Gillian Polack's Blog, page 267
March 3, 2011
Women's History Month: Deborah Kalin
Deborah Kalin is the author of The Binding books, and for a positive role-model in all things has never needed to look further than her mother, to whom this post is dedicated. She regularly discusses nothing of any particular substance at her blog, http://deborahkalin.com/damselfly
Somewhat to my chagrin, I had never heard of Women's History Month before Gillian's email wondering if I'd like to participate.
Saying yes was easy — finding a topic rather less so. Women's History Month is, as far as it goes, entirely self-explanatory; but as a rule of thumb I live under a crippling inability to consider myself as contributing to anything. What can I say, it's a skill. And not even a particularly rare one at that.
Having little more to go on than Gillian's injunction to discuss our work, passions and lives, and determined to ignore that niggling little voice which keeps me silent when I shouldn't be, I decided to talk a little about my dayjob. Those of you who know me online would know me as a writer first and foremost. But writing, while it comes first in my list of Stuff I Love Doing (well, just behind sleeping), comes second in funding my ability to pay the rent. Thus I spend the majority of any given day working as a chemical engineer.
That I simultaneously pursue both science and art surprises a lot of people, but engineering is work and a mindset I love just as much as writing. (Well. Almost. It's hard to resist the lure of a profession where killing people off is not only allowed, but encouraged. And where dinosaurs still exist. But maybe that's just me.) At the time, applying to study engineering at university was a move which surprised every one who knew me. Writing was all I talked about, consuming my extracurricular hours, and when I wasn't writing I was reading. At school I gravitated toward the artsier subjects: high-level english (which I hated: literary analysis and I hadn't made our peace at that stage), ancient history (which I loved), visual arts, a smattering of language here and there (at which I was earnestly terrible).
But my favourite subjects were mathematics and chemistry. They led me to study and work in engineering, which I love for reasons not dissimilar to the reasons I love writing. I could go on at length about the appeal of science and engineering — the way it takes hard physical evidence and observable, reproducible phenomena, and strings theorems and hypotheses between them to create stories of why the leaves are green and the sky is blue. That, just like writing, it's about past experiences, a shared history, imagination, and daring to dream. The fact that the entire discipline is built on a premise of being collaborative and rigorously open, encouraging invention and innovation, like a global remix project centred around numbers and factoids. I like that language is immaterial, that the stars speak to us through chemicals and fractals and ratios.
In the end, it comes down to the fact that I crave answers, yes, but more than anything, I want space and the chance to both be curious and to indulge that curiosity.
It won't come as a surprise to anyone when I say that engineering is a male-dominated career. The female-to-male ratio varies widely across the individual disciplines. When I enrolled, environmental featured about 95% women, whereas mechanical featured less than 1%. Chemical engineering sat somewhere in the middle, with about 10% of the class being women. (In general industry, which features a much slower turnaround time due to employing people for 40-odd years instead of 4, tends toward even smaller ratios.) So there was I, fresh-faced and packing literary analysis skills and a head full of ancient history that would mean squat, rocking up to my first day of university as one of a distinct minority.
And the wonderful thing about that first day, when I was one of only 4 women among a class of 40? It simply never occurred to me that I didn't belong, that I may need to fight to earn and keep my place, that I was in any way less than any of my new classmates. Even more wonderful: that thought never occurred to any of my male classmates either.
They were a new breed of boys, and we were a new breed of girls, raised so thoroughly to the knowledge that gender did not have any place in the discussion of rights, that it didn't even occur to any of us to realise it hadn't always been so.
Some years later my aunt told me of what it had been like for her, to get into university. She'd won a scholarship to study medicine — and prior to starting had to attend an interview where she was asked (read: told) to be sure this was what she really wanted, because in accepting this scholarship she would be taking a place away from a boy. A boy who wouldn't go off and have children and do nothing with all this precious learning. She was talked into downgrading to sonography, a far more reasonable course of study for a woman. Given my only worry on applying for university was getting a high enough mark, I like to think we've come a long way in just twenty odd years.
It's not perfect, of course — on leaving the rarefied world of university and entering the workforce, I've had my share of sexism to deal with. Sometimes I think the worst were the kindly ones. In my first work placement, one near-sighted fellow led me across a pontoon bridge to get to the sand-mining barge, and his tactic was to hover at the far end of each pontoon so he could time his spring-board departure from that pontoon with my attempted landing. He wanted to make me fall into the water. It would have been funny, of course, but it also would have demonstrated to me that I was wasting my time. Pretty young girl like me, I should be at home, married and having babies. Not stomping around mudflats in steel-capped boots.
