I’ve been busy dealing with all kinds of fiddly things this week, including a zillion medical appointments, but, hey, we’re off to the Columbia Gorge for a few days next week, so my outlook will perk up considerably. Not that it’s bad now, just mildly tedious. Though, hmmn, nope, not even tedious, not when the trees are all blossoming and the sun is preparing to shine. Again. That will make three times in one week, which is a record so far this year. I think I might pass out. (Oh, wait, that would mean more fucking medical appointments. I think I’ll just pass.)
Next month I might have a couple of announcements. There again, I might not. We’ll just have to see. Yes, I’m being cryptic, but there’s no point talking about stuff until it’s ironclad.
Meanwhile, here are some bits and bobs of stuff:
- Over at Lambda Literary, a complete list of Publishing Triangle Award winners. Particular congratulations to occasional AN visitor, Katherine Beuter, Alcestis, which took the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction.
- I’d like you all to welcome our friend Jon Anastasio, Leadership Learning expert, to the wild world of social media. His website is here. Guess who did the photos…
- Sterling Editing has some nifty links for writers, including my favourite, a sketch of how it really feels to be a writer.
- The Women’s Funding Alliance (which I talked about yesterday) raised nearly $400,000 at their event. If you’d like to help them support women and girls in the Northwest, let’s see if we can push them the rest of the way.
- Last, and definitely most difficult: Joanna Russ died yesterday. Locus has a preliminary obit, and over at io9 Annaleen Newnitz explains why you should read Russ’s books.
Joanna Russ was a giant. As John-Henri Holmberg points out, one of our Modernist masters. She was witty, she could be savage, she was always honest. She influenced fiction way beyond the intimate gravity well of f/sf. I’d like to see a Modern Library edition of her work. Her most important writing, in my opinion, was her short fiction (“Mystery of the Young Gentleman,” “When It Changed” “Picnic on Paradise”) and her non-fiction. (How to Suppress Women’s Writing, To Write Like a Woman).
I’m not able to explain today just how much her work meant to me, how very important it is. But Ammonite, for example, simply couldn’t have existed without her foundation.
Go read Farah Mendlesohn’s On Joanna Russ. Perhaps at some point I’ll be able to think clearly. For now: I regret that I never met her.
I agree with you that Russ's short fiction and her non-fiction are her most important work. I reread her short stories last year, and should continue with her other fiction.
Don't you mean a Library of America edition of her writing? That would be great, and I'd snap it up in a second, even if I don't see it happening. Still, if they could put out three volumes of Philip K. Dick's novels, they could do one volume of Russ.
Thank you again for the congrats!
Looking forward to hearing your mysterious news, if it is indeed shareable next week.
Thanks for letting us know about Joanna Russ. Back when I was coming out as a baby dyke in the mid-80s I attended rap groups at the LRC. At the time it was located in a shared space with a women's gymn upstairs in an old building on either Pike or Pine on Capitol Hill.
Joanna attended the Wednesday night group pretty regularly. At the time I had no conception of who she was. I did hear someone mention eventually that she was a published author but it wasn't until a few years later that I realized she was an Important Person. She did have a knack for stirring up interesting conversation and debate at the group. Being only 23 at the time she was a bit of an intimidating figure to me, and that was before having any concept of her place in literary history.
May she rest in peace.
Duncan, hey, I think she should get Modern Library and Library of America editions.
Katherine, you deserve it! But my news may take longer than a week…
Robin, there's an lovely piece about Joanna by Timmi Duchamp over at the Aqueduct blog. I think you'd enjoy it.
From a Ben Bova essay on John W. Campbell available at planetstories.wordpress.com.
“Scene 2: A midtown Manhattan restaurant. John Campbell is taking six or seven (I forget the exact number) writers to lunch. John was fond of posing mental puzzlers; he liked to see how bright his writers were.
He asks us: 'In the year 1910 there were two railroad stations in the city of Boston. One of them was the largest railroad station in the United States. But as every proper Bostonian knew, it was not the largest railroad station in Boston.'
Talk about challenges! We had to explain that conundrum. Over lunch. If memory serves, I believe it was Joanna Russ who finally cracked it. Think about that as you read about John W. Campbell Jr. There will never be another like him.”
For me, from time to time, this example comes to mind…because Campbell is always associated with his stable of male SF writers including Heinlein. And here he was inviting Russ along who topped the boys in thinking. It makes me wonder what the conversation was like…
I do remember Harry Harrison talking about showing up at the Analog offices once just before lunch. Randall Garrett told him to hold on, wait a moment, Campbell would take them to lunch, he needed authors to justify the company buying…
chadao, thanks for that. But, y'know, I don't thank you for the puzzle. It took me ages to figure out…