Kindling is a World Fantasy Award finalist

Tue 22 Jul 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Awards, Kathleen Jennings| Posted by: Gavin

Congratulations to all the finalists for the World Fantasy Awards, especially Kathleen Jennings, whose debut collection, Kindling, is one of five finalists for Best Collection.

Kelly, the sole woman, and I — one of six men — are finalists for “Special Award – Non-Professional” for LCRW, and yay for that. However, if you’re voting this year I hope you will choose DeVaun Saunders, for Fiyah, or Steve J. Shaw, for Black Shuck Books, who are both nominated for the first time, and help keep this annual award invigorated and fresh.

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Kathleen Jennings and Kij Johnson Redux

Wed 16 Apr 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Awards, Kathleen Jennings, Kij Johnson| Posted by: Gavin

Kathleen Jennings’s Kindling: Stories has been shortlisted for the Aurealis Award — “Australia’s premier speculative fiction award” — for Best Collection.

The cover for Kathleen’s next novel, Honeyeater, dropped and it is worth clicking on the link.

Also of note, Kathleen did the cover art and half-page pen-and-ink illustrations for Kij Johnson’s forthcoming RiverBank roleplaying game which is being crowdfunded right now on Backerkit and has more than doubled the original goal.

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Kathleen at the Brisbane Writers Festival

Thu 30 May 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., book festivals, Kathleen Jennings| Posted by: Gavin

Kathleen will be on a couple of panels at the Brisbane* Writers Festival this coming weekend. We went to that festival I think a couple of times and loved it. Kathleen is on not just one but two panels with Naomi Novik whose Scholomance books I wholeheartedly recommend. Shelley Parker Chan is also on both of those panels and Angela Slatter — to whom Kindling is dedicated — is also on the Gothic Tales panel.

For a little more about Kathleen’s stories, she just posted notes on each story in Kindling.

* Friends (lovingly) called Brisbane BrisVegas and it stuck for me. Maybe one day they’ll have a BrisVegas Writers Fest.

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Aurealis Convenors’ Award for Excellence for Jennings, et al.

Tue 28 May 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Awards, Kathleen Jennings| Posted by: Gavin

Kathleen Jennings, along with Helen Marshall and Jo Anderton, received the Aurealis Convenors’ Award for Excellence for their article “Science fiction for hire? Notes towards an emerging practice of creative futurism”! (read here)

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Kathleen Jennings at the Brisbane Square Library

Fri 17 May 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kathleen Jennings, readings| Posted by: Gavin

Brisbane Square Library has booked Kathleen Jennings for a local launch event for her debut collection, Kindling on Friday 14 June, 6 p.m.* AEST (Australian Eastern Standard Time).

* Flat Earthers please note the time is local, no matter where you live.

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Big Moods

Tue 16 Apr 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kathleen Jennings| Posted by: Gavin

Every month is cruel yet April still tries to claim the mantle of cruelest. Why the big mood? Powell’s is digging into it with a Big Mood Sale: Feel the love, or the angst, or the joy, or all the feelings, as long as they’re BIG. Enjoy big savings on new fiction that delivers the full range of human emotions, as only a great book can! Part of this sale: Kindling by Kathleen Jennings as well as new books from Scarlett Thomas, Jennifer Croft’s The Extinction of Irina Rey, and more.

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Kathleen & Kelly Tomorrow

Mon 4 Mar 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kathleen Jennings, Kelly Link, Working Writer's Daily Planner| Posted by: Gavin

We have a unique intercontinental event coming up tomorrow at 5 p.m. Central Time with Kathleen Jennings and Kelly Link talking about their first collection, Kindling: Stories (Kathleen), and first novel, The Book of Love (Kelly).

We’ve worked with Kathleen for about 15 years. I think the first project was the striking and beautiful cover for Greer Gilman’s Cloud & Ashes.