There were times when being a girl made my job much harder than it needed to be, but I never considered giving up engineering because of my gender. (I did consider giving up engineering, and in fact did give it up for a spell, when it clashed with my writing one too many times.) When I spoke to Gillian about what she wanted out of this series of articles, she spoke of role-models, women who inspired or challenged me. So I sat to pondering that, wondering if it was thanks to a role-model that I stuck it out, or started in the first place.
That's when I realised that, in all honesty, I know very little of the contribution of women to the course of science. Marie Curie springs to mind, and Ada Lovelace, and then I start drawing blanks and needing to dig deeper than the casual trivia of a stray name.
Let me say I'm not particularly proud of that ignorance, but at the same time it is, in a way, something to celebrate in and of itself. Because increasingly we live in a world where women undertake whatever they want to, without stopping to think of it as a luxury, as bold or daring or unconventional, without even pausing to think it wasn't always this easy. Without needing to cling to a role-model.
And I for one think that's inspirational.
(Now if you'll excuse me, there's some biographies of enterprising women I should read up on.)
Somewhat to my chagrin, I had never heard of Women's History Month before Gillian's email wondering if I'd like to participate.
Saying yes was easy — finding a topic rather less so. Women's History Month is, as far as it goes, entirely self-explanatory; but as a rule of thumb I live under a crippling inability to consider myself as contributing to anything. What can I say, it's a skill. And not even a particularly rare one at that.
Having little more to go on than Gillian's injunction to discuss our work, passions and lives, and determined to ignore that niggling little voice which keeps me silent when I shouldn't be, I decided to talk a little about my dayjob. Those of you who know me online would know me as a writer first and foremost. But writing, while it comes first in my list of Stuff I Love Doing (well, just behind sleeping), comes second in funding my ability to pay the rent. Thus I spend the majority of any given day working as a chemical engineer.
That I simultaneously pursue both science and art surprises a lot of people, but engineering is work and a mindset I love just as much as writing. (Well. Almost. It's hard to resist the lure of a profession where killing people off is not only allowed, but encouraged. And where dinosaurs still exist. But maybe that's just me.) At the time, applying to study engineering at university was a move which surprised every one who knew me. Writing was all I talked about, consuming my extracurricular hours, and when I wasn't writing I was reading. At school I gravitated toward the artsier subjects: high-level english (which I hated: literary analysis and I hadn't made our peace at that stage), ancient history (which I loved), visual arts, a smattering of language here and there (at which I was earnestly terrible).
But my favourite subjects were mathematics and chemistry. They led me to study and work in engineering, which I love for reasons not dissimilar to the reasons I love writing. I could go on at length about the appeal of science and engineering — the way it takes hard physical evidence and observable, reproducible phenomena, and strings theorems and hypotheses between them to create stories of why the leaves are green and the sky is blue. That, just like writing, it's about past experiences, a shared history, imagination, and daring to dream. The fact that the entire discipline is built on a premise of being collaborative and rigorously open, encouraging invention and innovation, like a global remix project centred around numbers and factoids. I like that language is immaterial, that the stars speak to us through chemicals and fractals and ratios.
In the end, it comes down to the fact that I crave answers, yes, but more than anything, I want space and the chance to both be curious and to indulge that curiosity.
It won't come as a surprise to anyone when I say that engineering is a male-dominated career. The female-to-male ratio varies widely across the individual disciplines. When I enrolled, environmental featured about 95% women, whereas mechanical featured less than 1%. Chemical engineering sat somewhere in the middle, with about 10% of the class being women. (In general industry, which features a much slower turnaround time due to employing people for 40-odd years instead of 4, tends toward even smaller ratios.) So there was I, fresh-faced and packing literary analysis skills and a head full of ancient history that would mean squat, rocking up to my first day of university as one of a distinct minority.
And the wonderful thing about that first day, when I was one of only 4 women among a class of 40? It simply never occurred to me that I didn't belong, that I may need to fight to earn and keep my place, that I was in any way less than any of my new classmates. Even more wonderful: that thought never occurred to any of my male classmates either.
They were a new breed of boys, and we were a new breed of girls, raised so thoroughly to the knowledge that gender did not have any place in the discussion of rights, that it didn't even occur to any of us to realise it hadn't always been so.
Some years later my aunt told me of what it had been like for her, to get into university. She'd won a scholarship to study medicine — and prior to starting had to attend an interview where she was asked (read: told) to be sure this was what she really wanted, because in accepting this scholarship she would be taking a place away from a boy. A boy who wouldn't go off and have children and do nothing with all this precious learning. She was talked into downgrading to sonography, a far more reasonable course of study for a woman. Given my only worry on applying for university was getting a high enough mark, I like to think we've come a long way in just twenty odd years.
