R.B. Lemberg's Blog, page 50

Squee and unsquee

 1. My poem "Twin-Born" has been nominated for the Rhysling Award.

2. Was feeling feverish and dizzy and faint all day... measured my temperature: 34C (93.2F).  Sitting down now.

Joshua Gage reviews the Dwarf Stars nominees

 and has this to say about my poem, "Burns at Both Ends":

Burns at Both Ends • Rose Lemberg • Star*Line 32.1, Jan/Feb 2009

Lemberg might win the anthology's award for best vehicle with "feeling like gruel," which alone is enough to buy her way between these covers. That being said, the theme of this poem really works for me, especially considering that this is a poetry anthology and poetry, even as an art form, is considered by many to be frivolous when held up against things like opera, symphonies, novels, etc. Lemberg's poem caught me as almost a manifesto, and that energy also helped solidify its place in this anthology.

 Yay! It is, indeed, somewhat manifesto-ish. The rest of the Dwarf Stars review is here.

Mythpunk Roundtable is up on Strange Horizons! + Ekaterina Sedia

JoSelle Vanderhooft ( upstart_crow  ) conducted this roundtable with Amal El-Mohtar ( tithenai  ), Alex Dally McFarlane ( alankria  ), Shweta Narayan ( shweta_narayan  ) and yours truly ( rose_lemberg  ). I get to babble all too much (and all too little) about folkloristics, and to recommend Ekaterina Sedia's thought-provoking and brilliant House of Discarded Dreams. 

And speaking of Ekaterina Sedia ( squirrel_monkey  ) - it's her author week on World SF Blog! If you follow this link, there's a giveaway of her books, and I understand that more good things are to come, including a short story and a guest blog. For those of you interested in liminality  and boundary-crossing, and immigrant authors,  Sedia's author week is well worth following (and her work is highly recommended).

January Resolutions Summary

Resolutions first appear in this post.

Critique more. I critiqued two short stories and two poems this month. This is more or less where I want to be. If you have stuff you'd like me to critique, please let me know (can't promise that I'll be able to commit, but please try me).

Discover new music. OK, I made progress here! First, I rediscovered Boiled in Lead and their first album, Old Lead. Second, thanks to  art_ungulate  , I discovered Niyaz, and their wonderful album Niyaz.

Read novels thoughtfully. I read two new novels thoughtfully. Ok, those of you who read a novel a day - this doesn't seem like much, but I'm drowning in many other things, including reading piles and piles of academic nonfiction, so two novels is great news. The novels are Passion Play by Beth Bernobich and House of Discarded Dreams by Ekaterina Sedia. I'm hoping to talk about at least one of them in greater detail, spoons permitting.

Read short stories at my favorite markets. Complete flop, except for Willow Fagan's "The Interior of Mr. Bumblethorn's Coat", which was amazingly askew and wonderful, and chosen for Rich Horton's Year's Best SFF.

Have more fun writing! Not a complete flop. I wrote and derived pleasure from it, but nothing nearly as incredible as the increasingly memorable "Ten Days in December". This may have to do with the fact that I am writing a very unhappy PoV right now. Happier PoVs will follow.

Write stories about things that are important to me... Yes, I am doing it.

...and send my stuff to all kinds of markets - pro, semi-pro and mainstream. Sent one story to a mainstream market, one to a pro market, and one to (technically) a semi-pro market. I guess I actually succeeded here?

Walk more. Hard to do with snow and tendonitis in my ankle. So no. Excuses, excuses...

Rediscover my sense of style. Wore my Icelandic elf hat a lot. Does that count?

Novel filter

Apparently I'm writing a LGBTQ YA novel with five PoV protagonists, set in a secondary world. I made a novel filter and an entry. If you can see it, you're on the filter (and can opt out). If you don't see it, but want in, let me know.

Two completely different things

  art_ungulate   worships a small god, aka Amal El-Mohtar's ( tithenai  's) Honey Month. 

