Nicola Griffith's Blog, page 50

#CripLit: New YA and MG Fiction, Sunday 12/09, 1pm Pacific

Image description: Rectangular graphic with a white background and black text that reads “#CripLit TwitterChat New YA and MG Fiction, December 9, 2018, 1 pm Pacific/ 2 pm Mountain/ 3 pm Central/ 4 pm Eastern, Guest hosts @mariekeyn and @brigityoung. Details: DisabilityVisibilityProject.com or nicolagriffith.com.” On the left is an illustration of a girl reading lying down, and on the right a pile of books. Both illustrations in colour.

#CripLit Twitter Chat

New YA and MG Fiction

Sunday, December 9, 2018

1 pm Pacific/ 4 pm Eastern

You are invited to the fifteenth #CripLit chat co-hosted by novelist Nicola Griffith, and Alice Wong of the Disability Visibility Project®. We are delighted to have Marieke Nijkamp and Brigit Young join us in a conversation about writing, disability, and new Young Adult and Middle Grade fiction. Marieke is the editor of the YA short story anthology, Unbroken, and Brigit is the author of Worth a Thousand Words, a new Middle Grade novel. We look forward to learning more about these great books—just in time for holiday shopping season!

Please note: This chat begins 3 hours earlier than our usual start time to take into account of the time difference between Europe and North America. Set your alarms and/or reminders; you don’t want to miss it!

Also note: these questions are for everyone. Our hope is that we can all self-promote a little and perhaps give eager readers ideas for gift-giving—or to ask their library to order or independent bookstore to stock. We want to hear about all the marvellous #CripLit out there!

Additional Links

Marieke Nijkamp
Best YA Books of 2018 That Feed Imaginations, Kirkus, 3 December, 2018
Brigit Young
Brigit Young Interview, Literary Rambles, 20 August, 2018
Disability in Kidlit

How to Participate

Follow @DisVisibility @nicolaz @mariekeyn and @brigityoung on Twitter for updates.

When it’s time, search #CripLit on Twitter for the series of live tweets under the ‘Latest’ tab for the full conversation.

If you might be overwhelmed by the volume of tweets and only want to see the chat’s questions so you can respond to them, check @DisVisibility’s account. Each question will tweeted 5 minutes apart.

Another way to participate in the chat is to use this app that allows you to pause the chat if the Tweets are coming at you too fast: http://www.tchat.io/

Here’s an article about how to participate in a Twitter chat: https://www.adweek.com/digital/how-to-join-a-twitter-hashtag-chat/

Check out this captioned #ASL explanation of how to participate in a chat by @behearddc

https://www.facebook.com/HEARDDC/videos/1181213075257528/

Introductory Tweets and Questions for 12/09 Chat

Welcome to the #CripLit chat on Young Adult and Middle Grade fiction. This chat is co-hosted by @nicolaz & @disvisibility. We also have guest hosts @mariekeyn and @brigityoung joining us today. Please remember to use the #CripLit hashtag when you tweet.

If you respond to a question such as Q1, your tweet should follow this format: “A1 [your message] #CripLit”

Q1 Roll call! Please introduce yourself and your work. Tell us a little about your journey to writing or editing fiction with disabled characters for young adults and children, and share any links to your work. #CripLit

Q2 Tell us what draws you to writing or editing fiction for young adults and children: What are its joys? Why is it so important? #CripLit

Q3 Do you think you have a substantial number of adult readers, too? Does that make a difference to what and how you write or edit? #CripLit

Q4 What are some writing challenges you have faced creating or editing disabled characters in YA/KidLit? What kind of disabled characters are missing from YA/Kidlit? CripLit

Q5 What are some great disabled characters or storylines in YA/KidLit? What are some problematic ones? #CripLit

The winter holidays are a great time to give books as gifts, or to borrow them from the library. We want you to self-promote a little here, as well as promote others. #CripLit

So if you’ve written a great book or short story—or more than one—we want to hear about them! Please include buy links or other useful information. #CripLit

Q6 Tell us about the best piece of fiction with disabled characters you’ve ever written or edited—published or not. Why would we love it? How can we read or listen to it? #CripLit

Q7 Who are some disabled writers and editors currently killing it in YA/KidLit? Which of their books should we know about and support? #CripLit

Q8 How far have we come in writing and publishing disabled stories for YA/Kidlit? What do you want to see in the future? #CripLit

Thank you for joining our #CripLit chat. Please continue the conversation! Many thanks to guest hosts @mariekeyn and @brigityoung!