It's not perfect, of course — on leaving the rarefied world of university and entering the workforce, I've had my share of sexism to deal with. Sometimes I think the worst were the kindly ones. In my first work placement, one near-sighted fellow led me across a pontoon bridge to get to the sand-mining barge, and his tactic was to hover at the far end of each pontoon so he could time his spring-board departure from that pontoon with my attempted landing. He wanted to make me fall into the water. It would have been funny, of course, but it also would have demonstrated to me that I was wasting my time. Pretty young girl like me, I should be at home, married and having babies. Not stomping around mudflats in steel-capped boots.
There were times when being a girl made my job much harder than it needed to be, but I never considered giving up engineering because of my gender. (I did consider giving up engineering, and in fact did give it up for a spell, when it clashed with my writing one too many times.) When I spoke to Gillian about what she wanted out of this series of articles, she spoke of role-models, women who inspired or challenged me. So I sat to pondering that, wondering if it was thanks to a role-model that I stuck it out, or started in the first place.
That's when I realised that, in all honesty, I know very little of the contribution of women to the course of science. Marie Curie springs to mind, and Ada Lovelace, and then I start drawing blanks and needing to dig deeper than the casual trivia of a stray name.
Let me say I'm not particularly proud of that ignorance, but at the same time it is, in a way, something to celebrate in and of itself. Because increasingly we live in a world where women undertake whatever they want to, without stopping to think of it as a luxury, as bold or daring or unconventional, without even pausing to think it wasn't always this easy. Without needing to cling to a role-model.
And I for one think that's inspirational.
(Now if you'll excuse me, there's some biographies of enterprising women I should read up on.)
March 2, 2011
gillpolack @ 2011-03-02T19:22:00
You know, oh my friends who are also writers, you really should stop trusting me. Do not give me permission to edit you in any way I like. It's really not safe...
PS My punctuation of the day is the ellipse. I plan to use it so much that I annoy everyone who reads my writing. Then I plan to sneak in m-dashes. After that, I might try leaving commas out for a bit...
PS My punctuation of the day is the ellipse. I plan to use it so much that I annoy everyone who reads my writing. Then I plan to sneak in m-dashes. After that, I might try leaving commas out for a bit...
Quantum Poets - week 2
Before we could move to the sciences, today we examined epigrams. This is because my students were writing epigrams about quantum physics, of course. Next week I've had a request for sonnets.
Today we talked about Schrodinger's cat and waves and particles and the consequences of knowledge and uncertainty. We talked more about probability and have decided that 'probability' really has to be our word-of-the-day next week (this week's was 'repudiate') and might even be worthy of a word collage. We focussed a great deal on statistics and what different levels of statistical certainty meant to being able to keep classical science in practise (polygamy in science!).
We discussed quantum physics being emotionally easier for us ordinary mortals than most classical science because of the fuzziness of everyday life. I'm not sure that physicists would agree with me, because at this point in most books on quantum physics there are many warnings on how difficult it is for small minds to grasp. My small mind demonstrated the need for reliable outcomes in classical science through dropping a pen and the basic calculations inherent in quantum phyisics with the relationship between the Canberra bus timetable and busses actually arriving. Then I managed to make my students doubt the reliability of gravity to such an extent that many pens were dropped...We all agreed that there's a difference between something happening 99.9999999999999% of the time and 100% of the time, but that we (as pen-droppers) might not see that difference and that maybe scientists would be able to assume that things weren't inevitable, but were still reliable enough to function.
I read a bit aloud about deities who play dice with the universe and the inevitable question arose: which game? As an historian, I can only know the games played as demonstrated a limited past subset of human experience. Bigger picture stuff I leave to scientists. If anyone knows, therefore, my class would appreciate an answer. Me, I want to know what the die looks like and how it's numbered.
Right now, I'm praying I got the science right. We're all finding it straightforward and yet the earlier books I looked at said it was impossibly complicated, so I rather suspect I'm missing major stuff. (My students have been given a list of key terms and are doing a bit of checking.)
To finish with, there is poetry written by those playing along at home in the comments to last week's post. There's more on Facebook.
Today we talked about Schrodinger's cat and waves and particles and the consequences of knowledge and uncertainty. We talked more about probability and have decided that 'probability' really has to be our word-of-the-day next week (this week's was 'repudiate') and might even be worthy of a word collage. We focussed a great deal on statistics and what different levels of statistical certainty meant to being able to keep classical science in practise (polygamy in science!).
