Scott Nicolay

Ana Kai Tangata

Tag: Small Beer Press

Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward: Midwifing the Other: Nurturing Diversity in Weird and Speculative Lit | The Outer Dark: Episode 31 — FEBRUARY 17, 2016

writingtheotherAuthors/editors Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward join Scott for a very special show focusing on diversity in Weird and speculative fiction. They start by recounting the story behind the origins of their Writing the Other workshop/book, its connections to Clarion West, the next set of upcoming online classes (March 13), its impact on spec-lit writers over its 25-year history, and their hopes for an updated book to reflect new language and examples. The conversation proceeds to positive directions with diverse characters, how writers need not to be afraid to write what they don’t know but they do need to research, the concept of “parallax” and W.E.B. DuBois, writing the other as a collaborative process, why treating equally or fairly doesn’t mean not seeing color, gender or other differences, rewarding examples of people who learned and gained courage from the Writing the Other program to increase Lost Trails Forgotten Tales of the Weird West Final Cover 6-26-2015their own representation of people of color as characters, teaching the “reptile brain,” the good example of Joe R Lansdale, and midwifing works by Sarah Smith and South African writer Nick Wood (Azanian Bridges. NewCon Press, Nov 2016). Cynthia and Nisi also talk about some of their own written and edited works. Cynthia discusses her edited anthology Lost Trails: Forgotten Tales of the Weird West, which features stories about non-white characters on the frontier, in the context of growing interest in the Weird Western in books, film and graphic novels, a second volume on the way, and several novels in progress, including Night Rising, the first in The Return of the Dark trilogy, an apocalyptic magic story set in Tucson which she calls a “cozy catastrophe.” Nisi reveals some of the back story about Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delaney, which she co-edited with Bill Campbell (Rosarium Publishing), which has received everfairconsiderable praise, as well as contemplating her interaction with horror and exploring a different relation to death and the status quo in the African diaspora in her 2008 James Tiptree Jr.  Award-winning collection Filter House, confronting steampunk’s embedded imperialism in her upcoming Belgian Congo set novel Everfair (Tor, Sept. 2016), encountering ghosts in her middle grade novel Speculation, and much more. The conversation concludes with their recommended writers including Bill Campbell, J. Comer (Planetary Stories), Ayize Jama-Everett ( whose works include The Liminal War and The Entropy of Bones), Australian feminist writer Sylvia Kelso (The Blackston Gold and The Amberlight series), Aqueduct Press’s L. Timmel Duchamp (The Red Rose Rages Bleeding, The Marq’ssan Cycle, and more), Nigerian writer Tade Thompson (Making Wolf and Rosewater, Sept. 2016), Matt Ruff (Lovecraft Country) and Amy Wolf (The Misses Bronte’s Establishment).

gamutNews From the Weird: Special Guest Richard Thomas gives The Outer Dark listeners an exclusive sneak peek at the exciting plans for his highly anticipated new neo-noir spec-lit fiction magazine Gamut, featuring a who’s who of writers, artists and staff, and its Kickstarter campaign.

This archival episode will be available again at This Is Horror soon. In the meantime, subscribe at iTunes  or Blubrry to make sure you don’t miss an episode.

Next week’s guest: Will Ludwigsen, author of In Search Of and Others (Lethe Press).

Please vote for The Outer Dark in the People’s Choice Project iRadio Podcast Awards. https://www.projectiradio.com/podcast-awards/

storiesforchipOrder The Outer Dark T-shirts at SkurvyInk: https://skurvyink.com/products/outerdark-shirt

More Links:

Bert and I: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPGf77t9hRA

Stagecoach Mary: https://www.blackcowboys.com/maryfields.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Leopold%27s_Ghost

Review of Lovecraft Country by Nisi Shawl: https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/books/matt-ruffs-lovecraft-country-horrors-in-1950s-america/

https://www.thedarkhousepress.com/

lovecraftctryShow credits:

Host/Executive Producer: Scott Nicolay

Co-Host, News From the Weird/Producer: Justin Steele

Associate Producer/Show Notes/Publicist: Anya Martin

Logo Design: Nick “The Hat” Gucker

Music: Michael Griffin

Laird Barron & Justin Steele: The State of The Weird 2015 | The Outer Dark: Episode 24 — DECEMBER 22, 2015

