Finding the Queers (WisCon 30 Panel)

Panel Info

panel 255 finding the queers

Although books with GLBT characters are now published, they may not be marketed as GLBT books. We'll get together and compare our lists of favorite works with major GLBT characters, focusing on both new works and old.

Panelists

Ron Serdiuk (moderator), Lorraine Angela Donaldson, Rob Gates, Diane Silver

Notes/Transcript

Original transcription from Laura Quilter ... please add corrections, deletions, commentary, explanations, as needed

RG: it's like where's waldo

DS: it actually is

RS: books by glbt characters are published they might not be marketed as such

RS: bookseller from australia ... i'm queer ... i beg to differ ... get everyone to introduce themselves

JF: i write lesbian sf fantasy romance a few books in print, next book is coming out in two weeks time. ... bold strokes book ... lesbian book convention in atlanta 2 weeks time ... bel aire distribution ... available thru

LD: my name is lorraine donaldson i'm a long=time sf fan and a transwoman by that i mean i was labeled male at birth but live & identify as a woman now and ... qualifications.

RG: i'm rob gates i'm a fundamentalist christian conservative straight man.

RS: yeah sometimes i can't quite figure out how they organize the panels here. (looking at paperwork)

laughter

RG: i am very involved w/ dc area gay fandom group and i am the organizer poobah of gaylactic specturme awards which recognize gay lesbian glbt content

ds: recommended this panel, a political activist & a nonfiction writer who dabbles in fiction ... having gone to clarion a long time when they fought dinosaurs to get to ... fighting effort to ban same-sex marriage in kansas

rg: do you dabble b/c you write at the same pace i am

ds: i am frustrated to the point of screaming about how books w/ gay characters are marketed

rs: b/c i have a sf/f bookstore sometimes i get really bunred out and go home & try to read books that aren't f/sf and i realize the error of my ways ... pumped up by wiscon ... want to get back home and read all kinds of stuff ... and google just aint cutting it. so who wants to start.

ds: i have a day job as an editor at a university. s oduring my day job i put together my own quirky list of lesbian books. silver's quirky lesbian list.

• ... want to highlight ... anyone who hasn't ready laurie j. marks and wants to read about queers, lesbians gays ... one review complained about fire logic they didn't think there was straight person in it who was a major character ... beautiful books, worthy of anyone's attention and beautiful queer content.
• anyone who doesn't know nicola griffith, run buy books now. ... two sf books and a book from aqueduct
• a few people i will spend money on hardbacks ... hiromi gotoo, laurie marks, kelley eskridge,
• annoyance with people who decide to throw in lesbians, hi i'm a elesbian at the beginning, then go on a quest. ... my personal thing is i have to read about my people. on eother thing quickly - this also has a list of resources. spectrum award.

audience: why not anything from a lesbian press?

DS: i don't know, these are the ones that stuck in my mind.

moderator RS: i have something to say about that in discussion. let's bring up important point early. hold questions till everyone has something to say.

...

JF: there's actually two distinct strands of queer sf that i'm aware of. me, i've been in us for 3 weeks. anybody who met me at party last week. i've only been in US for 3 weeks -0 two book conventions - wiscon and staying for atlanta in 2 weeks time. golden crwon is a lesbian book festival, all the lesbian presses will all be there. and here's there's a science fiction wone and i'm aware of two distinct strands. there are writers, lesbin science fiction writers, total split on the camps and i don't think they're aware of each other ... jean stewart. i read her books. they're romances. two women are going to have sex in there somewhere, it's pure escapist romance fiction and i love it. ... like a bisexual with a foot in each camp ... i'd like to come out here as being bi-genreal.

RS: oh god another initial to add to the acronym

jf: chris anne wolfe, jean stewart, katherine forrest ... her science fiction doesn't quite cut it for me ... and she writes crime and romance for me too. not expanding my world view but i do enjoy it.

RG: first in terms of recommendations - diane has two recos i was going to tell people, spectrumawards.org. we maintain lists of every book or work in the genre recommended to us for consideration. we maintain list of our short list and identify our winners for each year. we're now in our 8th year of giving out the award so we've got quite a history each year. the other thing to look at is lambda sf book. that is recommendations from readers w/ short blurbs about book & why it was recommended. ...