Before Kindling, the biggest projects we worked with her on were the 2012 edition of our Working Writer’s Daily Planner* and illustrating Kij Johnson’s Wind in the Willows follow-up, The River Bank. Both books were complicated, unusual, and extraordinarily interesting and fun to work on which meant that when she queried us on her first collection we were very familiar with her work and also her ways of working. So despite her coming to the end of her PhD program(!), we knew she’d be responsive and proactive — two things I struggle more and more with!

Anyway, all of which is to say, hope you will join this event tomorrow:

 

* I looked at the Daily Planner for the first time in years for this post and I am still charmed and entertained seeing Kathleen’s art all through it. She did monthly headers and spot illustrations — I’ve added a few screenshots below. I still really enjoy those planners. I don’t know if someone is making something like them now, hope so.

I ran out of time to do our edition — our kid was 2-3 years old and keeping the press running was enough for me. The final death knell was in waiting for the pre-orders to come in from Am*zon. The Planners were full color throughout and we printed them in the US. I had to get them to the printer quite early but Am*zon — who sold a good number of the 2011 edition — would not give our sales reps their order for the 2012 edition.

That year we published our two-volume “Best of” Ursula K. Le Guin short stories, collections by Kij Johnson, Elizabeth Hand, and Nancy Kress, a chapbook from Hal Duncan, Ayize’s first novel, and more. The friction and uncertainty of not getting the number was too much and although I loved the project I had to drop it. I printed what was needed through Lulu and that was it. I’d like to say I never regretted it but while that’s not true it’s also not a big thing. I’m glad we did it, that people enjoyed it, and it proved again that Kathleen was a great person to work with on a complicated project.

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Sparks

Tue 23 Jan 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kathleen Jennings| Posted by: Gavin

Today is the official publication day for Kathleen Jennings’s first collection of short stories, Kindling. Kathleen has illustrated many of our book covers over the last 15 years. She worked with Kij Johnson and did the cover and many interior illustrations for The River Bank; she provided covers for two issues of our zine, LCRW; and also did the cover and interior illustration for Margo Lanagan’s chapbook Stray Bats.

As a writer, she contributed comics to each of our Candlewick Press anthologies Steampunk! and Monstrous Affections, as well as two stories to LCRW. Both of those stories were reprinted in Best of the Year anthologies. And now, at last!, we are elated to publish Kathleen’s debut collection, Kindling, in both hardcover and paperback. Kindling collects a dozen fantastic tales including “Annie Coal” which is published here for the first time.

Book Riot includes the book on a list of good books out today and Charlotte’s review just went up on her Library. If you’re new to Kathleen’s writing here are two completely different stories, The Present Only Toucheth Thee published in Strange Horizons and The Heart of Owl Abbas originally published on Tor.com.

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The Heart of Owl Abbas

Thu 4 Jan 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kathleen Jennings, read| Posted by: Gavin

Kathleen Jennings’s new book, Kindling, her first collection of stories, is being trucked from printer to distributor and from there on its way to shops, cafes, backpacks, bedside tables, ship’s libraries, and a few to alternate worlds. One of those worlds might be the one where her story The Heart of Owl Abbas is set:

Cautious even in despair, Excelsior shredded the gossamer spell into cheap sentiment and tramping rhythm, and sent it by nip-fingered courier below where, unintended, the words fell like fire-inches, like sparks in kindling.

The rooms of roses burn,
The lanterns are turned high.
Petty Street, long starved for light,
Lifts a ravening eye.

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Not the Delaware Attorney General

Thu 21 Dec 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kathleen Jennings| Posted by: Gavin

Not to be missed in all of this, in January we’re publishing Kathleen Jenning’s first collection of stories, Kindling.

The printer, Maple Press in York, PA, is about to ship the hardcover and trade paperbacks to our distro, Consortium, whose main warehouse in an Ingram one in Jackson, TN. Once they’re received and sorted, Consortium will start shipping the books out to bookstores, libraries, me(! — well, Book Moon), and so on, and everyone in the whole world will get ready to celebrate the publication day, January 23rd, by setting the world on fire, overthrowing repressive governments, installing solar power and batteries, buying more bikes, and reading this collection of modern folk and fairy tales.