We discussed quantum physics being emotionally easier for us ordinary mortals than most classical science because of the fuzziness of everyday life. I'm not sure that physicists would agree with me, because at this point in most books on quantum physics there are many warnings on how difficult it is for small minds to grasp. My small mind demonstrated the need for reliable outcomes in classical science through dropping a pen and the basic calculations inherent in quantum phyisics with the relationship between the Canberra bus timetable and busses actually arriving. Then I managed to make my students doubt the reliability of gravity to such an extent that many pens were dropped...We all agreed that there's a difference between something happening 99.9999999999999% of the time and 100% of the time, but that we (as pen-droppers) might not see that difference and that maybe scientists would be able to assume that things weren't inevitable, but were still reliable enough to function.
I read a bit aloud about deities who play dice with the universe and the inevitable question arose: which game? As an historian, I can only know the games played as demonstrated a limited past subset of human experience. Bigger picture stuff I leave to scientists. If anyone knows, therefore, my class would appreciate an answer. Me, I want to know what the die looks like and how it's numbered.
Right now, I'm praying I got the science right. We're all finding it straightforward and yet the earlier books I looked at said it was impossibly complicated, so I rather suspect I'm missing major stuff. (My students have been given a list of key terms and are doing a bit of checking.)
To finish with, there is poetry written by those playing along at home in the comments to last week's post. There's more on Facebook.
March 1, 2011
Women's History Month: Lara Eakins
Lara Eakins is a science and tech geek, skeptic, history buff and needleworker. She does astronomy outreach and instructional technology as a day job and is probably best known around the internet for her passion of Tudor history. You can find links to all of her internet exploits at http://about.me/larae
To start off, I want to thank Gillian for inviting me to guest blog here as part of Women's History Month. I was quite flattered to be asked! I went through several drafts of this post but it ended up long and rambling because I had tried to include a lot of stories of women important to the history of astronomy and discuss the current state of women in science. But I realized that I didn't need to include all of that since a lot has already been written and will continue to be written on those topics by people a lot more knowledgeable than me. So, I decided to just keep it to my own personal story. I hope you find it interesting!
On March 2, 1972, two things launched into the universe - one into space and one into a hospital in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. The former was the Pioneer 10 spacecraft and the latter was - probably no surprise - me. Although I don't believe that this is a case of correlation equaling causation, I have always taken great pride that a child born the same day as the launch of the first spacecraft to fly by Jupiter later went on to take part (a very small part, but a part nonetheless) in the first mission to orbit Jupiter in 1995.
The 1970s were the start of a golden era in the exploration of the solar system and from an early age, up-close pictures of the solar system were part of my life. One of my earliest memories was looking through National Geographic magazines filled with pictures from the Viking missions to Mars. When I was 8 years old, Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" first aired on television and now hardly a year goes by without me re-watching the series. (I had the great pleasure of seeing Carl Sagan speak several times and I cherish the copy of the "Cosmos" companion book that I had him autograph at a lecture.) Although there were a few women scientists that I could point to as an inspiration in my childhood - Astronaut Sally Ride and Planetary Astronomer Carolyn Porco primarily - one big reason that I was exposed to science and science fiction from an early age was because of my mother. (And as another interesting coincidence, my mother's birthday is March 8 - International Women's Day.) I think it was when I was around 12 years old that I started playing around with my mother's telescope and later my parents bought me a small telescope of my own, beginning my love of observational astronomy.
Early in high school I decided that I wanted to be an astronaut (I even went to Space Camp!), but when the time finally came to actually start my career path, I ended up deciding on astronomy. Although if someone offered me a trip on one of the new private space vehicles, I certainly wouldn't turn it down! And it was convenient that one of the larger undergraduate astronomy programs in the US was in my hometown of Austin, Texas since I didn't have a whole lot of money for college.
While I was a student, I began working with the team of astronomers in our department doing work in a sub-field known as astrometry. If you know your word roots, you can probably deduce it is a field that studies the positions of celestial objects. We primarily measured asteroids and comets and the satellites of the outer planets so that precise orbits can be worked out. Part of our funding was from NASA in support of the Galileo mission to get good orbits for some of the small outer moons of Jupiter as well as getting good positions on two asteroids that Galileo would fly past as it transited the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Our other work was on Near Earth Objects, and you can guess from the name why they are important to study. (I've jokingly referred to it as one of the most boring jobs on Earth where you can honestly say you've done your part to save the planet.) The best example of why understanding the dynamics of comets and asteroids is important came when we did some of the follow-up measurements of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, discovered in 1993, and confirmed the preliminary calculations that indicated it would impact Jupiter in July 1994.