And speaking of something completely different, I want to share with you this piyut, composed by Abraham ibn Ezra, a religious philosopher, grammarian, poet, lover of wine, and overall one of my favorite people of all times (and certainly one of my favorite Golden Age poets). This is not exactly how we sing it (we do the traditional Ashkenazi nigun) but it is a beautiful rendition and quite close to the traditional Ashkenazi version. Tzama Nafshi/ My soul is thirsty, performance by Madrigot:

Good things

Deborah Brannon (talkstowolves ) reviews the Winter Goblin Fruit. I am very happy that my recordings made a difference for this reader. I love performing my poems, although I am rather apprehensive about my accent. 

I thought that yesterday's poetry #zinechat went really well. We had time_shark , erzebet , yuki_onna  and tithenai  for guests, as well as many wonderful others. I am hoping that transcripts will emerge eventually (please link in comments if you find some). Jaym Gates suggested that we do another poetry #zinechat at some point, and I would love to do that (although not soon).

There are some frustrations too, but I am trying to maintain a hopeful outlook for 2011. :)
 

Squeeful

   mer_moon, aka the indomitable Jessica Wick of Goblin Fruity fame, reviewes the first issue of Stone Telling. She focuses especially on the recordings, which is lovely. Jess concludes with "I'm exhausted from liking this 'zine. It's a good exhaustion. I feel satisfied."  Yay! and again, yay!

And the New York Journal of Books reviews People of the Book; it is a very positive review overall, that also mentions me. The review concludes with:People of the Book: A Decade of Jewish Science Fiction and Fantasy is a book that belongs in every Jewish library with an acquisitions budget and on the desk of every Jewish educator, especially those who assemble curricula, as well as readers who enjoy Jewish short fiction. I agree, and not because I have a story in it. It is a fabulous anthology.

Salty Snowy Goblin Fruit + zinechat

 Yippee! The Winter Goblin Fruit is LIVE, and it is beautiful, and it has TWO (2) poems by me of which I am most unreasonably fond (Three Bone Masks and Strong as Salt). And this time, the Goblin Queens adapted a niftyplayer audioplayer from Stone Telling, so you can now listen to the recordings alongside the text, which I think is a very fine thing indeed. I quite like my reading for Three Bone Masks, and hope you will enjoy it too! (I can't believe I'm bragging so much about these... perhaps losing my marbles?)

The art is gorgeous. Gorgeous. It's not by Ollie this time, but rather by FAM, an Australia-based artist. 

Discuss this issue over at the Speculative Poetry community, or leave me a note here (always welcome!)

Again it strikes me how  I am strictly a Fall/Winter poet. Perhaps, one of these days I'll yet sell something for a non-Fall or a non-Winter issue, but I am not holding my breath; after all, Fall and Winter is what I am about :)

A reminder/announcement: there will be a poetry #zinechat over at Twitter tomorrow, 18th of January, 7pm EST, with me as host, and  erzebet  ,  time_shark  ,  tithenai  , and  yuki_onna  . All are welcome!

Awesome things

 1. Shweta Narayan's Eyes of Carven Emerald (from Clockwork Phoenix 3, edited by  time_shark  ) is up at SF Signal. (Shweta blogs about it here).

If you like multicultural, thoughtful, lush and intricately woven stories that do not *feel* Western, I warmly recommend it, along with Shweta's other stories featuring the Artificer Bird. There are three others: "Padishah Begum's Reflections," in Steam-Powered; "Sultana Lena's Gift" in June 2010 Realms of Fantasy; and The Mechanical Aviary of Emperor Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar," in Shimmer's Clockwork Jungle issue, which was reprinted in Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded.

2. Emily Jiang (of "Self-Portrait"), blogs beautifully about her immigrant parents in response to Amy Chua's column on Chinese mothers in Wall Street Journal. Chua's column itself appears to be doctored by WSJ; another blog by Emily discusses this issue:what is most disturbing is the fact that the Wall Street Journal took Chua's words and manipulated the passages out of context so that her book (and thus the author) would be perceived as more extremist than it really is. Was the Journal trying to be controversial to gain attention? But in doing so, the Journal is propagating and reinforcing overly simplistic stereotypes about what is a Chinese mother and what is a Western mother. Really, mothers are people with a wide range of beliefs in how to raise their children.