Author: Holly Schofield

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New poems by Jean-Louis Trudel!

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SF Canada member Jean-Louis Trudel has news  on the English-language SF poetry front. First, his poem, “Offerings to a Voiceless Star”, appears in the Summer 2022 of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association’s magazine, Star*Line.

Two more poems were accepted recently by online publications. “The Name of Last Things” is slated to appear in a future issue of Canada’s Polar Starlight. And “Dark Is Your Loneliness in a Crowd” will appear in the second issue of Australia’s I Become the Beast.

Find out more about Jean-Louis at culturedesfuturs.blogspot.com

 

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New publication for KT Wagner!

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SF Canada member KT Wagner’s short story “Beneath Her Skin” is in the August issue of Cosmic Horror Monthly!

KT Wagner writes Gothic horror and op/ed pieces in the garden of her Maple Ridge, British Columbia home. She enjoys day-dreaming and is a collector of strange plants, weird trivia and obscure tomes. In her spare time, she organizes writer events and works to create literary community. KT graduated from Simon Fraser University’s Writers Studio in 2015 (Southbank 2013). A number of her short stories are published in magazines and anthologies. She’s currently working on a scifi-horror novel and is also an active member of the Horror Writers Association (HWA). KT can be found online at www.northernlightsgothic.com

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Short story by Melanie Marttila published in Pirating Pups!

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SF Canada member Melanie Marttila’s short story, “Torvi, Viking Queen,” was recently published in Tyche Books‘ Pirating Pups anthology. Edited by Rhonda Parrish and SFC member Margaret Curelas, the anthology contains thirteen daring “tails” of dogs, puns, and fun!

Enter a world of Barking Buccaneers, where piratical dogs sail the seas, seeking one tail-chasing adventure after another. Whether dealing with sea monsters, the doldrums, or bitter betrayal, these dogs have a true nose for adventure and always dig up their buried treasure.

Pirating Pups is available in a variety of formats at Tyche Books.

Melanie blogs at melaniemarttila.ca and lives in Sudbury, Ontario, with spouse and dog, in the house where three generations of her family have lived, on the street that bears her family name.

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Darke Conteur’s MALICE now a web serial!

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SF Canada member Darke Conteur has turned their post-apocalyptic tv show MALICE (based two hundred years after their zombie novel), into a web serial!

Two hundred years after a zombie plague, the real danger begins…

Aaron Zahira is looking for a different way of life and falls in with a group of mercenaries hired for jobs that take them into the badlands; places where wraiths and werewolves hunt for new meat, where vampires nest in crumbling steel lairs, and where the remains of the dead lurk in dark places, waiting.

Aaron is no mercenary and he’ll need the help of his comrades to escape the clutches of creatures that are faster, stronger, and deadlier than anything that has ever lived before.

Find the first four parts on Wattpad and find Darke Conteur at darkeconteur.weebly.com

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“The Ableism and Privilege Behind ‘You Must Write Every Day'” by Cait Gordon

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SF Canada member Cait Gordon has an article in Write Magazine this month. With quotes from A. Gregory Frankson, Derek Newman-Stille, Talia C. Johnson, SFC member Bernadette Gabay Dyer, and Cathy Smith, Cait examines how the common writing advice of “write every day” may be harmful to people who are disabled, neurodivergent, and/or who have lived experiences that make this writing “rule” inaccessible..

Cait Gordon is an autistic, disabled, and queer Canadian writer of speculative fiction that celebrates diversity. She is the author of Life in the ’Cosm, The Stealth Lovers, and Iris and the Crew Tear Through Space (2023). Her short stories appear in Alice Unbound: Beyond Wonderland, We Shall Be Monsters, Space Opera Libretti, and Stargazers: Microtales from the Cosmos. Cait also founded The Spoonie Authors Network and joined Talia C. Johnson to co-edit the Nothing Without Us and Nothing Without Us Too anthologies, whose authors and protagonists are disabled, d/Deaf, Blind or visually impaired, neurodivergent, Spoonie, and/or they manage mental illness.

You can learn more about Cait Gordon at her website: caitgordon.com.

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Statement from SF Canada about the attack on Salman Rushdie

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On Saturday, August 13th, the Booker-winning author Sir Salman Rushdie was attacked in Chautauqua, NY, by a knife-wielding assailant. At the time of writing he is expected to live and no longer on a respirator, but it is reported that he may have lost an eye, and suffered other possibly-permanent injuries. SF Canada wishes Sir Salman a speedy recovery.  We would also like to voice our support for Rushdie’s work, and for writers everywhere who write on controversial topics.
The attack appears to have been in retribution for Rushdie’s authorship (in 1988) of the magic-realist novel The Satanic Verses. While in one sense it was the act of a lone would-be murderer, the attack was encouraged by a fatwa issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini, and by blood money offered by entities connected to the Iranian government.
 
Of course, being controversial does not in itself make a piece of literature worthwhile. The quality of a piece of literature depends upon numerous things, in many cases subjective, and controversy in the service of bad writing is no virtue. However,  a writer may legitimately make use of controversial material. It is perhaps not widely enough remembered, three decades after the publication of The Satanic Verses, that the passages so widely objected to were not presented as true representations of the prophet Mohammed and those around him, but as the delusions of a mentally ill protagonist, aggravated by the stress of his experience as an immigrant.  It is ultimately the reader’s decision whether this, or any other, piece of writing succeeds: many have thought that The Satanic Verses succeeds brilliantly.  But, whatever the reader’s opinion on a piece of fiction, violence or persecution of the author are never legitimate responses.