After graduation, I continued my work with the astrometry team for another year and then in the fall of 1995 I began working full-time in our education and public outreach office. Although at times I miss doing research, I feel that communicating science to the public and helping the next generation of students understand astronomy is very important. Two duties of my very hodgepodge job are running a public viewing night on one of our campus telescopes and conducting school field trips centered around our solar telescope, which are often some of the most fun and rewarding parts of my job. Besides trying to do my part to raise the level of science literacy in the US, it's also my chance to encourage young girls who express an interest in astronomy or science in general. And I'm happy to say there have been quite a few!
Perhaps it's a big selfish of me, but I have to admit that my favorite groups are those from all-girls schools and camps. A few years ago I was leading a group of girls on a tour and we were talking about how just a couple of days before - for the first time ever - when the commanders of the space shuttle and the International Space Station greeted each other after docking, it was two women shaking hands and hugging. And one of the girls, probably about 12 years old, said "It will be great when that doesn't have to be big news". I could have hugged her! Not only was she right, but if more girls her age have that attitude then it truly won't be a big deal someday. And I hope it's a day that we see sooner rather than later.
To start off, I want to thank Gillian for inviting me to guest blog here as part of Women's History Month. I was quite flattered to be asked! I went through several drafts of this post but it ended up long and rambling because I had tried to include a lot of stories of women important to the history of astronomy and discuss the current state of women in science. But I realized that I didn't need to include all of that since a lot has already been written and will continue to be written on those topics by people a lot more knowledgeable than me. So, I decided to just keep it to my own personal story. I hope you find it interesting!
On March 2, 1972, two things launched into the universe - one into space and one into a hospital in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. The former was the Pioneer 10 spacecraft and the latter was - probably no surprise - me. Although I don't believe that this is a case of correlation equaling causation, I have always taken great pride that a child born the same day as the launch of the first spacecraft to fly by Jupiter later went on to take part (a very small part, but a part nonetheless) in the first mission to orbit Jupiter in 1995.
The 1970s were the start of a golden era in the exploration of the solar system and from an early age, up-close pictures of the solar system were part of my life. One of my earliest memories was looking through National Geographic magazines filled with pictures from the Viking missions to Mars. When I was 8 years old, Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" first aired on television and now hardly a year goes by without me re-watching the series. (I had the great pleasure of seeing Carl Sagan speak several times and I cherish the copy of the "Cosmos" companion book that I had him autograph at a lecture.) Although there were a few women scientists that I could point to as an inspiration in my childhood - Astronaut Sally Ride and Planetary Astronomer Carolyn Porco primarily - one big reason that I was exposed to science and science fiction from an early age was because of my mother. (And as another interesting coincidence, my mother's birthday is March 8 - International Women's Day.) I think it was when I was around 12 years old that I started playing around with my mother's telescope and later my parents bought me a small telescope of my own, beginning my love of observational astronomy.
Early in high school I decided that I wanted to be an astronaut (I even went to Space Camp!), but when the time finally came to actually start my career path, I ended up deciding on astronomy. Although if someone offered me a trip on one of the new private space vehicles, I certainly wouldn't turn it down! And it was convenient that one of the larger undergraduate astronomy programs in the US was in my hometown of Austin, Texas since I didn't have a whole lot of money for college.
While I was a student, I began working with the team of astronomers in our department doing work in a sub-field known as astrometry. If you know your word roots, you can probably deduce it is a field that studies the positions of celestial objects. We primarily measured asteroids and comets and the satellites of the outer planets so that precise orbits can be worked out. Part of our funding was from NASA in support of the Galileo mission to get good orbits for some of the small outer moons of Jupiter as well as getting good positions on two asteroids that Galileo would fly past as it transited the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Our other work was on Near Earth Objects, and you can guess from the name why they are important to study. (I've jokingly referred to it as one of the most boring jobs on Earth where you can honestly say you've done your part to save the planet.) The best example of why understanding the dynamics of comets and asteroids is important came when we did some of the follow-up measurements of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, discovered in 1993, and confirmed the preliminary calculations that indicated it would impact Jupiter in July 1994.
After graduation, I continued my work with the astrometry team for another year and then in the fall of 1995 I began working full-time in our education and public outreach office. Although at times I miss doing research, I feel that communicating science to the public and helping the next generation of students understand astronomy is very important. Two duties of my very hodgepodge job are running a public viewing night on one of our campus telescopes and conducting school field trips centered around our solar telescope, which are often some of the most fun and rewarding parts of my job. Besides trying to do my part to raise the level of science literacy in the US, it's also my chance to encourage young girls who express an interest in astronomy or science in general. And I'm happy to say there have been quite a few!