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A Treat for Readers

Mon 25 Sep 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kathleen Jennings| Posted by: Gavin

Our first book of 2024 has received a good early review in Kirkus Reviews — there’s a hilarious tag line at the end — but this will give you a good idea of why we’re publishing it and how enjoyable it is:

Old tales and new turning points converge in a dozen fantasy-rich stories.
Here’s a treat for readers who wish each fable launched by the words “Once upon a time” would segue into a cautionary tale punctuated with mythical motifs and genuine danger. In the opener, “The Heart of Owl Abbas,” a songwriter and a songbird in a mythical land bring forth one final song. “Skull and Hyssop” taps into the swashbuckling spirit of old Errol Flynn movies with its tale of a reluctant pirate and a low-powered enchantress at odds with a government flunky. Meanwhile, “A Hedge of Yellow Roses” is steeped in medieval lore; we meet a masterless knight on the run, carrying only “news of the murder of a King, a sword wrapped in a cape and tied to my saddle, and a secret so close to my own heart that even I did not then suspect it.” A child walks through fire in “Ella and the Flame,” two lovers of death find each other in “Not To Be Taken,” and a stowaway boggart causes a bit of chaos in “On Pepper Creek.” Even when the book veers past familiar fantasy into the boundlessly imaginative, it’s still beautifully composed, as in “The Present Only Toucheth Thee,” in which a storybook offers its own postmortem in the form of poetry, and “The Tangled Streets,” which features an enchantress helping a troubled young man find his true form. More often, it’s luridly imaginative—see the helpful amateur cryptozoologist in “Undine Love”—and genuinely exciting, like the ending of the title story: “No, I can’t stay any longer. I’ve been tangled in this story for too long. I have tigers to hunt, dragons to slay. An old friend to find.”
Women with guts and men of good fortune in search of their personal treasures.

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Set the World on Fire

Mon 8 May 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kathleen Jennings| Posted by: Gavin

And now, with the release of the cover art for Kathleen Jennings’s debut collection, Kindling, all our forthcoming 2023 books have covers.

The art is by Kathleen herself and features a slightly different take on some of her trademark lino cut art. Kathleen will post about her side of the process on her blog, which I always recommend to see an artist in action.

Kindling comes out in October when the trees here in Western Mass will be matching the matchbox on the cover January 2024. It has a baker’s dozen of fairy tales and more. We’ll put the full table of contents online soon. In the meantime, here’s the rather striking cover:

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Congratulations, Kathleen!

Wed 4 Nov 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Awards, Kathleen Jennings| Posted by: Gavin

We are so delighted that among all the crappiness of an uncertain election and millions of people somehow choosing Tr*mp despite the last 4 years there is the lovely news that Kathleen Jennings received this year’s World Fantasy Award for best artist.

Delighted, not only because last year we published Margo Lanagan’s chapbook, Stray Bats, illustrated by Kathleen and Laurie J. Marks’s Air Logic with a cover by Kathleen (which completed a fabulous piece of interlocking art she created over 5 years or so), and recently we published Kij Johnson’s The River Bank with a cover and illustrations by Kathleen as well as Christopher Rowe’s Telling the Map with a cover by Kathleen, but because she is a delightful person who adds joy to any day in which you see her. So, congrats to all the winners and especially this time to Kathleen.

      

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Kathleen Jennings Live Sketching

Wed 20 Nov 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal., event, Kathleen Jennings| Posted by: Gavin

This Friday evening we’re looking forward to Grrl’s Night Out on Cottage Street in Easthampton — we’re celebrating the publication of Kathleen Jennings’s & Margo Lanagan’s chapbook, Stray Bats, with an exhibition of her original illustrations (for the chapbook & more) and an eggnog-and-snacks-fueled reception:

Art Show Reception with On-the-Spot Sketching from 7 – 8 p.m.

