Nicola Griffith's Blog, page 61

Silenced voices: relative representation in the House of Commons

There are 650 Members of Parliament (MPs) and about 65 million people in UK. In a perfectly just world, we might expect to see the demographics of the electorate reflected in the demographics of their representatives. It is not a perfectly just world. To find out just how unjust it is, I’ve been doing some counting, using population numbers as a proxy for electorate and comparing them to the newly-elected MPs.

Numbers

Examined from a representational perspective, the numbers suck. Here are the rough percentages of various groups within the UK population:

Women 51%
Disabled 20%
BAME/POC 13%
Queer 7*%

Now compare that to the number of MPs from each group:

Women: 208 MPs = 32%
BAME (Black, Asian, and minority ethnic): 51 MPs = 8%
Out Queer: 45 MPs = 7%
Out Disabled: 4 MPs = 0.615%

Here’s what that looks like:

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Intersectionality

The overwhelming majority of MPs are straight, white, non-disabled men.

Of the out queer MPs, all are white, 80% are men, and none are trans. I don’t know how many BAME MPs are queer or crips or women, or how many women are BAME or queer. I don’t know how many of the out disabled MPs are queer—but three are white and men; the only woman is BAME. Intersectionality is a distant dream with regard to UK national politics.

Relative Representation

Where it gets really interesting (that is, enraging) is when we look at relative representation, that is, the ratio between the percentages of the population and those elected to speak for them:

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Over represented: men, white, non-disabled.

Balanced representation: queer.

Under represented: BAME/POC, women, disabled.

The biggest gap is between the representation for disabled people (grey) and non-disabled people (gold). Take a good, long look. That’s not a gap, it’s a chasm.

Silenced Voices

Imagine 100 disabled people at one end of a room and all but 3 are gagged. The 100 non-disabled people at the other end are not only free to speak but have brought 24 loud-voiced friends. If all talked at once, 3 voices against 124, which perspective will be heard?

Imagine 100 women: 63 get to talk. But the 100 men get to bring 39 of their friends. 63 vs 139. Whose voice will be heard?

Imagine 100 BAME/POC: 62 can speak. Those one hundred white people, though, get to invite 5 extra people. So if everyone shouts at once, 62 vs 105, who will be heard?

Interestingly, queer and straight appear perfectly balanced. But of course white male abled queer voices drown out the rest.

Many of us, then, are poorly represented in the Commons. (Don’t even get me started on the Lords.)

But here’s a thing: the woman who won Kensington and Chelsea for Labour for the first time in the history of the constituency did so by just 20 votes. Twenty. That’s the number of people you’d have round to watch the fireworks, the number of people who go outside to smoke at a party, the number you’d hang out with at a family barbeque/barbecue. So at your next fireworks display/party/barbecue talk to people. Ask them to vote. Every single vote matters. Your vote matters. Next time you get the chance, vote. Make your voice heard.

*We could argue about the percentage of queers in the population until the sun dims. I’ve seen figures ranging from just over 1% to almost 10% depending on whose figures and whose definitions. I plumped for 7% because, well, why not?

One-day workshop Sunday 8 October: Registration now open!

I’m teaching a one-day workshop for Clarion West on Sunday 8 October, 10am-4pm: What Readers Like—And Why. It will be held in an accessible space (I will most probably be in a wheelchair) in the U District of Seattle, and costs $150. Fourteen participants will be selected on a first-come, first-served basis. Registration is open.

I’ll be asking students to do a bit of pre-work, no more than 20 minutes of reading or viewing. This way we can begin with a shared foundation and spend more time actually practising some tools and techniques.

I’ve spent a lot of time in the last few years, particularly the last 12 months (more on that in a future blog post), thinking about how readers respond to narrative. In this workshop I want to share what I’ve learnt about why some moments, characters, or settings live in a reader’s heart and mind for years while others might prompt them to throw the book at the wall. What brings a reader in and what shoves them out? What makes a reader relax and trust you and what will provoke a visceral, negative response? And can you ever harness that visceral response?

I see this as being equally useful to writers of fiction and creative non-fiction; I’d welcome both. What kind of things will we be talking about? Word choice, of course, but also the shape of sentences and paragraphs, what is and is not effective in terms of imagery, how story works, and more.

My plan is to create a template that participants can use as a guide to analyse their own and each others’ work, to help them answer questions about how, as readers, they responded at various points in the text. My hope is that writers can then take that template home and use it to strengthen their own writing. Also—because this is always one of my goals—that in addition to learning nifty stuff you will have a blast.