Perhaps it's a big selfish of me, but I have to admit that my favorite groups are those from all-girls schools and camps. A few years ago I was leading a group of girls on a tour and we were talking about how just a couple of days before - for the first time ever - when the commanders of the space shuttle and the International Space Station greeted each other after docking, it was two women shaking hands and hugging. And one of the girls, probably about 12 years old, said "It will be great when that doesn't have to be big news". I could have hugged her! Not only was she right, but if more girls her age have that attitude then it truly won't be a big deal someday. And I hope it's a day that we see sooner rather than later.
gillpolack @ 2011-03-01T21:18:00
Tonight's class was all about medieval food. I fed my students cubebs and sugar-coated fennel and we talked about everything from the role climate plays in developing cuisines to the equipment a good cook might have had access to in 13th century France.
Next week I've promised table etiquette, drinks and then sex and marriage. My class asked what practical demonstrations I would be giving. I pointed out that they had cubebs this week, so next week was words only. One student was most disappointed. She had the consolation of discovering that the periodic table on the wall (which was wrong last week) has now been fixed. Iron instead of sex...
Next week I've promised table etiquette, drinks and then sex and marriage. My class asked what practical demonstrations I would be giving. I pointed out that they had cubebs this week, so next week was words only. One student was most disappointed. She had the consolation of discovering that the periodic table on the wall (which was wrong last week) has now been fixed. Iron instead of sex...
Women's History Month: Ann VanderMeer
Gillian asked me to guest blog this month in honor of Women's History Month. March has always been a special month for me, not only because of this celebration but also because my birthday falls in this month! When Stephen Segal and John Betancourt asked me to take over as Fiction Editor of Weird Tales magazine back in 2007, I was thrilled at the idea. Imagine, asking me to do my favorite thing - read fiction. And then I thought some more about the honor and the history and what this all could mean. Women and the weird…
In addition to taking over the oldest fantasy magazine in the world, I was given the opportunity of being only the second female editor of Weird Tales since Dorothy McIlwraith in 1940. So, we decided to make the announcement on Valentine's Day (why not?), and we opened to fiction submissions on my birthday the following month (which just so happened to be Women's History Month). This was all very exciting! And just like Ms. McIlwraith, I love finding new writers, the next generation so to speak, and publishing them along with established pros.
And please keep in mind that Margaret Brundage did all those amazing covers in the 1930's, making her the first (and only) female cover artist of that time. Yes, it's true that many of her covers were considered controversial and at times even too provocative, but her work was beautiful and remarkable and certainly helped to sell a lot of magazines.
So why did it take over 50 years for another woman at Weird Tales? Certainly weird fiction appeals to women, too. Just look at all the female writers that graced the pages of Weird Tales since back in the day to now: Mary Elizabeth Counselman (who I had the honor of publishing in The Silver Web in the 1990's), Margaret St. Clair, C. L. Moore, Allison V. Harding, Tanith Lee, Lois Tilton and Carrie Vaughn, among others. As a matter of fact, over 120 women published fiction in these pages from 1923-1954. And if you take a closer look at the Weird Tales Club you see all kinds of women readers (and letter writers), too.
And then…2011 - For the first time in the history of this iconic magazine, Weird Tales has an all-female editorial management team (I became Editor-in-Chief, Mary Robinette-Kowal is the Art Director and Paula Guran is the Nonfiction Editor and Webmistress). And it's about time.
So yeah…women like the weird. We like to read it, talk about it, write letters about it, and draw and paint it. We really really do. So why not a female fiction editor??? My weird isn't any more fragile or less dangerous than any male editor's weird. Don't be fooled by my size; my weird can be pretty darn ferocious. Just watch me.
In addition to taking over the oldest fantasy magazine in the world, I was given the opportunity of being only the second female editor of Weird Tales since Dorothy McIlwraith in 1940. So, we decided to make the announcement on Valentine's Day (why not?), and we opened to fiction submissions on my birthday the following month (which just so happened to be Women's History Month). This was all very exciting! And just like Ms. McIlwraith, I love finding new writers, the next generation so to speak, and publishing them along with established pros.
And please keep in mind that Margaret Brundage did all those amazing covers in the 1930's, making her the first (and only) female cover artist of that time. Yes, it's true that many of her covers were considered controversial and at times even too provocative, but her work was beautiful and remarkable and certainly helped to sell a lot of magazines.