Sketches Available for Purchase by acclaimed visiting Australian artist & illustrator Kathleen Jennings. Art exhibit with original illustrations for books by Holly Black, Cassandra Clare, Kij Johnson, Margo Lanagan, and more.
Event date: Friday, November 22, 2019 – 5:30pm to 9:30pm
Event address: Book Moon, 86 Cottage Street, Easthampton, MA 01027

Order your chapbook here or watch the Book Moon site to get an opportunity to pick up some of Kathleen’s amazing originals!

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Stray Bats in Los Angeles

Mon 28 Oct 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Cons, Kathleen Jennings, Margo Lanagan| Posted by: Gavin

If you are heading to LA this weekend for the 2019 World Fantasy Convention don’t miss your chance to get both Guest of Honor Margo Lanagan and Kathleen Jennings to sign your copy of their new chapbook Stray Bats.

We won’t be there (cf Book Moon) but I am happy to say — and very appreciative of their generosity — that it will be available from two lovely dealers in the dealers room, Patrick Swenson of Fairwood Press and Greg Ketter of DreamHaven.

As usual Kathleen will have work in the Art Show and she will also have extra copies of Stray Bats with her.

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New Margo Lanagan & Kathleen Jennings

Tue 17 Sep 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kathleen Jennings, Margo Lanagan| Posted by: Gavin

We are delighted to announce our second surprise Australian title of the year: Stray Bats by Margo Lanagan, illustrated by Kathleen Jennings.

Stray Bats, which is number 13 in our very occasional chapbook series, will be published on November 5, 2019. It will also be available at the World Fantasy Convention in Los Angeles (Oct. 31 – Nov. 3) where Margo will be a Guest of Honor and Kathleen, who was one of the World Fantasy Award judges this year, will be attending.

Stray Bats will be available as a 68-page, saddle-stitched chapbook, and as an ebook on Weightless Books as well as all the other usual ebooksites once the information filters out to them.

Both author and illustrator are probably quite familiar to our readers — I’ll drop their bios in at the end, though, just in case — and being long-time admirers of their work we could not resist this fabulous collaboration. Stray Bats began when Margo started writing short vignettes in response to poems from Australian women. She gathered those and sent them to Kathleen who responded in kind, in loose enjoyable pencil illustrations that capture the same quick, quirky smart energy of Margo’s responses. The result is this chapbook of short shorts which imitate the style, character or subject of a work for the purposes of celebrating the work. There are “Dachshund droids, sinister crones, shapeshifting children, a plethora of witches, dragonstalkers, familiars, slithering eels and, of course, bats.”

For those readers who wish to explore Lanagan’s inspirations further, she has included a list of poems that inspired her and notes on where those poems might be found.

We’re very much looking forward to publishing this tiny chapbook. You can pre-order or share info about it here.

Margo Lanagan has published two dark fantasy novels, and Stray Bats is her eighth short story collection. She collaborated with Scott Westerfeld and Deborah Biancotti on the New York Times-bestselling YA superheroes trilogy, Zeroes. Her work has won four World Fantasy Awards, nine Aurealis and five Ditmar Awards and been listed for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Dublin IMPAC Award, Shirley Jackson, Michael L. Printz, and Seiun awards, among others. Her books and stories have been translated into 19 languages. Margo lives in Sydney. Her twitter is @margolanagan.

 

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“An Absolutely Delightful Book”

Wed 27 Sep 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kathleen Jennings, Kij Johnson| Posted by: Gavin

Michael Dirda is delighted by Kij Johnson’s The River Bank — as you can see in his new review just posted in the Washington Post:

“If you’re going to write a sequel to one of the most beloved children’s books of all time, you’ll need to be pitch perfect, hit all the right notes and, at its end, leave your reader shouting “Bravo!” Or in this case, “Brava!” and “Encore!” Kij Johnson has brought out an absolutely delightful book, as charming and funny and rereadable as Kenneth Grahame’s “Wind in the Willows” itself.”