Details:

One-day workshop for Clarion West, on Sunday, 8 October, 10am-4pm
in an accessible space in the University District, Seattle
for 14 participants, selected on first-come first-served basis
and costs $150 for six hours of face-to-face discussion, exercise, and workshop.

Registration is open. See you there!

Good music for hard times

It’s been a day of hard news. But here’s a song I love, I’ve always loved. It always helps me. Perhaps it will help you, too.

Morning

Here are some pictures of flowers I took yesterday and a snip of sound I recorded first thing this morning: nothing but birds. (It recorded at low volume, though, so you might want to turn it up.) I think it’s going to be a lovely day.

https://nicolagriffith.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/birds-o5-29-17.mp3

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One-day workshop, Oct 8: What readers like—and why

I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about how readers respond to narrative, particularly fiction. Cognitive poetics, the neuroscience of narrative empathy, evolutionary and literary theory—it’s easy to get lost in the different but passionate arguments. So I try to answer simple questions: Why do readers respond more strongly to some fiction than to others? How does the writer immerse the reader in a story? What is it about this particular word, or sentence, or paragraph that persuades the reader to trust the writing?

I’ll be teaching What Readers Like—And Why, a one-day workshop for Clarion West, on Sunday, 8 October, 10am-4pm, in an accessible space on the University of Washington campus, Seattle. Space is limited to 14, and will cost $150 for six hours of face-to-face discussion, exercise, and workshop. My plan is to create a template that participants can use as a guide to analyse their own and each others’ work, to help them answer questions about how, as readers, they responded at various points in the text. My hope is that writers can then take that template home and use it to strengthen their own writing.

It will be the fourth time I’ve taught a one-day class for Clarion West. All the classes are different but they do tend to fill fairly quickly. I don’t know when exactly the class opens for enrollment but I wanted to give those who might be interested a heads-up. Registration is on a first-come, first-served basis, so I’ll do my best to post another reminder closer to the time.

Words to use carefully: a public service announcement

Bitch. Cripple. Dyke.* Only some people can get away with using these words—and only sometimes, and in certain circumstances.

The rules are simple: If you’ve had such a word hurled at you as a term of abuse, you may then reclaim the word and use it as a self-identifier, or—among other self-indentifiers—as a term of admiration.

Any other circumstances, any, make your use of the term an insult and a fighting word.

Clear? Good.

* There are, of course, many similar words that insult whole classes of people. But it’s not a good idea to speak on behalf of a group to which one doesn’t belong. You know the words I mean. Out in the real world, when you hear (or see) someone use one, call the user on it. You’ll be making the world a better place. And, yes, I’ve said all this before but it bears repeating.

Summer flowers

Every year we have to put new annuals in our deck pots. Last year it was nasturtiums, salvia (Flaming Lips; the hummingbirds love them), and carnations. I admit I killed off the nasturtiums and carnations (we have coir baskets; with the kind of summer we had last year I should have watered every single day because they’re super evaporators) and ended up replacing them with geraniums and some kind of weird weed-looking thing with purple tips. This year it’s marigolds, impatiens, petunias, fuschia and other things.

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In the actual pots we still have the jasmine and ornamental oregano and those weird weedy-looking things. In one of the coir baskets many of the herbs survived (not the basil, though; it never does) and the lavender in the hanging basket also survived, so we added some annuals and now it’s the Basket of All Purple.

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The Flaming Lips look as though they might be trying to come back, too, but they’re so small you can’t see them. We’ve already had a couple of hummingbirds coming by and being decidedly irritable that there’s nothing for them yet.

So here’s a wider shot of the deck. This is where I sit after lunch while I dwell in the still quiet place before writing. Summer is finally here.

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World Premiere of OtherLife—a film based on Solitaire

On Friday 16 June, OtherLife, based on Kelley’s novel Solitaire, debuts at the Sydney Film Festival. I am so very pleased and proud, even though I had absolutely nothing to do with it except cheer Kelley on.

Kelley has written a blog post with all the details about the film. It’s based on her novel and screenplay (officially credited to Greg Widen, Ben Lucas, Kelley Eskridge). Turning a long, speculative “stylistic and psychological tour de force” (New York Times) novel into just over 90 minutes of sleek, luscious-looking sci-fi thriller, all on a low budget, has been a rollercoaster ride: sometimes wildly exciting, sometimes grindingly hard, but never, ever boring. But that’s Kelley’s story to tell and happily she’s done that in a fascinating series of journal entries about the 11-year journey from book to screen. So go read it.

Meanwhile, we’ll be here grinning and drinking beer and thinking being a writer is the best job in the whole fucking world.

