Girls and boys and everything between

My 2007 interview with the WPR program To The Best of Our Knowledge will air again this coming week (starting on Sunday). I talk with host Jim Fleming about Dangerous Space, the character of Mars, and gender in fiction and life, and do a brief reading. I very much enjoyed the conversation with Jim — he’s a great host, asked thoughtful questions, and gave me lots of room to wave my arms around (in the way one does on the radio, grin).

If you’d like to hear it, you can find your local station here, or use this direct link to the mp3 of the show. My segment starts at about 38:30.

And in the spirit of it all, here’s a little something I’ve always loved. You don’t have to go far to find the wild side — it’s right there between your ears. Have fun with yours today.


(Click here if you can’t see the audio player.)

Putting on my interviewing hat

As many of you know, I’m a staff writer for @U2, the #1 U2 fan website in the world. I’m there because I’m a stone U2 fan, and because of how much I enjoy working with @U2 founder and editor Matt McGee. He’s built a great site and runs a great team of people who keep it going.

And now Matt’s published his first book — U2 – A Diary. It’s a comprehensive history of the band in diary format, interspersed with stories, rare photos, and interesting factoids. And it’s not just a collection of details — Matt’s a journalist by training, and he’s always looking for the connections, for the way that events have shaped the overall story of U2. He’s done a fantastic job, and I believe the book will become a must-have for every serious fan, and a cool-to-have for anyone who’s interested in how four creative people manage their relationships and make their music for more than 30 years.

And it’s a very 21st-century book in a particular way — Matt established a website for the book while he was researching and writing, and encouraged fans to participate by helping ferret out details. He’s already generated tons of excitement in the U2 fan community just by giving people a window into the process.

We’re all totally jazzed about it over at @U2, and I’ve just done an interview with Matt in which he shares many stories of how the book came together. In interviews and in person, Matt is real and funny and very self-effacing (the staff had to pretty much bully him into letting us support the book on the site, but hey, we’re just that ornery so it all worked out). Enjoy the interview, and do feel free to buy the book (grin).

And while you’re over at @U2, let me also point you to an interview I did with Michka Assayas (whose book I excerpted in yesterday’s post). He’s a great interview subject, smart and curious and very accessible. (Michka, if you happen to be googling yourself and end up here, do you remember this interview? I enjoyed our conversation very much, and it’s fun to revisit it today.)

I like doing these kinds of interviews. I spend a lot of time crafting the questions, looking for a tone and approach that I hope will connect with the subject, based on what I know (or perceive) about them. You’ll see a tone difference in the questions in these two interviews, but also, I hope, a consistency of focus. I’m interested in people’s process and their experiences of being creative, and I try to make my questions potentially expansive, the kind that give people the chance to talk about the truth of their feelings if they wish to. It’s a real joy for me when people take the questions seriously, and respond as thoughtfully as Michka and Matt. I hope you’ll enjoy reading them.

And now I am off to the rest of my day, ending with salad and spaghetti and alcohol and, I very much hope, Barack Obama’s acceptance speech. I think I may burst into tears at that point, but it’s okay, Nicola is used to it.

A lovely day to you all.

Reality Break podcast interview

Head on over to Reality Break and listen to my 2007 interview with my good friend Dave Slusher. Our lengthy (47 minute) conversation ranges from the power of performance to competence in characters to the origins of the story Dangerous Space… I enjoyed doing it, and I hope you’ll enjoy hearing it.

I talk in the interview about how special it was for me to put together the collection and have the chance to consider years of work in a contained way. It turns out the same thing is true for me with this interview. Dave gave me the chance to talk about things I’ve been thinking about for a while, and to string together a number of different ideas and perspectives about my work into a single conversation. Very fun for me, and illuminating in ways I didn’t expect. Kind of like writing that way (grin).

Dave, thanks so much for the chance to be part of Reality Break. It was a genuine pleasure.

Queer Universes

Nicola and I have a new joint essay called “War Machine, Time Machine” just published in Queer Universes: Sexualities in Science Fiction, edited by Wendy Gay Pearson, Veronica Hollinger and Joan Gordon.

Queer Universes is an academic publication from Liverpool University Press. We ourselves are not academic (smile), but we do a great job in irreverent footnotes. You’ll see.

Here’s a little excerpt of one of my parts of the essay:

I despise conscious theme, the great battering ram on the literary war machine. It subverts story. It renders characters nearly non-dimensional. It makes for some truly terrible dialogue. Good writers smile a polite ‘no’ when the theme tray is passed around, and instead allow theme to emerge from a well-told story about people who engage us because their choices, fears and hopes seem real, even if they are as strange to us as the surface of Pluto.
 
It’s vital for people who live outside of the dominant culture to find themselves reflected in positive ways within that culture. When those images don’t exist, we create them. It’s important and essential. But the goal should be to expand the boundaries of art, not establish new and increasingly granular rules and categories (never-het-dykes, bears, BDSM femmes, Log Cabin leathermen…) by which to label one another. I want people to write stories about strong women, people of colour, people of varied sexual orientation or physical condition, in order to make space in the cultural discussion for such people — not to set up a gay and lesbian table in the corner, as my stepbrother’s first wife did at their wedding reception so ‘Nicola and I would have people to talk to.’
 
From the essay “War Machine, Time Machine” by Nicola Griffith and Kelley Eskridge, in Queer Universes.

