Podcast: Readercon 2013 – Monsters, Memories and Mythmaking

The Three Graces on The Virtual Memories Show

Virtual Memories – season 3 episode 16 – Readercon – Monsters, Memories and Mythmaking

“Readercon focuses on the literature. And the people who come here are really smart. They take science fiction and fantasy seriously as literature. It’s always interesting to be on panels. It’s also a real community, so I can talk with writers, small presses, editors. Beyond that, it’s really a good scene socially.”

–Theodora Goss

It’s time part two of our Readercon 2013 mega-podcast! I visited the 24th annual Readercon conference on literary fantasy & science fiction in Burlington, MA in July, and recorded five interviews in one day! Readercon has great panels and programming, a fine booksellers’ hall, and lots of fun conversation; if you’re into the “literature of the fantastic,” you really should make a point of attending this event next year.

First, Theodora Goss talks about her new accordion-shaped novella, The Thorn and the Blossom, what writing contracts taught her about writing stories, why most classic literary monsters were female, and the joys of coffee in Budapest. Then (52:00), Valya Dudycz Lupescu explores the joys of Growing Up Ukrainian in Chicago, the role of folklore and myths in her fiction, and how every immigrant wave has to choose what it holds onto when it lands in America. Finally (1:15:00), Nancy Hightower tells us why she gave up Colorado for NYC, how she made the transition from teaching the grotesque to writing epic eco-fantasy, and how we learn the cost of wilderness.

Enjoy the conversations! And check out the archives for more great episodes!

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About our Guests

Theodora Goss was born in Hungary and spent her childhood in various European countries before her family moved to the United States. Although she grew up on the classics of English literature, her writing has been influenced by an Eastern European literary tradition in which the boundaries between realism and the fantastic are often ambiguous. Her publications include the short story collection In The Forest Of Forgetting (2006); Interfictions (2007), a short story anthology coedited with Delia Sherman; Voices from Fairyland (2008), a poetry anthology with critical essays and a selection of her own poems; and The Thorn and the Blossom (2012), a novella in a two-sided accordion format. She has been a finalist for the Nebula, Locus, Crawford, and Mythopoeic Awards, as well as on the Tiptree Award Honor List, and has won the World Fantasy Award. Check out her website, tumblr, Facebook page and twitter feed for more.

Valya Dudyz Lupescu is a writer and the founding editor of the literary magazine, Conclave: A Journal of Character. Born and raised in Chicago, she received her degree in English at DePaul University, studying with Richard Jones, Maureen Seaton, and Anne Calcagno. She earned her MFA in Writing as part of the inaugural class at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she studied under Michael D. Collins, James McManus, M. Evelina Galang, Rosellen Brown, and Carol Anshaw. Since receiving her MFA, Valya has worked as a college professor, obituary writer, content manager, goth cocktail waitress, internal communications specialist, and co-producer of the independent feature film, The Secret. She teaches workshops around the city and online, and  helps to facilitate a monthly gathering of writers and artists in Chicago called the Chicago Creative Cooperative (“the Coop”). Her historical novel, The Silence of Trees, was published in 2010 (Wolfsword Press) in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook (2012, Iambik Audio). She has also been published in various journals, including Sentence, The Pedestal Magazine, and Doorknobs & Bodypaint. She is currently an Artist-in-Residence at the historic Cliff Dwellers Club and at the Everleigh Club in Chicago. Check out her website, tumblr, Facebook page and twitter feed for more.