?: this whole dichotomy, these two threads, in many ways i don't see a lot of the gay press material as genre works, speculative fiction works. for me speculative fiction has always meant something that stimulates me intellectually in some way, and i love reading nsome of the gay works w/ sf or fantastical trappings. but i don't feel they're very grounded in the genre at all. perfect example is felice picanos' drylands end which is one of the most awful pieces of pulp crap i've ever read but the press that put it out published it as a this stunning work of great idea.s i was like hello we were working on this 50 years ago; we've moved on; why don't you. this is one of the reasons why i don't see a lot for the gay / lesbian presses. we've had a couple of works sift out for our recommended works. i know onen of jane's works was on our short list. but in many ways it's not good speculative fiction it might be good lesbian or gay but not good pseculative, most of the time, and there's nothing wrong with that.

jf: you can get good gay/lesbian and they may be the same but onot always.

LD i think for me one of the things that came up was what qualifies as a glbt work do you just have to have a character that declares i am gay or tarns , do yo uahve to have someone that represents someone in the community, what about a book that represents a stereotype even if the stereotype is overdone ... i'm here representing the trans voice and i'm not goign to recommend a lot of books b/c almost everything is crap. you have the books wehere the character has been labeled trans and nthen nothing else is ever said; the book where the character has gone straight things out of janice raymond's absolute horrible works the trans empire that was a slam 30 years ago and should have been put down 30 years ago b/c people knew better but ... sigh. you have books where transwomen are portrayed sympathetically but very very badly ... a story in latest chicks in chainmail anthology for example. stories that present a transwoman relatively well and sympathetically but portray us as an absolute victim, merely to be a tchagne mechanism for a charcter to show how they have grown by accepting us, one of these was shortlisted for tiptree in 2003 and made it into anthology ... if it was a woman and a man instead of a transwoman it would have been howled out of convention b/c the character is deciding whether woman is woman enough whether i can deign to accept them ... the thought that they could publish a story that hwile sympathetic is so bad on the politics would be laughed out of room if characters were a woman and a man amazed me. one book i really like that got a lot of things right, not at rans book technically in some senses, a book about a character who is in some senses asexual, but that is - oh that's embarrassing - halfway human by carolyn ives gilman. halfway human is an absolutely wonderful book, brilliantly written. everything i've read by her is brilliantly written and i wish someone would gather her short fiction. ... the character in there she also is a victim, also a protagonist. and she actually has growht and becomes a more fully realized person over course of book. ... i look for things with trans issues ... in particular the x-men. a scene in one of first two movies about mystique who's a shapeshifter and she encounters nightcrawler; both of them have bright blue colored skin ... nightcrawler is always out and he hates it, and mystqiue can change shape ... and nightcrawler asks her why she just doesn't disappear and mystique says i shouldn't have to. ... i coudl have come to this con and not told anybody but i shouldn't have to ... found a lot of acceptance, a couple of people who need a lot of education but a lot of acceptance ... i am a very big fan of social science fiction, i have a bachelor's in sociology, i really lik ethe authors who get social science right, and so much of glbt sf doesn't have any kind of support structure, no nglbt support system. introduce the character and society doesn't exist around them. ... only people in the world as fars you can tell.

aud: but some of us live in that world.

RG: i would disagree that a lot doesn't portray social aspects

... you're obviously not reading the same things i am.  even lynn flewelling's nightrunner series. great fun, wonderful time, and at the same time gay romances. marvelous scene in first book, just completely reminscent to me of my first experience going into a gay bar. ... some of the other works are portraying ... the same-sex nature of relationships, the queer nature of relationships pare in a society that doesn't require some sort of support network. ...

aud: but i seek out other communities, geek community. in madison i really didn't have anything in common w/ trans people. not all of us identify with that one aspect of our life ...

mod: that brings up something i want to discuss b/c it strikes me tere are tsesentially two types ... seeking the other ... terrific comment by aaron lichten ... something so inherently satisfying about seeing your own life experiences reflected inv ery good writing. two choices. you can read f/sf where there are secondary characters or there are queer ness going on but it's part of the wlallpaper, good bad or indifferent, or you can seek it out where it's the big thing ...