I’m judging the Black Warrior Review fiction contest

This year I am judging the Fiction contest for the University of Alabama’s Black Warrior Review. The contest is also open to Poetry, judged by Rachel McKibbens, and Non-fiction, judged by Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib. The prize in each category is $1000 and publication in BWR.

In an interview I talked about what I’m looking for:

Joy. Story. Voice. Beauty and brilliance and risk—a person, an image, an idea or a place that takes me somewhere new then returns me increased. Gorgeous sentences are all very well but if they serve a stale plot or clichéd character, the story is dead on arrival. My advice? Write what you’ve been avoiding. Go there and see what happens…

You can send up to 7,000 words. The deadline is September 1, 2017. Submit!

(After a recent #criplit chat I discovered that Submittable is not particularly accessible. If you have difficulties, please email Black Warrior Review directly. If you don’t get a satisfactory response please let me know here or via Twitter (@Nicolaz) and I’ll see what I can do.*)

* I apologise for the aspects of this site that are inaccessible. I plan to conduct an accessibility audit soon.

Special #CripLit: “Crips in Space” Thursday May 11

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This is a special #CripLit chat to celebrate the Deaf Poets Society special issue,”Crips in Space,” a collection of speculative fiction by d/Deaf and disabled writers.

#CripLit Twitter Chat

Publishing Online: “Crips in Space” Special Issue

Thursday, May 11, 2017

4 pm Pacific/ 7 pm Eastern

You are invited to the eighth #CripLit chat co-hosted by novelist Nicola Griffith and Alice Wong of the Disability Visibility Project™. For this Twitter chat we are delighted to have Sam de Leve and The Deaf Poets Society as our guest hosts.

The Deaf Poets Society is an online literary journal that publishes poetry, prose, cross-genre work, reviews of Deaf or disability-focused books, interviews/miscellany, and art by D/deaf and/or disabled writers and artists. Founded in 2016, our mission is to provide a venue for D/deaf and disability literature and art, as well as to connect readers with established and emerging talent in the field.

This chat will focus on the process of creating a special issue by The Deaf Poets Society, “Crips in Space,” a collection of speculative fiction by d/Deaf and disabled writers. Last year Guest Editor Sam de Leve tweeted about disabled people in space with the hashtag #CripsInSpace and the idea took off online. Guest Editor Alice Wong shared the idea and suggested a collaboration with the The Deaf Poets Society focused on science fiction, fantasy, and crip futurism. Fast forward four months and here we are in May with this special issue.

Similar to #CripLit’s January 15 Editor Roundtable, the structure of this chat will have questions directed at the editors from The Deaf Poets Society about this special issue with time for questions by participants.

For the “Crips in Space” special issue by @TheDeafPoets published on May 4, 2017, you can find it here: https://www.deafpoetssociety.com/

How to Participate

Follow @DisVisibility @nicolaz @TheDeafPoets @ChaiKovsky 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.

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 5/11 Chat

Welcome to the #CripLit chat on the process of publishing a journal issue from A-Z. This chat is co-hosted by @nicolaz & @DisVisibility

We have guest hosts @TheDeafPoets & @ChaiKovsky 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”

** FYI on format for this #CripLit chat: Questions 2-6 are for the editors & after they respond you all can ask them follow-up Qs **

We want to give you all the chance to talk with editors directly with our questions as a way to start the convo #CripLit

Q1 Roll call! Please introduce yourself and share any links to your work or anything about yourself. #CripLit

Q2 What is the process like for @TheDeafPoets when planning upcoming issues/themes? Describe your timeline & the teamwork involved. #CripLit

Q3 Once a call for submissions comes out, what does @TheDeafPoets do to get the word out & reach diverse d/Deaf & disabled writers? #CripLit

Q4 What do @TheDeafPoets’ prose, poetry, art editors look for once they receive submissions for an issue? How does the team work? #CripLit

Q5 Can you describe the deliberation process on whether to accept/reject a submission by @TheDeafPoets? Guiding principles? #CripLit

Q6 How does @TheDeafPoets make publishing more accessible with your online journal & working with d/Deaf & disabled writers? #CripLit

If anyone wants to check out the “Crips in Space” issue from @TheDeafPoets, you can find it here: https://www.deafpoetssociety.com/

Q7 What do you think of the “Crips in Space” issue? Any questions for @TheDeafPoets & guest editors @ChaiKovsky & @SFdirewolf? #CripLit

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

A Storify will be up tomorrow. Check the #CripLit hashtag. Feel free to contact @DisVisibility @nicolaz with any ideas/feedback