Nancy Hightower is a speculative fiction author and poet, as well as an art critic who writes for Weird Fiction Review. Her debut epic fantasy novel, Elementarí Rising, will be published in September 2013 with Pink Narcissus Press. She has co-authored, along with Carrie Ann Baade, the Cute and Creepy exhibition catalogue, an art book of contemporary macabre and surrealist works. She reviews books for Fantasy Matters and interviews writers such as China Miéville and Neil Gaiman for DJ Spooky’s Origin Magazine (interviews can be read online here). She has a Ph.D. in literature from the University of Denver, and previously taught the rhetorics of the fantastic, uncanny, and grotesque in art and literature at the University of Colorado. Her short fiction and poetry has appeared in Up the Staircase, Word Riot, Strange Horizons, Neon, Bourbon Penn, Prick of the Spindle, Liquid Imagination, Corvus, Red Fez, Prime Number Magazine, The New York Quarterly, storySouth, and Dense Macabre, among others. She now resides in New York City. Check out her website, Facebook page and twitter feed for more.

Credits: This episode’s music is Budapest by Blimp by Thomas Dolby. All conversations were recorded in a room at the Burlington Marriott on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 mics feeding into a Zoom H4n recorder. I recorded the intro and outro on a Blue Yeti into my Mac Mini, at my Ikeahack standing desk. File-splitting is done on a Mac Mini using Audacity and all editing and processing was done in Garage Band. Photo by me.

Podcast: The Importance of Being Out

Craig Gidney on the Virtual Memories Show

Virtual Memories – season 3 episode 7 –
The Importance of Being Out

It’s time for the first double-episode of the season!

“To me, there are two types of YA: one is fiction written with the kid in mind, and the other is where the characters happen to be that age. It’s a fascinating age-group, because that’s where the world is changing. I tend to write for the latter.”
–Craig Gidney

First, Craig Gidney, author of the new YA novel, Bereft, talks about bullying and how the internet has amplified it, his literary influences, his problems with “transparent” prose and Twilight, how his new book differs from his first collection, Sea, Swallow Me, and the joy of getting a blurb from one of his favorite authors.

“For the first 15 years or so, we’d occasionally get busted windows. It hasn’t happened in 10 or 15 years now, but in a period of two weeks, there were three windows smashed, and then we would go a few years without having any busted. It always struck me as interesting that these broken windows always came in the dead of night.”
–Ed Hermance

Then Ed Hermance talks to us about the history of his queer bookstore, Giovanni’s Room, the changing face of gay literature, the challenges of selling books in The Amazon Age, the historical creation of gay identity, why he was a little embarrassed by Obama’s Stonewall shout-out, and the most poignant story that the store has to tell.

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out our archives for more great talks!

Ed Hermance on The Virtual Memories Show

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About our Guests

Craig Laurance Gidney writes both contemporary, young adult and genre fiction. Recipient of the 1996 Susan C. Petrey Scholarship to the Clarion West writer’s workshop, he has published works in the fantasy/science fiction, gay and young adult categories. His first collection, Sea, Swallow Me and Other Stories, was nominated for the 2009 Lambda Literary Award in the Science Fiction/Fantasy and Horror category. He lives and writes in his native Washington, DC. He is on Twitter as @ethereallad.

Ed Hermance is the owner of Giovanni’s Room, the longest-operating queer bookstore in America. Ed was born in Houston in 1940, graduated Dartmouth College (’62, BA, philosophy) and Indiana University, Bloomington (’65, MA, comparative literature), and taught at Auburn, Indiana State , and Tuebingen University in Germany. Fearing that he might never escape the closet as long as he remained a teacher, Ed abandoned academia and joined a hippie commune in the mountains of Southern Colorado (still a going concern with a long history of distinguished perennial guests, including Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, and John Corso). Ed moved to Philadelphia in 1971 to manage Ecology Food Co-op, a natural foods outlet. He bought Giovanni’s Room from its founders with partner Arleen Olshan in 1976.

Credits: This episode’s music is Heaven or Las Vegas by Cocteau Twins. The conversation with Craig was recorded at the Doris-Mae Gallery in Washington, D.C., on a pair of Blue Encore 100 mics. The conversation with Ed was recorded at the Giovanni’s Room in Philadelphia, on a pair of AT2020 mics, feeding into a Zoom H4n recorder. I recorded the interstitial stuff on a Blue Yeti USB mic into Audacity. All editing and processing was done in Garage Band.