As much as I like myself and Nicola, I don’t think our essay alone is necessarily worth $85 (especially since we will regain the right to re-publish it on our websites early next year). But if you’re at all interested in queer theory, gender theory, and the expression of LGBTI etc. experience in speculative fiction, then there’s a lot in this book that will appeal. Please encourage your local library to order a copy — the editors would appreciate it, and so would we.

Congratulations to Wendy, Veronica and Joan, and thanks for including us.

We’re no angels

There is a bit of insanity in dancing that does everybody a great deal of good. — Edwin Denby

I don’t expect heaven when I die, but I’m getting a little Heaven right here in Seattle — the new location of my part-time dancing gig.

Dancers are on summer hiatus — things typically slow down in July and August, and the Hot Flash schedule is variable because of Mariners’ games (baseball in Seattle = parking hell). But the dances and the dancers will be back on a regularly scheduled basis in September.

In the meantime, I’m making noises with the management about a volunteer schedule — hey, I’ll be there dancing anyway, may as well do it on stage — but we’ll see. Either way, come dance with me on July 26 (Hawaiian shirt and bikini night!) and August 16. (Sorry, guys — Hot Flash dances are for women and transgendered people only.)

Interview at Enter the Octopus

Matt Staggs at Enter the Octopus is running interviews with the short fiction writers mentioned in Jeff VanderMeer’s recent list of favorites.

Here’s my interview with Matt.

Enjoy. And be sure and check out the rest of the interviews, it’s a very interesting collection of responses. Matt, thanks for supporting all of us this way — I really appreciate it.

Asimov’s SF reviews Dangerous Space

A lovely review of Dangerous Space from Paul di Filippo at Asimov’s SF, who also had many wonderful things to say about Nicola’s memoir.

In her much-anticipated debut collection, Dangerous Space, Kelley Eskridge can sound like Samuel Delany, Theodore Sturgeon, Fritz Leiber, or Joanna Russ, while still maintaining her own unique throaty, modulated voice. A non-trivial accomplishment indeed. These seven stories cover a wide territory stylistically and venue-wise, while all adhering to the same authorial POV that regards the world as a dangerous, delightful place, where extending oneself to others and opening oneself up to experience necessarily entails the possibility of suffering. “Strings” presents a future where music has been robbed of improvisation. “And Salome Danced” gives us an actor with some uncanny supernatural abilities. A “dust-devil” bag lady holds some startling secrets in “City Life.” Postmodern sword and sorcery is the motif in “Eye of the Storm,” while a cyberpunkish vision appertains to “Somewhere Down the Diamondback Road.” Original to this collection, the long title story is a mimetic rendition of the pop musician’s life. And finally, “Alien Jane” brings us inside a cruel mental asylum where the title character undergoes a lab-animal existence narrated by a fellow patient who might be her only friend. Eskridge’s output accretes only slowly–”the oldest story here dates from 1990–”but like well-aged wine, these tales decant superbly.
Asimov’s SF, July 2008

Nicola won the Lammy!

Last night, Nicola won the Lambda Literary Foundation Award for women’s memoir. It was a lovely event at the Silver Screen Theatre in the Pacific Design Center in LA, attended by many of the best queer writers in the world.

Nicola was awesome. She gave a heartfelt, moving speech that clearly touched the audience. And it was absolutely terrific to see so many people approach her with such genuine admiration and good wishes. A grand evening.

Or, as I love to say, my sweetie rocks!

Congratulations to all the winners and nominees. Thank you to the organizers who worked so hard to put the event together. And thanks especially to all the people with whom we had great conversations and from whom we felt such goodwill.

AfterEllen interview

A new interview on AfterEllen.com with Lillian Faderman, Nancy Garden, Sarah Waters, Sammin Sarif, Val McDermid, Charlotte Mendelson, Ariel Shrag, Amy Bloom, Joan Larkin, Rebecca Walker, Karin Kallmaker, and me.

I love this format — a roundup of writers answering similar questions in so many different ways — and I’m honored to be in the company of all these writers. Sarah Waters is brilliant, Val McDermid is a funny, gracious woman in whose company I’ve spent some really good time, Nancy Garden is one of my YA writing heroes, and so on… It’s very cool to read the thoughts of so many smart, intense women who are so diverse as writers.

The link at the top of the post is the direct link to my part. But please don’t stop with me — here’s a link to Part 1 of the article, and the entirety of Part 2.

Because we should all be able to marry as we choose

Earlier this month, the California Supreme Court ruled that the “fundamental right to marry” extends to same-sex couples.

Nicola and I would marry in a hot second if it were a federally-recognized legal relationship, and this ruling in California is an important step towards that higher goal.

The Office of the Governor of California has set up a hotline for a public opinion vote on this decision. Please call in and support the ruling.

ANYONE can vote in the poll. You don’t have to live in California. You don’t have to speak to a human being — it’s a fully automated system. All you have to do is:

1. call 916-445-2841
2. press options 1 (english); 5 (to vote on a hot topic); 1 (LGBT issue); 1 (vote yes).

If you are lesbian or gay or bisexual; if you have family or friends who are; if you want to be an ally; if you think that we all have the right to marry the person of our choice — then please call in with your vote.

Thank you very much for any support you choose to give. I appreciate it.