A recap of this chat will be up tomorrow. Check the #CripLit hashtag. Feel free to contact @DisVisibility and @nicolaz with any ideas/feedback

Signed, personalised books

I’m teaming up with a new bookshop, Phinney Books, on Greenwood Avenue, Seattle to bring you signed books. Why Phinney Books? Well, because it’s right next door to the pub! Which makes it massively, convivially convenient for me.

Here’s how it works.

Email info@phinneybooks.com (phone is okay: 206 297 2665) with billing info: all major credit cards accepted. They use Square, so they’ll also need the 3-digit code on the back and your billing postal code.
Tell them what you’d like, e.g.  Hild  (paperback or hardcover or audio CD) or another of my books. (See below.) Or, hey, another book by somebody else—lots of books, any books! Without book sales, bookshops don’t survive. Without bookshops, publishers have no market. If there’s no market, publishers don’t publish. Which means people like me starve and you have nothing to read. So splurge!
Tell them whether you want the books by me personalised (to you, or to someone else; if so, whom; and what short thing—short is easy; long might be ignored—you’d like me to add). If you give this order by phone, please spell out even the most common names.
Give them your mailing address and payment info.
Beam, sit back and relax: you’ve done your shopping!

Tom, the owner, tells me domestic shipping by media mail costs $3 for one book. He is happy to ship multiple copies, to ship internationally, and to ship express/priority, but then there will be extra charges you will have to work out with him.

Go for it. I’ll do my best to mostly sign your books before I go to the pub, which means everything will be spelled right. Mostly…

_________________

My books (all paperback unless otherwise noted):

Novels:

So Lucky (in stock)

Hild (in stock)

Hild (audio CD, special order)

Stay, Aud II (out of stock)

The Blue Place, Aud I (out of stock)

Slow River (in stock)

Ammonite (in stock)

Always, Aud III (out of stock)

Stories:

With Her Body (in stock)

Memoir:

And Now We Are Going to Have a Party (collector’s boxed set, in stock)

Please Note:

The Hild audio CD has to be ordered. Allow some time.
Assuming the audio CD comes shrink-wrapped, I’d have to open the wrap to sign, so do please be aware of that.
The memoir is available in seriously limited quantities. It also is shrink-wrapped. However, all are already signed (on the back of the photo inside), so you’d get that pristine. Unless you want it personalised…

Reading October/November

This time it’s mostly adult fiction with a couple of YA novels, and two disability-related nonfiction titles. Many of these books are either just-published or scheduled for early next year. For those I recommend but that are not yet published I’ve added the month of publication to make it easier for you to preorder.

As usual I started many, many more than I finished because life is too short to waste on crap books. These are a few that I got through.

Once Upon a River, Diane Setterfield (Dec 2018)

Beautifully moody gothic set in what is probably the nineteenth century, with an omniscient narration which functions as an old-fashioned storyteller’s voice. It begins with the classic dark and stormy night: at an ancient inn, regulars settle by the fire to tell stories. But they are interrupted by the arrival of badly injured man holding a dead girl. Only the girl doesn’t stay dead… Setterfield captures the scent and ancient power of an old river in a landscape steeped in legend. This is history as a haunting, a crossover from superstition to science and back. Here, nature—what we can explain and what we don’t—is the main character with other characters feeling a little less sharp. I enjoyed it, mostly. But here’s the thing: I read it a couple of months ago and I don’t really remember the ending. That is, I don’t remember the heart, the how and why of the mystery. Which to me indicates a certain privileging of atmosphere over substance. So worth reading, I think, but a bit disappointing.

Elmet, Fiona Mozley (2017)

Like the Setterfield, this is a beautifully moody book but set on my home turf: the woods of Yorkshire today. It reminded me very much of Sarah Hall’s work: fine prose, an emphasis on landscape, and a curiously old-fashioned feel. Perhaps it’s the emphasis on the land, perhaps it’s the focus on the body in that land and how the two interact. But I don’t think so. I think it’s more that there are no cellphones, and all the needs are primal: food, shelter, sex, and belonging rather than the quotidian anxieties of 21st century life. None of the characters consider their education, or health, or insurance, or pensions. There’s more than a hint  of the supernatural but, again, it feels nature-based. The young woman at the heart of the story is strong, physically and emotionally, but in the end she suffers the fate of many strong women in modern fiction: she chooses to sacrifice herself to save her loved ones. At least she takes others out with her.