Yay! There are a couple of Kathleen Jennings’s illustrations included in the review (they “add just the right extra magic”) and a comparison to Georgette Heyer. Not bad for a Wednesday morning!

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The Story Spilling Over

Thu 14 Sep 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kathleen Jennings, Kij Johnson| Posted by: Gavin

Occasionally I read a review of a book we’ve published and it makes me want to pick up the book and read it all over again. I just had that experience reading Amal El-Mohtar’s review of The River Bank on the NPR website. Amal begins her review writing about fan fiction and reading that made me wonder if fan fiction was labelled something else, would it be more acceptable to those who don’t like it? Much of the time fan fiction can pass me by but then Kij sent us a book that Amal accurately labels fan fiction and I love it. I love a book in conversation with another but sometimes, ach, you know how it is. There’s no one rule that describes even one reader’s preferences. I know a good book when I see it! Right? Sure.

Enough of me, here’s a part of Amal’s review. I urge you to read the whole thing:

I was never less than delighted with this book. From beginning to end, it thoroughly charmed and engaged me, speaking the native literary language of my childhood. Like a river, it is in places languid and broad, in others narrow and rushing, the story spilling over sharp rocks of incident before pooling in afternoon sunshine, smelling of lilies and mud. I loved the sweetness of its pace, which spoke of a deep, abiding love not so much for the source material’s specific contents as their tone: a wistful, enchanted melancholy that walks hand in hand with summer’s end.

There are passages here that I treasure, that take up the timbre of Kenneth Grahame’s voice to speak of new things that feel timeless: the joys and pains of being an author at work; the changeability of a summer’s day from possibility to exhaustion; the quiet loneliness of a home half-dwelt in, a home asleep until woken by occupation, activity, presence. Sentences like “an animal lives in the long now of the world.” So much of this book dwells deeply in that long now.

In addition to its many native felicities, the text is embellished by Kathleen Jennings’ beautiful incidental illustrations, grace notes sounded in E. H. Shepard’s mode with a line reminiscent of Beatrix Potter and a sensibility all Jennings’ own.

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Return to the River Bank

Tue 12 Sep 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kathleen Jennings, Kij Johnson| Posted by: Gavin

Today, five years or so after we published Kij Johnson’s collection At the Mouth of the River of Bees we are delighted to be publishing her new novel The River Bank.

The River Bank is a sequel to Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows and, given Kij’s recent stories such as “Ponies” and “Spar”) you would not be the only one surprised that Kij had chosen this as one of her next projects. For us, the first illustrator who came to mind was Kathleen Jennings. Her detailed lines and light sense of whimsy combined with her deep knowledge of illustration made her the perfect choice and we were quite enchanted when she started sending pencil sketches for chapter and incidental illustrations.

So today the book comes out in a lovely paper-over-boards hardcover — we’ve never done that before, what fun! — and ebook editions. People seem to love it as much as we do and as much as we’d hoped, especially once they have it in their hands. It’s very different from Kij’s other work but as ever her love of the natural world and for animals shines through.

If you’re in the Kansas City environs, Kij is launching the book at the Raven Book Store tonight (so you can order a signed copy if you’d like) and she has a few more readings planned:

Sept. 12, 7 p.m. Raven Book Store, 6 East Seventh St., Lawrence, KS
10/14, 1 p.m., Uncle Hugo’s Bookstore, Minneapolis, MN
11/2-5, World Fantasy Convention, San Antonio, TX
11/20, 7 p.m., Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd., Beaverton, OR
11/21, 7 p.m., Elliot Bay Book Co., 1521 Tenth Ave., Seattle, WA