So why did it take over 50 years for another woman at Weird Tales? Certainly weird fiction appeals to women, too. Just look at all the female writers that graced the pages of Weird Tales since back in the day to now: Mary Elizabeth Counselman (who I had the honor of publishing in The Silver Web in the 1990's), Margaret St. Clair, C. L. Moore, Allison V. Harding, Tanith Lee, Lois Tilton and Carrie Vaughn, among others. As a matter of fact, over 120 women published fiction in these pages from 1923-1954. And if you take a closer look at the Weird Tales Club you see all kinds of women readers (and letter writers), too.
And then…2011 - For the first time in the history of this iconic magazine, Weird Tales has an all-female editorial management team (I became Editor-in-Chief, Mary Robinette-Kowal is the Art Director and Paula Guran is the Nonfiction Editor and Webmistress). And it's about time.
So yeah…women like the weird. We like to read it, talk about it, write letters about it, and draw and paint it. We really really do. So why not a female fiction editor??? My weird isn't any more fragile or less dangerous than any male editor's weird. Don't be fooled by my size; my weird can be pretty darn ferocious. Just watch me.
February 28, 2011
Women's History Month: Wendy Orr
My first guest I met through another Wendy - Wendy Dunn - when Wendy Dunn invited us both to be guests at an online writing festival for schoolchildren. Jodie Foster had just been signed to appear in the film of her book, so I was prepared to be intimidated. Wendy Orr is not intimidating, it turns out. She is, however, exceptionally interesting.
There ought to be a word for the time between finishing one manuscript and starting another. (I mean apart from 'relief' and 'now I really do need to get around to all those other jobs I've been putting off for the last year' – which may also be the best incentive for starting a new book.)
Of course each time is different, but this time sending off the fourth book in my upcoming Rainbow Street Animal Shelter series (for the in USA), coincided with the publication of Raven's Mountain, my new middle grade novel in Australia. (By the way, I hate the term middle grade novel: it always makes the book sound as if it got a C grade. Must get over that.) But the timing means that I'm determined to take a couple of weeks off, not just for catching up on fan mail and accountant queries, and the perennial post-deadline task of trying to find my desk, but for reflection. And not just reflection for the purposes of interviews on the new book – because honestly, who doesn't enjoy insightful questions that help trace our pathway through a newly completed work? This writing hiatus is a time for true reflection, on why I write, and why I write what I do, and then that sudden gift of inspiration which makes everything else fade into the background, as I get the first glimpse of what I want to write next.
Well, that's the theory, but in the middle of my tai chi class last week, I suddenly felt the beginnings of a new book. Since finishing the last proofs for Raven, last October, I've been playing with the idea of returning to a world that I'd created twenty years ago, when I first started writing and was still searching for my voice. I have no desire to go back to the mammoth adult manuscript that I wrote then, but the world itself is still alive for me. Travelling to India in November, for the Bookaroo Children's Literature Festival, somehow confirmed my desire to return to this world, although I didn't think it had much in common with the India that I saw. And then, in that dreamy tai chi state, I heard new questions about the main character, suggesting that she is totally unlike anything I had expected, and had an image of the story idea floating in soap bubbles above my head, fragile and iridescent. The image moved me to tears. (Luckily everyone else in my tai chi group is equally vague in the beginning, familiar sequences, so no one noticed that I was crying.)
The next day I saw what I thought was a small dragonfly hovering above our pond. The wings were exactly the same iridescent blue as my story idea bubbles, and I felt I had to take it as a sign. When a twitter follower identified the insect as a damselfly, I knew that it was.
On the other hand, the fragile insect flying off into the distance could also be a sign that it's time to let Raven go. I've lived with her for two and a half years, and it's hard to remember that I created her as well as her mountain and all that happens to her. She is so real to me it feels as cruel as letting a flesh and blood eleven year old out into the world alone. But perhaps that damselfly was telling me that she's strong enough to fly. Time to let her go free, and clear out the rooms for the new damsel to move in.
Wendy Orr was born in Canada, and grew up in France, Canada and USA. After high school she studied occupational therapy in England, married an Australian farmer, and moved to Australia. They had a son and daughter, and now live on five acres of bush near the sea.
Wendy started writing seriously in 1986, with her picture book Amanda's Dinosaur. In 1993 Leaving it to You was shortlisted for the CBCA awards, junior readers; Ark in the Park won the same award in 1995. Peeling the Onion, based on a serious car accident Wendy had in 1991, was widely published internationally, with awards including the CBCA Honour Book, older readers, in 1997, and an American Library Association Book for older readers. Her book Nim's Island has been published in 24 countries around the world. In 2008 it became a Hollywood feature film starring Jodie Foster, Abigail Breslin and Gerard Butler.