DS: what i wanted otu of this panel was where queer characters are protagonists BUT it's not all about being queer. slow river is about ... i think in some part nicola figuring out her identity ... fire logidc & earth logic are ... sociopolitical, number one they're great love stories, very complex love stories ... and my personal quirky staste is trashy to literary and laurie is one of the best writers i've ever read, and fire/earth logic are great post-911 stories. you've been invaded and you want to get your freedom again but how do you do that without becoming the enemy, without your abu ghraibs and guantanamos.

reading doris lessing, it's crap science fiction - even tho the sentences are beautiful it's crap science fiction b/c those were ideas we were dealing with 50 years ago

DS: ... put in other things early ... i am helping out tiptree people this year. the one way to bring communities together is to have different books by different publishers and anything printed in 2006 that you think expands or explores gender ... email me. my email i have a blog btw cards in the hallway it's http://hopeandpolitics.blogspot.com email is hopeandpolitics@yahoo.com if you google diane silver or in this moment or hope and politics you'lll find me.

RG: on the topic of awards ... third is golden crown literary ... make sure you read,

DS: locus online, you can get things posted there very easily on their blink section. make sure they know.

RG: one of the reasons gaylactic came into existence is b/c lambda literary awards are offensive. lambda literary awards ignore works that come out from mainstream literary publishers. the blackbox that figures out finalist list in category doesn't read in the material at all; they go by have i heard of the publishing house; have i met the author; have they written anything w/ glbt content before; have they paid the entry fee; have i read a review of this. it is such an exclusionary and -- we are going to ignore quality content in favor of tooting the horns of our friends endeavor that i, say there ... good things show up in lists sometimes ... jane's work was on lambda finalist and our list, that happens all the times. but things they completely ignore. laurie marks' works weren't considered b/c they weren't considered b/c tor wouldn't pay fee.

jf: they were nominated and ...

RG: it's remarkably offensive to glbt award committee

LQ: ala glbt awards

RS; jane, what's it like in ritan, you come from a diff perspective.

JF: actually there is no lesbian pnress in ritain; there used to be diva; they've stopped publishing books. back in the 70s late 70s the onlywomen press; i think they're still going; there's a collective; lots of infighting; just one person left. that's why i'm published in the us. i write in the us but published in US.

RS: but what about reviewing, is there an award. you look at crime wawards there's a category for everything.

JF: we do have best lesbian book festival but there's no awards.

JF: york lesbian book festival is in october - lesbian book festival - much better place to visit, a thousand plus; last year there was ...

JF: not enough sf

RS: can i talk about small lpresses to as a bookseller. often as a bookselelr an indepednent small bookseleler it's hard to order from small presses and self-published things. and it's one of the things where they're all tarred with the same look. they have a distinctive look. you can recognize that they're "other" they don't look mainstream massproduced. a whole passel of expectations and one of them is rigorous proofreading etc. and unfortunately so many osmall presses ahven't had that rigor and w/in a short time you're finding typographical errors etc. ... i don't want to offend anyone, a wonderful young woman australian who wants to selfpublish and i was saying please submit ... so when you talk about small presses ... she's a good writer, but she needs a lot of editorial reining in, but she tells six jokes when only two are needed ... even in mainstream presses editorial rigor is a thing of the past. and someone published three lesbian novels and first one i thought it's a good start but it'll probably get better but second and third were even worse. and everyone's being very polite because we all lvoe the woman and it's just been picked up by an american press, and it's not really being published b/c it's good writing or good sf but b/c it has a gay protagonist. i find that a lot w/ gay press. ...

RS: sheryl & annie you have to talk to us .

aud (sheryl & annie) - i think there are certain small lesbian publishers who do skimp on costs w/ binding andn editorial processes. there are a couple of lesbain small presses out there and i think bold sttorkes out there and bella's another one focused on making sure the quality is there. so as they're getting bigger & better & more successful they're able to channel back into process and making better product.

RS: i think i've only picked up one bold strokes and found one small typing error.

RG: i just found 50 or 60 strange types in AIR and that is not small press.

DS: but it's also brilliant.

aud: and sometimes you can overlook that. if a lesbian writer submits to a lesbian press; they're probably going to accept it. there are other presses that are more rigorous.

RS: so you almost have to press-shop.

we do when buying books

RS: and there must be presses you won't read b/c you've had bad experiences

aud: i'd rather say that bella and bold strokes are good.

? and the other things is there's not many lesbian presses that do sf

? Chris Anne Wolfe, unfortunately she died, did four books

? Meisha Merlin Press, they're terrific, small, not really that small == i call them medium press -t hey've taken great works that are out of print - and they've done that sort of stuff and they find a whole new market for stuff that fans have contacted them about. quite a lot of glb stuff on that press.

RG: well we're talking about steve hegel's press.

RS: yeah but they don't sell themselves as a glb press.