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SBP @ WFC 2014

Wed 29 Oct 2014 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Andy Duncan, Benjamin Rosenbaum, conventions, Delia Sherman, Eileen Gunn, Ellen Kushner, Kathleen Jennings, Nancy Kress, Sofia Samatar, Ysabeau S. Wilce| Posted by: Gavin

What’s going on? Too much to say! We have tables (and, hopefully, you know, books for sale on those tables) in the dealer room, and many, many Small Beer authors will be there including (although to paraphrase what The New Yorker always says at the start of their gig listing: authors live complicated lives and sometimes plans don’t work out):

Nathan Ballingrud, Ted Chiang, Andy Duncan, Jeffrey Ford, Eileen Gunn, Kathleen Jennings (all the way from Australia, wooee!), Kij Johnson, Nancy Kress, Ellen Kushner, Kelly Link, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Delia Sherman, Sofia Samatar, Ysabeau S. Wilce.

Here’s some of what I saw on the program list the other week. If you’re going, drop by and say hi!

Thursday

E. Nesbit and Her Influence
Time:  4 p.m.-5 p.m., Thursday,  Regency F
Panelists:  Benjamin Rosenbaum (M), Ginjer Buchanan, Robert Knowlton, S. T. Joshi
Description:  E. Nesbit published over forty children’s books, from the beloved The Railway Children to The Stories of the Treasure Seekers and Five Children and It. She also had a darker side, as seen in Something Wrong and Tales told in Twilight, collections of horror stories for adults. A writer of many sides, Nesbit had an influence on many writers, including C.S. Lewis, Michael Moorcock, and J.K. Rowling. The panel will discuss her work and why it continues to have an impact today.

Friday

Derived Myths: Making it Original
Time:  10 a.m.-11 a.m., Friday,  Regency F
Panelists:  Sandra Kasturi, Nick DiCharo (M), S. P. Hendricks, Ellen Kushner, Melissa Marr
Description:  There is no denying that the influence of various mythologies on fantasy, which have been inspiration for Lord Dunsay, Elizabeth Hand, Barry Hughart and many more. With a wealth of examples, the panel will discuss when the myth inspiration is the center of the work to when it has lead to a whole new mythos.

Language and Linguistics in Fantasy
Time:  10 a.m.-11 a.m., Friday,  Regency E
Panelists:  Lawrence M. Schoen (M), C.D. Covington, Matthew Johnson, Sofia Samatar
Description:  Foreign languages are often used in fantasy literature to add atmosphere, to show cultural backgrounds, and to bring a richness to the world, as can be seen in Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange and Richard Adams Watership Down. Some works rely on real languages. Others, such as Tolkien, have invented entire tongues of their own. Which stories incorporate other languages successfully, and where have authors stumbled, making too much of the work incomprehensible to the reader?

Reading: Nathan Ballingrud
Time: 10am-10:30am, Nov. 7, Fairfax

Adoption and Fostering in Fantasy
Time:  12 p.m.-1 p.m., Friday,  Regency F
Panelists:  Susan Dexter (M), Tina Connolly, Delia Sherman, Edward Willett
Description:  Adoption or fostering is often used in fantasy and horror literature, from Oedipus to Jon Snow, from young Wart helping in the kitchens before that fateful day when he pulled a sword out of a stone in Londontown, to the most famous orphan of them all, Harry Potter. Dozens of fantasies feature young orphans who do not know their parentage, from Richard in Wizard’s First Rule, to Will from the Ranger’s Apprentice series, who is a ward of the state, to even Frodo, who was an orphan, albeit an older one, at the beginning of his adventures. There is even one beloved character, Taren from the Prydain Chronicles, who never learns his parentage, and this mystery itself proves to be his key to assuming the kingship. How does adoption, bastardy, mixed parentage, long-lost relatives all contribute to epic quests for self-knowledge in literature?