Wendy's latest book is Raven's Mountain an adventure novel for mid to upper primary.
There ought to be a word for the time between finishing one manuscript and starting another. (I mean apart from 'relief' and 'now I really do need to get around to all those other jobs I've been putting off for the last year' – which may also be the best incentive for starting a new book.)
Of course each time is different, but this time sending off the fourth book in my upcoming Rainbow Street Animal Shelter series (for the in USA), coincided with the publication of Raven's Mountain, my new middle grade novel in Australia. (By the way, I hate the term middle grade novel: it always makes the book sound as if it got a C grade. Must get over that.) But the timing means that I'm determined to take a couple of weeks off, not just for catching up on fan mail and accountant queries, and the perennial post-deadline task of trying to find my desk, but for reflection. And not just reflection for the purposes of interviews on the new book – because honestly, who doesn't enjoy insightful questions that help trace our pathway through a newly completed work? This writing hiatus is a time for true reflection, on why I write, and why I write what I do, and then that sudden gift of inspiration which makes everything else fade into the background, as I get the first glimpse of what I want to write next.
Well, that's the theory, but in the middle of my tai chi class last week, I suddenly felt the beginnings of a new book. Since finishing the last proofs for Raven, last October, I've been playing with the idea of returning to a world that I'd created twenty years ago, when I first started writing and was still searching for my voice. I have no desire to go back to the mammoth adult manuscript that I wrote then, but the world itself is still alive for me. Travelling to India in November, for the Bookaroo Children's Literature Festival, somehow confirmed my desire to return to this world, although I didn't think it had much in common with the India that I saw. And then, in that dreamy tai chi state, I heard new questions about the main character, suggesting that she is totally unlike anything I had expected, and had an image of the story idea floating in soap bubbles above my head, fragile and iridescent. The image moved me to tears. (Luckily everyone else in my tai chi group is equally vague in the beginning, familiar sequences, so no one noticed that I was crying.)
The next day I saw what I thought was a small dragonfly hovering above our pond. The wings were exactly the same iridescent blue as my story idea bubbles, and I felt I had to take it as a sign. When a twitter follower identified the insect as a damselfly, I knew that it was.
On the other hand, the fragile insect flying off into the distance could also be a sign that it's time to let Raven go. I've lived with her for two and a half years, and it's hard to remember that I created her as well as her mountain and all that happens to her. She is so real to me it feels as cruel as letting a flesh and blood eleven year old out into the world alone. But perhaps that damselfly was telling me that she's strong enough to fly. Time to let her go free, and clear out the rooms for the new damsel to move in.
Wendy Orr was born in Canada, and grew up in France, Canada and USA. After high school she studied occupational therapy in England, married an Australian farmer, and moved to Australia. They had a son and daughter, and now live on five acres of bush near the sea.
Wendy started writing seriously in 1986, with her picture book Amanda's Dinosaur. In 1993 Leaving it to You was shortlisted for the CBCA awards, junior readers; Ark in the Park won the same award in 1995. Peeling the Onion, based on a serious car accident Wendy had in 1991, was widely published internationally, with awards including the CBCA Honour Book, older readers, in 1997, and an American Library Association Book for older readers. Her book Nim's Island has been published in 24 countries around the world. In 2008 it became a Hollywood feature film starring Jodie Foster, Abigail Breslin and Gerard Butler.
Wendy's latest book is Raven's Mountain an adventure novel for mid to upper primary.
Women's History Month Celebration
It's Women's History Month, and I prmised you something special. I have blogposts from some amazing women: writers, scientists, musicians, historians, farmers, activists and more. I've not told them what to write, just that I would really like them to be guests on my blog during March. These are the women who are making history right now.
What I found fascinating about chatting with them, is that nearly 1/3 of these wonderful women think their lives are dull and were surprised I asked them. No dull lives here. No boring people. I hope you enjoy this celebration of women's lives and interests as much as I am.
What I found fascinating about chatting with them, is that nearly 1/3 of these wonderful women think their lives are dull and were surprised I asked them. No dull lives here. No boring people. I hope you enjoy this celebration of women's lives and interests as much as I am.
gillpolack @ 2011-02-28T20:35:00
Why do I keep typing Charlemange, when I mean Charlemagne? Was he losing his hair?
gillpolack @ 2011-02-28T15:15:00
Today I have a new interview up at BiblioBuffet. It's long, but the writers say some fabulously fascinating stuff. This time I've interviewed Alma Alexander, Cat Valente, and Mary Victoria. http://www.bibliobuffet.com/bookish-dreaming/1466-placelessness-and-between-a-talk-022711