The Priory of the Orange Tree, Samantha Shannon (February 2019)

The Priory of the Orange Tree is the Platonic Ideal of a fantasy novel. A rich and stirring tale of magic and queens, swords and dragons, assassins and sorcerers, it’s thronged with women: strong women and queer women, gorgeous women and powerful women, brilliant women and dangerous women. Men, too, of course. It’s a beautifully written story of good and evil, struggle and triumph, love and loss and return: complex but clear and utterly immersive. I loved this book. Go buy it.

Resistance and Hope, ed Alice Wong (2018)

17 essays from an incredibly diverse set of contributors which can be summed up as crip wisdom for the people: all people. Editor Alice Wong (my partner and co-host for #CripLit) began to put this anthology together right after the 2016 election when it became clear the US was in for a tough few years, especially for those of us who are marginalised, or doubly marginalised, or triply—or more. The powerful and power-hungry always come for the most vulnerable first, and disabled people have always been the most vulnerable. But we have learned many coping strategies over the millennia. Here are some of them.

(Don’t) Call me Crazy, ed  Kelly Jensen (2018)

Subject of a recent Twitter chat (read the archive of that chat here). A marvellous nonfiction anthology of short pieces for YA readers about mental health with contributions from disability activists, writers, and those who are well-known in other walks of life: an actress, an Olympic medallist, and so on. Some of these pieces are hard to read, some are not. But all are worth reading, and all are clear and useful. Recommended for every teenager and young adult.

The Migration, Helen Marshall (March 2019)

This first novel (Marshall has published two award-winning collections of short fiction) has a lot in common with both the Setterfield and the Mozley, but in the end it’s more satisfying: clearer, cleaner, and much more hopeful. It follows two Canadian sisters who, after the younger is diagnosed with JI2—a strange new syndrome that appears to be a juvenile hormone-related immune disorder—move with their mother back to her roots in Oxford, UK. They move in with the mother’s sister who is a medievalist researching historical plagues like the Black Death and the plague of Justinian. As JI2 spreads and young people start to die, a series of unusual weather events reminds the aunt of events that preceded the Black Death. Rumours begin to circulate that those who die of JI2 don’t really die—but they are either cremated or spirited away for research so no one knows for sure. And then the younger sister dies, and the older sister, just diagnosed, has to make some excruciating choices.

It’s difficult to capture this novel in a single paragraph. It has echoes of Quatermass and the Pit, of the cosy catastrophes of John Wyndham, and the its-in-the-genes sweeping human change of Naomi Alderman’s The Power. It uses one of the oldest SF/F tropes there is, metamorphosis, to create a clear-eyed, clean-limbed parable of change which itself becomes a blazing emblem of the transcendent power of hope. If you worry about climate change and worry about young people today, read this book.

The Devil Aspect, Craig Russell (2019)

A historical psycho (psychology, psychotherapy, psychokiller) novel with Jack the Ripper overtones set in 1930s Czechoslovakia, complete with the threat of fascism and a louring ancient castle and torch-and-pitchfork-ready peasantry. Let me save you the trouble of reading it: the ending is exactly what you suspect it will be. About a third of the way through, I was so sure I knew the answer that I skipped to the end to check and, oh yep, no surprises here. Some fine books become even more delicious when you  know the trajectory, but lesser books lose what little interest they had. This is one of them.

Elevation, Stephen King (2018)

This is a slight piece of work from King with a heavy-handed straight-male-saviour-of-queer-gals theme tacked onto a mystery of a man who gets lighter and lighter. Worth a read from the library, but not worth buying.

Holy Ghost, John Sandford (2018)

A Virgil Flowers novel that does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s the eleventh in the series, and this time Virgil is in a tiny town that has come up with an ingenious way of reinvigorating itself. Naturally, several people die. Equally naturally, Virgil solves the crimes in good-natured, easy-going style. So if you like the series, buy it. If you’re not familiar with these books yet, get it from the library and see what you think.

My Lovely Wife, Samantha Dowling (2019)

Another in the Gone Girl school of fiction: twisty psychological couples fiction. But like so very many other books of this type it only works if women are the victims. If you’re not yet tired of women being killed for entertainment then, hey, get it from the library. But I’d hate to see too many people encouraging more production of this stuff by putting money in the pockets of its author.