X's for Eyes state of the weird 1000pxLaird Barron and Justin Steele join host Scott Nicolay in the most epic episode of The Outer Dark yet. Laird updates listeners on what he’s been working on lately, including his new review columns at Dark Discoveries and Locus, Justin discusses his vision as new fiction editor, columnist and reviewer for Strange Aeons, as well as more future anthology plans with Ross Lockhart. And Scott reveals some plans as well including his next collection in 2017, editing a short story collection of works by John D. Keefauver for Lethe Press, and more. The three then dive deep into a discussion of all the “good stuff out there” released in 2015 and upcoming in 2016 in weird fiction, especially short stories and so many must-have collections and anthologies. One stand-out in late 2015 is the “wonderful” and historic Cassilda’s Song, edited by Joseph S Pulver Sr. and featuring a who’s who of not just the top women writing weird fiction today but some of the very best authors and stories of the year period. In 2016, new collections from Laird Barron, John Langan, Livia Llewellyn, Jeffrey Ford, and Brian Evenson lead the pack of highly anticipated publications, as well as collections such as Autumn Cthulhu (ed. Mike Davis/Lovecraft eZine) and Lost Signals (ed. Max Booth III/Perpetual Motion Machine Press), a major new novel by the consistently excellent Stephen Graham Jones and many more writers and editors driving the Weird Renaissance.

YBWF-2Plus the Roundtable discusses innovative takes on werewolves, different types of rejections, the small press boom and its sustainability, the economics of limited editions, advice to authors on strategies to grow careers, the loss of some titans (Joel Lane, Michael Shea, Lucius Shepard, Melanie Tem, Tanith Lee) in recent years, why writers should embrace and savor weird and horror influences, the Weird’s big move into major publishing and cinema/TV, heading into the third annual Year’s Best Weird Fiction, key editors and publishers (including Ellen Datlow, Michael Kelly, Ross Lockhart, Simon Strantzas, and more), where Bizarro and Weird meet and diverge, and much more.

My dick was up for 5 hours (last one in hospital..). If you ask me if did it work? – hell yeah! Did I enjoy it? – hell no! But to be honest, that’s only for Levitra 20mg my idiocy.

This archival episode will be available again at This Is Horror soon. In the meantime, subscribe at iTunes or Blubrry to make sure you don’t miss an episode.

Next week’s guest: Henry Lien, author of “The Ladies’ Aquatic Gardening Society” (Asimov’s, June 2015) and more.

cassilda's songMore Links:

https://jonathanstrahan.podbean.com/

https://weirdfictionreview.com/2011/11/dogme-2011-for-weird-fiction-by-scott-nicolay/

https://www.eibonvalepress.co.uk/books/books_scarcity.htm

https://www.lethepressbooks.com/

https://dimshores.apps-1and1.com/

https://smallbeerpress.com/

https://journalstone.com/

autumn-cthulhu-midsizehttps://dunhamsmanor.com/

https://centipedepress.com/

https://www.undertowbooks.com/

https://chizinepub.com/

https://perpetualpublishing.com/

https://www.fedoganandbremer.com/

Orrin Grey: Who’s Afraid of the Painted Monster? | The Outer Dark: Episode 19 — NOVEMBER 11, 2015

pm-cov72dpiOrrin Grey, author of Painted Monsters & Other Strange Beasts, shares the secret origins of his latest collection including how artist Nick Gucker deftly worked details from all the stories into a monstrously macabre cover, the dialogue with horror cinema from Universal to Hammer to giallo that runs through his wonderfully plotted works, what he describes as a “Clive Barker influence,” exploring “philosophy” through narrative, using tropes as shorthand but in surprising, unconventional ways, ghost stories not about ghosts as we expect them to be, similarities to Robert Aickman, acknowledging and celebrating dramatic influences from William Shakespeare to William Castle, the extraordinary significance of Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets starring Boris Karloff and how that film juxtaposed an older Gothic, creepy school of horror with the modern paranoia-laced violent horror of the Sixties, scholarly approaches versus jazz riffing on many different traditions of horror film and literature especially in the title story, his love of wax museums, the dialogue between the stories in both of his anthologies, John Langan who wrote the introduction, his obsession with obsession, The Prestige, twin novella finales about selling your soul to the Devil, what he learned about pacing from Mike Mignola and giving the Golem the Universal treatment via Hellboy pulp expressionist styling, affinities with Belgian Weird author Jean Ray and buried Malpertuis in “Painted Monsters,” Old Dark House movies, death as a recurring theme in every single story, what’s next for Orrin Grey including stories, novellas, and a nonfiction book about horror films, talking movies with Gemma Files, musing about seeing his own work someday on film, and his recent reading recommendations including previous The Outer Dark guest Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Amanda Downum.

Justin Steele reviews Orrin Grey’s Painted Monsters & Other Strange Beasts, and joins Scott for this week’s installment of News from the Weird including coverage of World Fantasy Convention 2015 and the World Fantasy Awards, as well as exciting upcoming collections, novels and other works by some of the biggest names in Weird.

This archival episode will be available again at This Is Horror soon. In the meantime, subscribe at iTunes  or Blubrry to make sure you don’t miss an episode.

More Links:

https://www.patreon.com/orringrey?ty=h

https://www.paulchadwick.net/

https://www.strange-aeons.com/

Next week’s guest: Mike Davis, editor/publisher of Lovecraft eZine. and the upcoming anthology, Autumn Cthulhu.

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