RS: b/c i'm involved w/ glb fandom , we find that it is a lot easier to promote the gay aspects of works w/in the genre community than it is to promote and get acceptance of specultaive fictiona s a valid fiction in the glbt community. bookstroes, press - how often do you go into almbda book report & find reviews of speculative fiction works yet some of the most cutting edge thoughtful works for society, where we could go and get you thinking stuff is happening in speculative fiction - why does the gay press - we get plastered all over genre press, on the front page of scifi.com, on the cover of locus magazine; we're everywhere. we've had over last 8 years two appearances in glbt publications; never in the advocate; one appearance in planetout; and a san francisco newspaper did this tiny thing on page 37 in lower left hand corner. at some point you're like screw you why do we care?

aud: i agree i talk to lesbians who say at our store they will never pick it up

RS: so how do you break genre prejudice. ... cross-genre. b/c suddenly romance is ... suddenly getting sf & fantasy books marketed as romance and they're doing really well.

RG; if you walked up to a group of lesbians said here's laurie marks' book and they didn't know what they were reading and they started to read it they would love this book ... maybe (groups) ... maybe many readers don't want thoughtfulness ... i want books that make me think.

aud: that's what it is with science fiction in general. two friends that read science fiction and most of the other people that i know won't read science fiction.

? people who freak at the thought of reading the future, crossing the line. ... look at lesbian crime & mystery buckets of it, so popular. lesbians read it, men read it.

RG: if you think about it, mystery is essentially a comfort genre, sceince fiction is not.

DS: speculative is not. it's really a marketing question. one of the things that pat murphy & i've been talking about a lot recently. whether a book is good or not has nothing to do with how it sells and a good book can sell and has nothing to do w/ quality of book. has to do w/ marketing problems, publishing industry, all sorts of things w/ nothing to do w/ what's on the page ... look at mayr doria russell's the psarrow ... the issue however is how they marketed it, it was written as a sf story and marketed as a literary story that pushes boundaries, na di f you listen to mary russell do her thing and say but it has a spaceship in it, and nyrob would say oh no it's literary ... until it won the tiptree they did not market it as science fiction. we have a real problem in this genre, nothing to do w/ glbt content, they look at it say it's just star wars.

RS: dirty little secret about how well sf/f sold and was not returned. but itt's not quite, a bit disreputable.

RG: the nancy uncle.

RS: the mary doira russell experience is the connie willis experience. you look at her books bantam and you don't see words science fiction on it. they look at it and say you know what it's better than that it rises above the grubbby little fingers of f/sf. but you know that hurts its sales.

JF: i actually get people who say i bought one of your books by accident and really liked it. ... now she reads everything else by me.

aud: didn't you get someone who won't read your book b/c it has strange characters on it.

LD: one thing i think can help to break genre prejudice is if authors cross-publish. i used to have a strong prejudice against gay press b/c i'd seen so much incredible crap. and then i read a story in collection by robert rhodie and it was absolutely brilliant and i went to look for etoheer things by him and they were all in gay press.

RS: are these flukes? are we missing things b/c of marketing?

RG: sturgeon's law applies; 90% of everything is crap ... we wade thru for gems. ...

DS: i will guarantee that any work you send me will be considered

RS: aurealis awards for glb sf in australia ... actually taken self-published books ... they've been tainted in my mind but they can be good

RG: putting on diff hat ... i review books ... i have to say that there's definitely as a reviewer a sense of being burned sometimes both in temrs of responses to reviews if you review something and in fact in the srots of things people expect you to read and say something good about. as a gay person i essentially have been told by at least one publication that i used to write reviewsw for that you are not allowed to say anything negative about a book by a gay author b/c that's homophboic. ... the washington blade. i don't write reviews for them any more. i have had a gaty author whose book did not make it on the shortlist for gaylactric spectrum awards publicly accuse the awards of being homophboic b/c they didn't put his book on the shortlist. and we were homophbic b/c i'm a ga y author, and if they're not gay authors, they're crap. there's this real attitude problemsw/ some in the gay literary community about the validity of their experience over somebody else's experience

RS: but it doesn't amek for good writing nec and this is where we have the cdicothomy going on.

RG: when you have to wade thru as a reviewer 90% or more of crap to find something that's even readable never mind good you really stop even opening the packages that come.

RS: but this is ther eviewer's burden ... and i'm saying that tthe 1% ... tough job but somebody's gotta do it.

RG: good works from small presses have really been tarnished by less reputable small presses and self-publishers disguising themselves as small presses. there's no real way to tell them apart any more.

