bit about what I’m doing (and even more over on Objects of Love). What I haven’t mentioned here are the amazing things other people are doing. Here are just a few I know about. Some of these people I already know IRL. Some are people I have stumbled across through their writer pages. There are many other people doing creative things (and feel free to mention yourself in comments, with so many terrific people worthy of love I might have missed you) – here’s a small sampling of my faves.
Unusual creative outlets:
Writer craft – creator community
These folks are doing cool things, but I should add, some people (like me) love this kind of incentive and challenge. Other creators don’t get a buzz out of this kind of thing. Everyone who does stuff in the write-a-thon, everyone who stretches themselves, explores creative paths or knuckles down is doing very cool stuff.
And every time you send a dollar to a creator, tied to a specific project or showing support, you supporting the arts, you are making writers feel loved and you rock.
Late Breaking News
Thanks to a rambly facebook conversation you may also ask me to record one of my existing songs for $20. This is utterly terrifying, but that’s what experimental playing fields like the Write-a-thon are for. Jenny Mason has sponsored the Phone Song.
In other news
Day 1 has been posted up at Love Letters to Inanimate Objects. Love letter to a Spork is up there. If I don’t collapse first I’ll be posting something there tonight (I won’t be cross-posting much ’cause I don’t want to clutter your lives).
My love letters to inanimate objects project is in its early days, but this is what I have discovered so far (who knows where the stream will take me next, 6 weeks in length I hope for more mutations and new creative challenges).
Several works have been completed and have been sent to their initiators. They will go live in Week 1 of the write-a-thon on website I am creating right now https://objectsoflove.wordpress.com . If you go there now you can see it in all its ugly duckling grandeur as I fiddle with themes and play with content. The subscribe button on the right hand side works however!
As you can see, one of the first things I’ve discovered is that this project wants its own space to play and breathe in.
Discoveries – preparation – 24 June 2011
Some people gave me my prompts early and I was unable to resist the pull of their nouns. Denying the tug of inspiration for the Write-a-thon seemed to go against the Write-a-thon’s deepest principals and so I went with it and began creating.
When I imagined this fun project a year ago I thought it would be a good opportunity to throw myself with wild passionate abandon into things far from myself. …
Subscribers have had it in their hands for a week, but my story is now available free for everyone on Daily Science Fiction. A Study in Flesh and Mind.
The feedback has been really nice thus far and that has warmed all the cockles in my heart. I may have to revisit the Albury-Wodonga Academy of Fine Arts and Neuroscience sometime.
Daily Science Fiction doesn’t have bio photos as part of its formatting, but if it did here’s a link to my earlier blog post with a very rare life model photo. How safe it is for work will depend on your workplace (it is lifemodel-ly but not pink bits-y. Photo taken while the Canberra Times were interviewing me for an article about the Parisian Life Model strike.)
John Scalzi’s reading last night was lovely on multiple levels. Great to hang out with friends, great special surprises, lovely reading and Mr Scalzi is of course adorable, thoughtful, funny and engaging. I particularly enjoyed how he smiled and eyes got all soft and dreamy when mention of his wife crossed his lips. Folks speaking of the ones they love is always a delight to see.
Speaking of marriage Scalzi stated his support for same sex marriage and said (to paraphrase and semi-make up from memory) “What do I lose from same sex marriage? Nothing? I enjoy being married *cue soft smiley face* my gay friends should be able to enjoy that too. I don’t lose a thing.”
I would go a step further and encourage folks in general to shift language to the positive (no criticism of Mr Scalzi here, indeed thanks for inspiring this post and being an all round good guy). “What do I lose” is a place to start when people are processing their fear around sexualities, but we can move through that to something that isn’t reacting against perceived badness as part of its structure.
As a happily married contextually heterosexual gal I feel like it’s not about “what do I lose” when I have everything to gain from same sex marriage. Making marriage equally and equitably accessible is a positive gain for everybody (though some might need to move past fear to get there). When the consensual love between two people is made lesser because of some chromosomal bigotry I feel it diminishes all consensual love.
I have even more to gain from universal gay rights because it frees me from an additional burden of privilege guilt that I carry around. There’s a lot of heterosexual privilege that exists in the world (there are many articles and checklists if you’re not sure what this means, here’s one) and as someone who was brought up with a sense of fairness it rankles that things like privilege exist. It’s just not fair and it makes me grumpy. On a basic pleasure principal and because smiles breed smiles when my friends suffer less, when folks I don’t know suffer less, I benefit.
When smart people of amazing capacity do not have their capacity limited because of bullshit prejudice I get to enjoy so much more of what they have to bring to the world. When a woman who looses her wife is given the cultural space to grieve and be supported I benefit. When a man who loses his husband does not also lose his home and pension I benefit.
Often heterosexual priviledge is invisible, but the fact that I get to live at all in the USA is grounded in heterosexual privilege and I have to look at it every day. If I had fallen in love with a woman instead of a man I would not be able to live in this country. There are friends I never would have met, conventions I never would have gone to, publishing opportunities I never would have had and rawking writers workshops I never would have done. The idea that the gender of the person I love could have rendered all that impossible chills me to the bone, it makes me feel sick and sad and guilty that so much of what I have now is built on heterosexual privilege when it doesn’t have to be.
Privilege, to my mind, diminishes accomplishments. It adds a sour note to every victory no matter how much struggle it took to get there (ah yes, I got that, but did I get it on my own merits is that just because I’m ‘pretty’? because I’m white? because my situation is monogamous hetero? because of my intellectual middle class upbringing?). There’s always a part of me looking for some way to undercut praise, and that’s not always healthy, but privilege is real, inequality is real.
Where inequality exists it makes us less than what we could be. When a voice is silenced the choir loses complexity and volume or the music festival looses a stage.
So on purely selfish terms I don’t lose a damn thing with same sex marriage in the world. I gain, my life becomes richer and healthier because of it.
Wiscon is not very far away at all at all! – Wiscon being a mighty feminist science fiction convention held every year in Wisconsin.
This will be my first Wiscon and I am quite excited. I will be doing a reading and two panels.
11up – Writer Readings. Cycles of Life. Salacious, sacrificial, silly, sentimental and severe.
Sat, 2:30–3:45 pm Michelangelos
Liz Argall, Keffy R.M. Kehrli, Valya Dudycz Lupescu, Margaret Ronald and Monica Valentinelli
With about 10 minutes a piece we aim to entertain. I am planning to read from an unpublished story of mine that I am very fond of. It’s called “Love is a component of this story”. It’s my love letter to Kurt Vonnegurt, though I do have a few love letters to Oscar Wilde I’m tempted by as well.
Doing the Industrial Revolution Right
Sun, 12:00–1:15 am Senate A
Philip Kaveny, Liz Argall, Richard F. Dutcher, Michael J. “Orange Mike” Lowrey and ANONYMOUS.
Is there a way to develop a modern industrial society without devastating environmental and cultural destruction, and without creating enormous social inequality?
Communication Technologies as Tools of Revolution
Mon, 10:00–11:15 am Conference 3
Christopher Davis, Liz Argall, Jim Leinweber, Rowan Littell and Sunny Moraine
First, let’s discuss the various communication technologies and the tools to use them: the Internet, satellite, cell and broadcast; email, instant messaging, social media, and ham radio. Then let’s talk about how they advance social change and how can we make them more effective in social change work. Some possibilities: routing around failure, preserving anonymity, collating assistance and organizing efforts, and auto-translating.