Deadfall, Stephen Wallenfels (2018)

This is a young adult American male echo of something like Elmet: all about the outdoors, and testing physical endurance and emotional family endurance. It clips right along, and although, yes, again, women are in fact sexually harmed in its production, that harm is not centre stage and mostly off the page, and men are harmed, too, this time on the page, in gendered though not sexually predatory ways. The moral of the story could be that rigid gender roles are evil, and it ends well, so worth a read.

War of the Wolf, Bernard Cornwell (2018)

I loved the first few novels about Uhtred of Bebbanburg, set in the late ninth and early tenth centuries. Even when he began to write them a bit fast, relying on the research done by others (in later books I recognised at least two incompletely digested lumps of source material), they still had an appealing vigour. But by this one, the eleventh in the series, that energy is flagging. It’s a very competent book, and if you’ve already invested in the first ten, worth reading. But if I’d encountered this one first I most probably would not have sought out the others.

After the Fire, Will Hill (2018)

Another YA, this time told from the viewpoint of a girl in alternating timelines. An armed US sect headed by a male guru who exploits women (as they do, in real life and in fiction). Well-researched and relatively realistic, with a well-earned ending. Would I recommend it? If you don’t have claustrophobia, yes. But if a tightly-wound weirdo compound and a tightly-wound federal/medical compound might make you feel, well, tightly wound, this isn’t for you.

 

Signed, personalised books for holiday gifts

I’m teaming up again with Phinney Books, on Greenwood Avenue, Seattle, to bring you signed, personalised books for the holidays. Why Phinney Books? Well, because it’s right next door to the pub! Which makes it massively, convivially convenient for me. Also, Phinney Books is my idea of a perfectly-sized bookshop with just the right stock. Also also, it’s level-entry with a light front door so very easy for me to get in and out of.

[image error] Image description: Photo, taken on a bright spring day with an old disposable camera, of a friendly neighbourhood street: cars parked in the shade of a tree growing on the sidewalk in front of Phinney Books and its next-door neighbour, the 74th Street Alehouse.

Here’s how it works.

Go to Phinney Books’ online ordering page to buy any of my books, no muss no fuss, and get them shipped to any address in US, Canada, UK, Australia, or New Zealand. Everyone else, see the next step.
Email info@phinneybooks.com (phone is okay: 206 297 2665) with billing info: all major credit cards accepted. They use Square, so they’ll also need the 3-digit code on the back and your billing postal code.
Tell them what you’d like, e.g.  Hild  (paperback or hardcover) or So Lucky or another of my books.* Or, hey, another book by somebody else—lots of books, any books! It’s the holidays. You (and your friends, your family, everyone you’ve ever met) deserve something nice. Splurge!
Tell them whether you want the books by me personalised (to you, or to someone else; if so, who; and what short thing you’d like me to add). If you give this order by phone, please spell out even the most common names.
Give them your mailing address and payment info.
Beam, sit back and relax: you’ve done your holiday shopping!

Tom, the owner, tells me he is happy to ship multiple copies, to ship internationally, and to ship express/priority, but then there will be extra charges you will have to work out with him.

Deadlines: I haven’t checked with Tom on this but perhaps Wednesday 12th December is a safe deadline for books shipping domestically via media mail, but if you’re willing to pay for priority mail, we could probably push that out a bit. International, well, I suspect you’d have to be quick…

So basically you have two weeks for Domestic. Go for it! I’ll do my best to sign your books before I go to the pub, which means everything will be spelled right. Mostly…

*The Aud novels are no longer available. I reverted the rights last year and sold everything I had lying about in last year’s promotion. Once Menewood (aka Hild 2) is done, I’ll be turning my attention to Aud for a bit and seeing what can be done to get them back in print. Meanwhile, you can probably find second hand copies of The Blue Place, Stay, and Always at various retailers. I won’t be able to personalise them, though, unless you bring them to one of my events.

December Book of the Month

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So Lucky was published in the UK last week, and Diva, Europe’s leading magazine for lesbians and bi women, has named it their Book of the Month, which is pretty cool, as is being called “one of the most important writers working today.” [Goes away for five minutes to yodel in triumph]

Just in time for holiday shopping!

More on that Wednesday.

So Lucky is out today in the UK

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Image description: A cardboard box of books: So Lucky by Nicola Griffith. The book cover is black with a huge image of a torch flame.

