Wellp.
I’m not gonna lie, I’ve been watching the news with great dismay. I’m Canadian, but I’m extremely upset on behalf of all my queer American friends and colleagues, among many other reasons. (We have our own little crop of Trump imitators up here, and you can be sure they are watching this play out and taking avid notes.)
It’s hard not to feel helpless right now, but I try to remember that the best defense against helplessness is to find one useful thing to do – even a very small one.
When my colleague Leigh Harlen told me they were starting a mini auction on behalf of Trans Lifeline, I knew this was my cue for a small useful thing. So I’m donating a signed copy of the whole Outside trilogy. Starting bid is a $35 donation to help trans people in crisis, and I’ll ship almost anywhere in the world. The auction starts this morning and will go until Monday the 18th.
If you already have a copy of the Outside trilogy, you can still browse the rest of the auction, which has books by other authors – including Nino Cipri and John Wiswell – adorable crafts, and even a friendly lady who will remotely coach you through tidying your house.
Meanwhile, recs!
I’m seeing a lot of talk on Bluesky about how art will do this, art will do that. (I’m on Bluesky, by the way! It’s really been livening up and filling with people lately.) Art is where we will put our rage, or our joy, or our hope that a different world is still possible. Or whatever else our readers are going to need. I don’t know.
(I actually happen to be near the end of my current WIP anyway, in the “oh noes all is lost!!” section before it all resolves. So I feel like what I’m putting into my art, for the next few chapters at least, is despair.)
I think art is inherently political, in that it reflects the beliefs of its author; I think it is also political, in that engaging with art fosters empathy. (Inherently. Even if that’s not what the artist was thinking about.) It can sometimes be political in various other ways. I think good art can be consciously didactic and I enjoy some authors who write that way. But what I find – just for myself, just for my own creative process – is that if I try too hard to fit my art into a political program, even a program I deeply agree with, I freeze up and overthink and stop being able to make art.
I can’t promise that my art will channel any of the needs of the moment but mine. I can’t promise it will save any of you. Maybe a lot of art will save a lot of people, in the next few years, even in ways that its creators did not expect. That tends to happen, even in better times. But we’re going to need a lot of other tools as well.
Anyway, the one piece about the importance of art in these times that did resonate with me is DongWon Song’s.
The remaining recommendations in this newsletter are for things I read before the election.
Alice Towey, “I Should Have Been a Pair of Ragged Claws” (Fantasy, Issue 87, January 2023)
I have such affection for parts of the self that are in shadow or otherwise exiled from normal consciousness, and I love the mix of revulsion and tenderness with which Towey’s narrator describes one of hers.
Grace Cahill, “flood fish/pumpkin moon” (The Deadlands, Issue 22, February 2023)
What I love about this one is the uncertainty, the way survivors try to make sense out of a disaster, not directly in the “why did this happen?” sense but in something more like a personifying of what the flood leaves behind. The sense that, of course, a rational survivor wouldn’t be seeing this or feeling this way – but they all do anyway.
Pooja Peravali, “The Changeling and the Child” (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, March 9, 2023)
Normally when I read changeling stories, they’re about neurodivergence, or about being rejected by one’s parents in some way. Like, I hadn’t really thought about it, but that’s the norm for changeling stories these days. It’s not really a subversion anymore. Peravali takes a different tack, and dares to write a changeling story where the human mother of the story is the hero. What if all the business about fairies stealing babies and replacing them with fairy babies was literally true? In that case, what would it look like to address the situation, not with the abuse that we hear of in folklore but with kindness, love, and courage? Peravali has an answer to that question, and her answer is good.
Leah Bobet, “Notable Escapes” (June 19, 2023)
Harry says: when faced with straitjackets, / get bigger. I hate words like “inspiring”; but a poem like this feels – intentionally, I think – like a manual for resistance.
Stephen Granade, “The Sigilist’s Notes on the Fell Lord’s Staff” (PodCastle 807, October 3, 2023)
Look, “devoted minion who has a crush on the Dark Lord” is one of my bulletproof tropes, okay? I never get tired of it – not even after deconstructing it to death in The Fallen. Anyway this story delivers the goods, with a cute list-like format and in a refreshingly sweet way.
Francine Rubin, “Gravity” (Small Wonders, Issue 6, 2023)
Space is great! Also, it is physically and psychologically very difficult to be in space. I love the detail and care with which this poem compactly explores the claustrophobia and unrootedness of a space traveler, while also holding space for the longing that spurs them to make those travels regardless.