RS: what are thinking about trends. what have you noticed. you're going to golden crown thing, kyou're writing ...s o are we going to see some of the small presses start to expand to include sf/f or start to include romance ... or what

JF: i don't see much in way of trends. the POD has really stirred things up. you can actually do small volumes. if you're aiming nat a gay audience ... as opposed to a straight audience ... in sf genre is open to alternate sexualities, sf book sare aimed at the hwole thing, and there are sf books just aimed at gay community for various reasons. off-topoic slightly ... for me, talking about seeing your own life validated in the fiction ... for me actually reading lesbian romance is very important. the reason i'm a elsbian is not b/c i have sex w/ women, not a lifestyle statement, it's b/c i fall in love w/ women...i could ignore desire but falling in love forces me to make lifestyle decisions. and romance gets looked down on. but if you're straight the whole world validates your chocies, parties, gifts, rings ... heterosexuals falling in love. if you're gay this enormous emotion you feel, it's the last one the straight world is going ... straight friends don't actually accept that when i fall in love it's just as insane, powerful etc. ... so i do read lesbian romance b/c it's very important and the only place i can get that is thru fiction. they don't need to read lesbian fiction the way i need to ... have i lost the point totally?

RS: no i think you've maade a n important point.

jF: if you put the two [fsf/romance] together i'm in heaven. the mainstream presses ... gay press that's where you're going to get lesbian/gay romance. i don't see that aspect ever really stropping over to mainstream b/c girl reads girl ...

RS: sum up of trends 10 minutes left ... let's all name gems / favorites

LD: hope - one of authors written brilliant work ... rachel pollack is coming out w/ a collection about future of transgender w/ a short story by her. i'm hopeful b/c trans is becoming more visible in alrger culture. and something in theory ...

RS: can i ask if you write? we need more people who are trans who write and their family and friends.

JF: only trans writer i know is -- but she writes straight lesbian mystery

LD: a trans writer doesn't have to write trans and the lesbian stuff i think sells much better

RG: onen of the trends i've seen b/c i've had the luxury of being able to watch thru short fiction ... a lot of new writers, particularly thru outlets like strange horizons, which is wonderfully glbt accepting ... these writers are now at point in their careers where being published by main genre publishers & their work is just infused w/ sensibility that of course any world that's outt here any society that's out there is going to have queerness in it. i have not seen a signle book by any of these people who came out of the group of newer writers who are not having at least a couple of characters who are queer ... just out there, more and more of it. strangehorizons.com professional short fiction magazine, online. free. rigorously edited.

DS: i've been so busy w/ politics in last year really notn reading a lot. point of view of a writer. not a trend a thought. if you are published in lesbian press then publishers don't really know how to market to genre community. if you're published in genre press they so do not know don't even conceive of marketing to lesbian/gay glbt community. so it's really up to writer to do the crossover in some way. i would suggest that if you're a woman writer get involved in broaduniverse.org ; hopefully hold a marketing seminar next year; writer shave to pick up the ball. publishing industry has so many problems not enough time to pick them up.

audiences lists -

• mary shannon / sword of the guardian -
• any of jane fletcher's books
• snowcrash
• diane duane - allegedly fourth book was going to come out thru meisha merlin. she hasn't finished writing it yet.
• lois mcmaster bujold has a lot of lesbian/gay/bi characters and does really wonderful stuff w/ gender. miles vorkosigan but alos fantasy series.
• stuff from 30s 40s 50s - the ship who sang
• women of wonder
• friends of library groups places for authors to contact b/c guest as meeting
• ya / kind of afntasy would be francesca lia block / weetzie bat books
• storm constantine
• the shadowman / melissa scott
• amy thompson storyteller
• joanna russ / female man
• marge piercy
• kirith kirin / jim grimsley
• jewelle gomez
• wen spencer
• sylvia townsend warner / lolly willowes - 1926

lots of slip-streamy, "magical realism" kind of stuff that is often not marketed as sf as well as small press:

• ellen galford / dyke & the dybbuk, fires of bride, queendom come
• carol guess / switch
• jonathan lerner / caught in a still place
• mark merliss / an arrow's flight
• shani mootoo / cereus blooms at night
• susan stinson / martha moody

RS: i enjoyed this panel and a wonderful audience ... when i did this ... in 70s. .. holy cow it was hard. uranian worlds ... lyn paleo & eric garber had co-edited. and it was really really hard to come up with books. We are so spoiled ...