To celebrate, the UK publisher, Handheld Press, have enacted key scenes from the book and built a Twitter thread. Enjoy!

And then go buy the book from these fine UK retailers

Books, Etc | Blackwell’s | Amazon UK | list of 70 UK independent book shops

Also, don’t forget the audio version, which I narrated earlier this year—available as a digital download or CD from Amazon or from any of those lovely independents linked above.

Rewriting the Old Story

Today I have an Op-Ed in the New York Times about the rewriting the familiar disability script and changing the world:

Think about all those stories that are missing. Stories that we need to overwrite the corrosive narrative of ableism. Without those stories, the implicit bias will continue and the cycle will renew itself endlessly. We changed queer literature, and the world, with story. We can do it again. We can write those stories in our own voices, our strong, beautiful, ordinary, disabled voices.

So Lucky news

Image description: Composite image of two covers of So Lucky: A Novel, by Nicola Griffith. On the left, the UK edition. On a black background, a burning torch flames in orange and yellow up and across at least half the image. At the top, in between the flames are quotes from the Independent ‘a short, fast-paced whirlwind of a novel’ and BBC Culture‘a sophisticated thriller’. Below is the title, So Lucky in salmon-coloured type, and the author’s name, Nicola Griffith, in white. On the right, the US edition. The background is matte black with the title “So Lucky,” and the author’s name “Nicola Griffith,” in big uppercase type rendered as burning paper. In smaller, brighter letters between title and author is, “A novel,” and, below the writer’s name, “Author of Hild” 

I’ve been in Las Vegas—my very first trip, which deserves a whole post to itself at some point—and have come back to a few bits and bobs of So Lucky news. In no particular order:

Montserrat Pons Nusas at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, has just completed their MA dissertation, “Queer and Crippled: Intersectional Feminism in Nicola Griffith’s So Lucky: A Novel” which you can read online for free at the link. I’ve only just started it but so far it’s a cracker.
My Op-Ed about the cultural dangers of disability literature clichés, “Overwriting the Old Story,” (the title may change) will be published in Wednesday’s New York Times.
The US edition (FSG Originals) of So Lucky is a finalist for the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association 2019 Book Awards, winners to be announced in January.
The UK edition (Handheld Press) of So Lucky will be out on November 22 just in time for Thanksgiving. It’s slightly different to the US version, with English spellings and three bonus essays. You can buy direct from publisher at the above link or from:

Books, Etc | Blackwell’s | Amazon UK | list of 70 UK independent book shops

Also, don’t forget the audio version, which I narrated earlier this year—available as a digital download or CD from Amazon or from any of those lovely independents linked above.

 

#CripLit: Sunday, 18 November

Image description: Graphic with a white background and text in black that reads “#CripLit TwitterChat Mental Health & Writing, November 18, 2018, 4 pm Pacific/ 5 pm Mountain/ 6 pm Central/ 7 pm Eastern/ 4 pm Pacific, Guest hosts @veronikellymars and @sesmith. Details: DisabilityVisibilityProject.com.” On the left is an illustration of a pile of books and on the right a typewriter. Both illustrations in black.

#CripLit Twitter Chat

Writing and Mental Health

Sunday, November 18, 2018

4 pm Pacific/ 7 pm Eastern

You are invited to the fourteenth #CripLit chat co-hosted by novelist Nicola Griffith and Alice Wong of the Disability Visibility Project®. We are excited to have Kelly Jensen and s.e. smith join us in a conversation about writing, mental health, and the new anthology (Don’t) Call Me Crazy: 33 Voices Start the Conversation about Mental Health. Kelly is the editor of this anthology and s.e. is a contributor–we look forward to learning more about this groundbreaking collection of essays from them.

Please note: This first question is for everyone, then we will ask several questions of Kelly and s.e., and then open the last 20 minutes for participants to ask their own questions to our guest hosts or Tweet their thoughts about writing and mental health.

Additional Links

● Kirkus Review of (Don’t) Call Me Crazy (May 28, 2018)

● Kelly Jensen, Writer & Editor

● s.e. smith

● Stacked Books

How to Participate

Follow @DisVisibility @nicolaz @sesmith and @veronikellymars on Twitter for updates.

When it’s time, search #CripLit on Twitter for the series of live tweets under the ‘Latest’ tab for the full conversation.

If you might be overwhelmed by the volume of tweets and only want to see the chat’s questions so you can respond to them, check @DisVisibility’s account. Each question will tweeted 6-8 minutes apart.