Beyond Rebellion in Young Adult Fantasy
Time:  2 p.m.-3 p.m., Friday,  Regency F
Panelists:  Ysabeau Wilce (M), Gail Carriger, Sarah Beth Durst,
Description:  We all know the story of teen disaffection and rebellion, but there are plenty of Young Adult fantasies that maintain strong family ties, with rational adult role models, such as L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, Stephen Gould’s Impulse, or even Suzanne Collin’s Hunger Games. A look at books that don’t always have the hero with an unhappy home, discussion why this can also make an intriguing story.

Reading: Jeffrey Ford
Time: 5pm-5:30pm, Nov. 7, Arlington

Saturday

Fantasy Artists That Take Up the Pen
Time:  11 a.m.-12 p.m., Saturday,  Tidewater 2
Panelists:  Charles Vess (M), Kathleen Jennings, Greg Manchess, Ruth Sanderson
Description:  There are authors who are know for doing artwork, such as Beatrix Potter, Rudyard Kipling and Neil Gaiman, so it should be no surprise that artists can also be drawn to writing. The panel will discuss the impact of being both artist and writer and how these two creative forms interact.

Reading: Andy Duncan
Time: 11am-11:30am, Nov. 8, Fairfax

Reading: Kelly Link
Time: 11:30am-12pm, Nov. 8, Fairfax

Historical People in Fantasy
Time:  1 p.m.-2 p.m., Saturday,  Tidewater 2
Panelists:  Eileen Gunn (M), David B. Coe, Jack Dann, Jean Marie Ward, Rick Wilber
Description:  When using Samuel Adams, Joseph Warren, or perhaps on of the most used names, Nikola Tesla and other real people as characters in fiction, what liberties can an author take and what holes do they have to fill? How close to the real Jack Kerouac does Nick Mamatas get in Move Under Ground? What do creators owe to history, especially if the players are in a new world as in Philip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld series. The panel will discuss where historical truth meets literary license.

Lafferty as an American Fantasist
Time:  2 p.m.-3 p.m., Saturday,  Tidewater 2
Panelists:  Andy Duncan (M), Carrie Cuinn, Andrew Ferguson, Gordon Van Gelder, Don Pizarro, Cat Rambo
Description:  R. A. Lafferty was known for his original use of language and metaphor. Drawing on storytelling traditions of the Irish and Native Americans, but with his own twists, as in The Devil is Dead and The Flame is Green. The panel will explore how Lafferty used American history, American landscapes, and American folklore/mythology in his work.

Reading: Nicole Kornher-Stace
Time: 2:30pm-3pm, Nov. 8, Fairfax

Sunday

Young, Middle-Aged, and Older Writers
Time:  11 a.m.-12 p.m., Sunday,  Washington
Panelists:  Catherine Montrose (M), Nancy Kress, Kevin Maroney, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Description:  Some writers’ best work is the first thing they ever published. Others, like George R. R. Martin, get better with age. Others, such as Terry Pratchett, have maintained their quality over a span of decades. How does the age and/or generation of the writer affect the story? Also, does the age at which authors began to write matter? The bestselling Eragon was published by a young man of not yet twenty, while Tolkien did not get his first work published until he was forty-five. How does getting older affect an author’s work? How do they feel about their earlier works when they look back? Have our opinions, as readers, changed on this subject over time?

 

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Publication Day for A Stranger in Olondria

Tue 30 Apr 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kathleen Jennings, Sofia Samatar| Posted by: Gavin

Yay! Which makes it extra nice that the cover artist, Kathleen Jennings, posted her cover process sketches for A Stranger in Olondria. And did you see the cake one of Sofia’s friends made for her for the launch reading party at A Room of One’s Own? Nice! There will also be a party of some sort at WisCon next month. Wish we were going!

You can of course read an excerpt on Tor.com or download a pdf of the first 70 pages; read Sofia’s The Big Idea, and an Interview on the Qwillery. More reviews—yours?— will be coming soon. It’s a big beautiful book and we’re very happy to see it out there in the world being read. Raul M. Chapa of BookPeople in Austin, TX, gave us a great early boost when he sent us this note from reading a galley, thanks Raul!

