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Palimpsest - 2012
review of Winterson's Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
The first part of Why Be Happy, twice as long as the second, is a scraped clean, rewritten, and embellished palimpsest of Oranges.
Hard Take Soft, Still - 2009
Sexuality in Science Fiction Symposium, SF Studies
Sf as a genre is terrified of the body. As a result, its depictions of physical pleasures are rare.
War Machine, Time Machine - June 2008
written by Nicola Griffith and Kelley Eskridge
The golden age of queer sf is 20. Or maybe it was the 1970s. Or perhaps it was in France.
Spit Out Your Mouthguard - March 2003
Humans vs. Nature
"Layd-ees and gentlemen, please welcome, on my right, fresh from championship bouts with DDT and lead pollution...."
Identity and SF - June 2007
Why science fiction is part of my identity.
Scientific theory and fiction are both narrative, stories we tell to make sense of the world....
Taser Buzz Kill - April 2008
A screed I wrote for The Huffington Post
There's been a lot of buzz in the press about women's Taser parties. (They're like Tupperware parties, but sell C2 Tasers instead of plastic tubs.)...
Process Porn, Part I - July 2007
more of an interview, really, for the Aqueduct blog
It appalls me, if I stop to think about it...
Process Porn, Part II - July 2007
the interview go so long we had to cut it in two
It makes sense only if 'inspiration' means vision...
As We Mean To Go On - June 2005
written by Kelley Eskridge & Nicola Griffith
I don't know how to begin this damn thing, I say. She grins and answers, Honey, don't faff about. Just tell the story.
Author Readings: A Guide - May 2005
An author reading is an informal, free event. (As in *free*. Costs you nothing. At all. Sometimes--rare, but not unheard of--there's even free food.) You can plan in advance or just show up on a whim, wearing what you like, and sit anywhere. Bring a date, bring your family, bring your fine self....
Doing it For Pleasure - written for Central Booking
Reading isn't everything--it's not meat and drink, it's not sex or a warm hearth--but it's a lot. I need it. I do it often. I do it for pleasure....
Doing the Work - written for Bold
Type, April 2002
Even though I can list in my sleep the questions I'll get
when this book comes out, I'll still be struck dumb when they're
asked because the answers are all connected and about as easy
to explain as why being alive is a good thing...
Brilliance and beauty
and risk- Guest of Honour speech
given at Liverpool University
A couple of times in the last few months I've seen myself
described in print as a British writer. Each time, it startles
me. I don't know why, exactly, because I don't think of myself
as American--I'm English, born and bred, still a citizen,
still with at least the remnants of a Yorkshire accent--but
it does...
Writing from
the Body - first published in SF Eye
In this essay I want to talk about Art, particularly literature,
and the Body--about the ways in which we do and do not connect
the two. It's a personal essay about how I feel about my body,
my writing, and the various changes both have undergone over the years...
"Satan's Super
Spawn?" - from Nature, December 1999
Initial research indicates the practice of egg donation is
spurring in some regions a statistically significant alteration
in both the new and controversial Raswani Social Intelligence
scale and the more traditional Stanford-Binet IQ test...
Living Fiction
and Storybook Lives - from Altair #2
There isn't a culture on this earth without some kind of storytelling
tradition... As individuals and societies we are shaped by
story: our culture and sense of self literally cannot exist
without it because we only know who and what we are when we
can tell a story about ourselves...
Writing
Slow River: Gender and Genre - a conversation
It's a novel I have been waiting to write since I was twenty
years old but didn't have the skill. To be honest, I'm not
sure if I will ever have the skill to do the themes and characters
justice. But two years ago I reached the point where I had
to write it down, ready or not.
A
Few Words About Nicola Griffith - by Kelley Eskridge
When Nicola Griffith was nine years old, she wondered how
bows and arrows worked. She had probably read a book about
them; she has always read books about history and people and
how they shape each other. So she made a bow out of a tree
branch and string. She found a stick of bamboo and whittled
it to a point with a pencil sharpener...
Visitor from an Edge
- by Mark W. Tiedemann
Key images that come to mind when I hear the name "Nicola Griffith":
Limes squeezed dry down the neck of a Dos Equis bottle--
An impromptu tango danced to bad Muzak with Kelley while waiting (interminably) for a hotel elevator in Boston, 1989--
Sitting crosslegged on a chair before an enormous IBM Selectric in a sweltering summer heat, composing a love story (which promptly went over everybody else's head during the workshop)...
The New Aliens
of Science Fiction - from Nebula Awards 30
Science fiction has always been concerned with exploring the
Alien, the Not Self, the Other. Let me take you on a tour
of the history of that alien, show you the broad trends, and
then come back to what SF considers The Alien today.
Alien
in our own Tongue - from Terra Incognita
Imagine being six years old and reading an anthropology primer
about Stone Age Man: "After a hard day's search for food on
the veldt, stone age man was probably glad to get back to
the warm cave. No doubt he was comforted by the same everyday
activities we are today..."
Layered
Cities - from Paradoxa
Fiction generally embodies that which a culture knows to be
true...What do we know to be true today? That civilization--art,
education, democracy, law--springs from and is of the city.
That, paradoxically, "inner city" has become a euphemism for
poverty, despair, and injustice. We also know that there are
two parts to any city--the physical infrastructure, and the
people and their institutions--and that both are changing...
Nicola
Griffith's The Blue Place -
by L. Timmel Duchamp
On the face of it, Nicola Griffith's novel, The Blue Place,
looks like a gripping thriller and tender love story that
just happens to have one of the most believable and interesting
characterizations to be found in any kind of fiction and a
plot that serves beautifully to elaborate and exemplify it.
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