Another way to participate in the chat is to use this app that allows you to pause the chat if the Tweets are coming at you too fast: http://www.tchat.io/

Check out this explanation of how to participate in a twitter chat by Ruti Regan: https://storify.com/RutiRegan/examplechat

Check out this captioned #ASL explanation of how to participate in a chat by @behearddc: https://www.facebook.com/HEARDDC/videos/1181213075257528/

Introductory Tweets and Questions for 11/18 Chat

Welcome to the #CripLit chat on writing & mental health with guest hosts @sesmith and @veronikellymars! We’ll be talking about the new anthology edited by Kelly Jensen featuring an essay by s.e. smith: (Don’t) Call Me Crazy: 33 Voices Start the Conversation about Mental Health

If you respond to a question such as Q1 or want to Tweet a comment, your tweet should follow this format: “A1 [your message] #CripLit”

Please note: The first question is for everyone, then we will address several questions about the anthology directly to @veronikellymars and @sesmith, and then open it up to you all for the last 20 minutes of the #CripLit chat

Q1 Welcome everyone! Please introduce yourself and share a little bit about your writing and your interest in #MentalHealth in literature #CripLit

Q2 @veronikellymars: As the Editor of Don’t Call Me Crazy, tell us about how this project started and why you wanted to create this collection at this time on this topic #CripLit

Q3 @veronikellymars: What was the editing process like and what led you to select these 33 particular essays? What were your intentions with the choice of these contributors?

Q4 @sesmith: Could you tell us about your essay in Don’t Call Me Crazy and what it means for you to be part of this collection centered on the lived experience mental health/illness? #CripLit

Q5 @veronikellymars and @sesmith: The word ‘crazy’ is considered sanist and ableist but it’s also reclaimed by people w/ mental health disabilities and Mad or neurodivergent people. What does ‘crazy’ mean to you and how does language & identity matter in writing about disability? #CripLit

Q6 @veronikellymars and @sesmith: What kinds of conversations do you hope the essays in Don’t Call Me Crazy will start about #MentalHealth and accurate representation of it in literature? #CripLit

For the rest of the hour we welcome all of you to share your thoughts about #MentalHealth and writing. You are also welcome to ask @veronikellymars and @sesmith questions about the Don’t Call Me Crazy anthology #CripLit

Reminder: if you ask Kelly or s.e. a question, don’t forget to Tweet at them @veronikellymars and @sesmith and use use the #CripLit tag!

Thank you for joining our #CripLit chat. Many thanks to our guest hosts @veronikellymars and @sesmith

Please continue the conversation!

A recap of this chat will be up tomorrow. Check the #CripLit hashtag. Feel free to contact @DisVisibility and @nicolaz with any ideas/feedback

Monday 5 November, 7 pm: Elliott Bay Book Company, in conversation with Katrina Carrasco

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Image description: Two photos side by side. Left: the author, Katrina Carrasco, with a short asymmetrical haircut, wearing glasses, jeans, boots, and collared jacket standing on snowy ground before mountains and bare trees. Right: book cover of The Best Bad Things, with the title and author rendered in what looks like smeared blood. The central illustration, of the back of a gender-indeterminate figure holding a just-fired gun, is in the same colour and style.

In the US we don’t have Bonfire Night, but if you’re in or near Seattle on Monday night, and want fireworks, come to Elliott Bay Book Company. At 7 pm I’ll be talking with Katrina Carrasco about her debut novel, The Best Bad Things.

The Best Bad Things is a fabulous book. I talked about it earlier this year:

Gritty street fiction set in the lawless 19th century when Port Townsend was the Deadwood of the Pacific Northwest, The Best Bad Things is a bloody brawl of a book… Alma, dressed as Jack, sheds her impulse control along with her corsets, and the plot accelerates into a visceral, unexpected underworld of bare-knuckle fighting, opium smuggling, and genderqueer lust.

I promise you, this book is not like anything you’ve read before. I can also promise you a fantastic evening of conversation about gender, writing queer people and people of colour back into history, writing the body, and the opium-smuggling underworld of the nineteenth-century Pacific Northwest.

Join us—and bring friends, relatives, enemies you wish to make peace with, people you bump into on the street, bring everyone!—and help me help Catrina celebrate the publication of this lusty, exciting, thrillingly-written and ground breaking fiction.