If you’re curious for some of the inspirations for this huge book and the deep love of reading that thrums all through it, check out Sofia’s What Were They Reading post.

 

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Peter Dickinson in F&SF; Robert Reddick @ the library

Wed 12 Sep 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kathleen Jennings, Peter Dickinson| Posted by: Gavin

How cool is this? Peter Dickinson’s story “Troll Blood” is the above the headline story in F&SF this month. As Gordon points out in the story intro, Peter was last in F&SF in 1955! “Troll Blood” is one of six stories in Peter’s new collection Earth and Air, forthcoming from Big Mouth House. It’s at the printer as I type so it won’t be too long until you can get your hands on it.

Next Saturday, Sept. 15, at 10:30 am one of our fave local authors Robert Redick (have you read The Red Wolf Conspiracy? It’s fab!) is doing a panel this weekend at the Florence library: Writing Fantasy: Reflections on Craft. More info on the Straw Dogs Writers Guild page.

Go read this interview with the one and only Kathleen Jennings by Rowena Cory Daniells. There’s also a giveaway you should enter: “A little ink drawing of a famous quote with a word replaced by “duck” (artist retains right of veto/negotiation on quote, because I don’t have time to draw 14 ducks again – you don’t realise how many ducks that is until you have to draw them, but it is a lot of ducks).”

Top Shelf Comix is having a huge sale.

And that’s it for the open tabs. Ok, there was this crazy NYT story (which I read because I was reading a follow-up story about a restaurant whose owner, Lucy, I worked with nearly 20 years ago(!) in a restaurant in California). The tech story is about a business owner whose CTO apparently tried to start a competing company while still working at the first place, then when he was fired, he tried to take down the company through all the software backdoors he’d built into the system, and when the police, etc., tried to track him down they found he was living off the grid: no taxes filed, no credit cards, etc. Wow.

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Steampunk! ToC

Wed 19 Jan 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Cassandra Clare, Christopher Rowe, Cory Doctorow, Delia Sherman, Dylan Horrocks, Elizabeth Knox, Garth Nix, Holly Black, Kathleen Jennings, Kelly Link, Libba Bray, Shawn Cheng, steampunk, Ysabeau Wilce| Posted by: Gavin

Today Kelly and I are handing over the final copyedited manuscript of the anthology we’ve been working on for the last year or so: Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories to our editor, Deborah Noyes at Candlewick. Yay!

It’s been a huge amount of fun getting the stories (and two comics!) from the writers who hail from the US, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. There was the usual amount of last minute hijinks trying to corral 14 authors (including Kelly!) to go over the copyedits in superquick time, luckily for me none of them were on internet sabbatical.

But that it all done. The introduction is written, the bios are in, the stories are copyedited (and the copyediting arguments are over!) and so out the door it goes. Now we get to put together a website (although getting back to the 19th century and doing a website is harder than I expected it to be) and at some point soon we’ll get to post the cover. Candlewick showed us a couple of exciting cover roughs—more on that when it’s finalized.

And now: the table of contents!

Cassandra Clare, “Some Fortunate Future Day”
Libba Bray, “The Last Ride of the Glory Girls”
Cory Doctorow, “Clockwork Fagin”
Shawn Cheng, “Seven Days Beset by Demons” (comic)
Ysabeau Wilce, “Hand in Glove”
Delia Sherman, “The Ghost of Cwmlech Manor”
Elizabeth Knox, “Gethsemene”
Kelly Link, “The Summer People”
Garth Nix, “Peace in Our Time”
Christopher Rowe, “Nowhere Fast”
Kathleen Jennings, “Finishing School” (comic)
Dylan Horrocks, “Steam Girl”
Holly Black, “Everything Amiable and Obliging”

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