On New Year’s Eve, I posted on Facebook that I didn’t really consider 2013 a “bad” year, because the phrase implied a certain passiveness. No, 2013 wasn’t bad; it was actively hostile.
Resolve
A Very Merry Metal Christmas to all!
Hey, remember when I used to have a website?
Weekly Roundup: Writing Machine
Wherein I have entered some kind of a writing fugue state and therefore have not left my house barely at all in a solid week. Send assistance.
Weekly Roundup: Time Flies
Holy hell, a week went by and I posted nothing. I’ve been keeping my head down and writing my ass off and being generally overwhelmed, which means I’m putting up a hell of a lot of links here in one fell swoop.
TIFF Review: Metalhead (dir. Ragnar Bragason)
Not for a single moment of it’s 1:38 runtime does Metalhead do what you think it will.
TIFF Review: The Husband (dir. Bruce MacDonald)
The Husband, the latest film directed by Bruce McDonald is billed as a mix of comedy and horror, and while it possesses aspects of both, it only fits this definition by the broadest definitions.
Daily Roundup: A Study in Contrasts
Wherein it has come to my attention that promoters dislike it when you mention their events were poorly run and badly organized, and venues dislike it when you point out that their toilets were overflowing with poop.
Read more…
Book Camp TO, #DiverseCanLit and #DiversityinSFF
On Saturday, August 24th, I joyously participated in the BookCamp TO Unconference, a fantastic annual event that has a tendency to start wonderful and important conversations in the Canadian publishing industry. I sat on three of the sessions: the Diversity in Publishing panel with Leonicka Valcius, an AMA session with Emily Keeler, and a discussion on the future of poetry on Canada with Jay MillAr.
Pheobe Wang has written a lovely piece on BookCamp TO in The Town Crier for The Puritan, wherein she discusses the Diversity panel that Leonicka and I led in some detail. In particular, she mentioned the 25 Book Challenge, a personal reading,writing and reviewing challenge that each of us in the session issues to ourselves and each other at the end of the conversation. As Wang explains: “A highlight of the session was the proposal of a “25 book challenge,” in which readers attempt to read 25 books by authors they didn’t self-identify with.” The idea behind the challenge is to extend the boundaries of the work that we typically read, turning to work by authors and about characters who race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity etc. are different from our own.
One of the first, and most important steps anyone can take towards making the landscape of Canadian literature more diverse is to read more and more widely. Hence, the 25 Book Challenge. Anyone who would like to participate in the challenge is welcome to do so, and if you’d like, tweet the new books you’re reading along with the hashtag #DiverseCanLit to further participate in the conversation. There is also a mega-awesome Tumblr that you should follow!
Another important conversation currently taking place is that of increasing the diversity of science fiction and fantasy writing and publishing. As someone who reviews speculative fiction, this is something I actively want to improve in my own writing. I’ve asked for recommendations on Twitter, and will do so again here! Please feel free to send me any and all recommendations to help make my spec fic reading, and subsequent reviews, more diverse.
Daily Roundup: Raw
My partner has a long and storied relationship with professional wrestling; I have a long and storied relationship with finding professional wrestling stupid. It’s been a long time since he watched it religiously (he used to write about it fairly frequently too), but he drifted away once MMA cast the spell of being an actual sport over his heart.
Daily Roundup: Fireplug
So last night, my boyfriend affectionately referred to me as a “fireplug.” Another term for fire hydrant, it’s used to refer to a particular athletic body often found in wrestlers: short, stocky, stubby-limbed, but strong as hell and with a wicked low centre of gravity.
I’m rather fond of the term.
