Local Paper Goodness

Fri 20 Oct 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

I was reading our local paper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette, at first breakfast with our kid (me: tea; toast: marmite; toast: peanut butter & banana) this morning & was delighted to see a review of Kij Johnson’s The Privilege of the Happy Ending — which Kij launches on Tuesday at the Raven Bookstore in Lawrence, Kansas, and then next week, 10/26-29, she’ll be a Guest of Honor at this year’s World Fantasy Convention in Kansas City, MO. I don’t know how Steve Pfarrer keeps up, he also wrote today’s above-the-fold story on Smith College Museum of Art’s new show, Sum of its Parts.

I was even more delighted when I followed the jump to read the rest of the review and found he had also reviewed Anya Johanna DeNiro’s “dreamlike, speculative novel” OKPsyche. I hope wherever you’re reading you have a decent local paper. If not, I highly recommend our paper which I finished reading when I went back for second breakfast with Kelly (porridge with miso and fresh tomato).

Review in the local paper! Titled "Fantasy fiction from Small Beer Press: The Privilege of the Happy Ending By Kij Johnson Small Beer Press Fantasy writer Kij Johnson has a long list of awards and award nominations to her name, from Nebula and Hugo Awards — two of the premiere prizes for fantasy and science fiction writing — to World Fantasy Awards. She and her publisher also have a good sense of humor: Her newest collection of work, “The Privilege of the Happy Ending,” includes the subtitle “Small, Medium & Large Stories.” (Many of the pieces have previously been published separately.) Published by Small Beer Press of Easthampton, “Privilege” indeed offers work of varying length, from vignettes of just a few pages to a novella-length tale, “The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe,” which won a World Fantasy Award; NPR voted it one of the best books of 2016.

Review of OKPsyche in our local paper, yay! The unnamed narrator of “OKPsyche,” a dreamlike, speculative novel by Anya Johanna DeNiro, lives in or around Minneapolis in a not-too-distant future in which climate change and economic inequality have brought increasing ugliness and violence to the country. “The street is mostly empty except for surplus-green tents in the greenway and armed guards in front of the luxury towers. The creative class needs tactical teams to protect them from people who are not them.” But the heart of this short novel, published by Small Beer Press, is about the narrator’s journey as a trans woman, someone who’s trying to come to terms with the pain of her closeted past even as she struggles to find her way in a fragile, uncertain present. Part of that present is the fallout from the narrator’s transition: Her ex-wife and 11-year-old son, Aaron, now live in another Midwestern state, and the narrator is desperate to reconnect with Aaron...