Culture Consumption: March & April 2022

Hoo, boy. Time slipped right by me. I was planning to do my Culture Consumption for March on time, but then the next thing I knew it was April. In addition to putting two months together, I’ve done a lot media consumption over the past two months — which means I’ve got a huge stack of things to talk about.

I’ll try to move through it all as quickly as I can. If I have the wherewithal, I’ll try to expand on a few of these later on.

Anyway, here I am at last with all the books books, movies, television, games, and podcasts I enjoyed over the past two months.

Books

The Smallest of Bones by Holly Lyn WalrathLet’s kick things off with a couple of fantastic poetry collections.

First, The Smallest of Bones by Holly Lyn Walwrath uses the skeletal structure of the body as a means of structurally shaping the collection. Each section begins with a poetic description of various bones, from the cranium to the sternum and beyond. The poems that follow beautifully explore love, sexuality, gender, religion, and death, among other  aspects of humanity and the supernatural. It’s a gorgeous collection with crisp, clear, and lyrical language.

This is How the Bone Sings by W Todd KanekoSecond, This is How the Bone Sings by W. Todd Kaneko is a stunning collection of poems focus on Minidoka, a concentration camp for Japanese Americans built in Idaho during World War II. The author blends history with myth and folklore to explore how the scars of the past carry through generations — from grandparents through to their grandchildren. The wounds caused by racism and hate are continue on through memory and story. These poems are evocative and beautiful, providing an important memorial for an aspect of American history that should never be forgotten.

Noor by Nnedi OkoraforDelving into fiction, Nnedi Okorafor’s Noor is the story of Anwuli Okwudili, a woman who prefers to be called AO, who has a number of necessary body augmentations on her arm and legs — a fact that that makes some superstitious people in Africa believe she is evil or wicked. When she is attacked by men in her local community, she fights back with incredible power and flees into the desert. On her journey, she finds new companions, faces off against an powerful corporation, and finds hope filled utopian community finding safety within the winds of a man-made natural disaster. I loved the characters and communities portrayed with Okorafor’s Africanfuturist vision of a future. It’s a great read.

Cosmobiological-Stories by Jilly DreadfulCosmobiological: Stories by Jilly Dreadful is a collection of hopepunk short stories that explore love, relationships, passion, the resilience of the human spirit, and the possibilities of hope through myth, fantasy, and science fiction.”5×5″ (which you can read at LightSpeed) is an epistolary story about two young people who connect with and find strength through each other at an advanced science camp.

Another gorgeous tale is “Even the Simulacrum Heart is a Lonely Hunter,” which is about a woman who has been genetically engineered for increased empathy. In the story, she has to deal with the impact that this increased empathy has on her live and reckons with her relationship with her father. It totally made me cry by the end.

And these are just two of many of the fantastic tales in this collection.

Continue reading “Culture Consumption: March & April 2022”

Elgin Award Winners Announced — and Poetry Giveaway!

The Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) hosts the annual  Elgin Awards — named for SFPA founder Suzette Haden Elgin — which honor the best poetry books (49+ pages) and chapbooks (10–39 pages) of speculative poetry from the past two years.

The 2019 winners for book length collection are:

  • Winner: War: Dark Poems by Marge Simon & Alessandro Manzetti (Crystal Lake Publishing, 2018)
  • Second Place: Artifacts by Bruce Boston (Independent Legions, 2018)
  • Third Place: Witch Wife by Kiki Petrosino (Sarabande Books, 2017)

The 2019 winners for chapbook length collection are:

That’s right! My collaborative chapbook written with the amazing Lauren Madeline Wiseman has placed third in the Elgin Awards. We are so phenomenally honored to be included among such amazing works of poetry.

And I’m so stoked that I’m hosting a poetry giveaway on my Instagram — featuring copies of the two winners and a copy of my collaborative chapbook.


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Poet Spotlight: Holly Lyn Walrath on hybrid writing and the idea of femininity

Holy Lyn Walrath

Holly Lyn Walrath’s poetry and short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Fireside Fiction, Luna Station Quarterly, Liminality, and elsewhere. Her chapbook of words and images, Glimmerglass Girl, will be published by Finishing Line Press in 2018. She holds a B.A. in English from The University of Texas and a Master’s in Creative Writing from the University of Denver. She is a freelance editor and host of The Weird Circular, an e-newsletter for writers containing submission calls and writing prompts. ​Find her on Twitter @HollyLynWalrath or on Instagram @Holly__Lyn. (Bio from author’s website.)

You recently published your first collection of poetry, Glimmerglass Girl. Tell us about the project and how it came into being.

Glimmerglass Girl by Holy Lyn WalrathSome time ago I realized I’d written a lot of poems centered on the idea of femininity. It made sense to me to compile them into a collection. Many were poems I loved but that weren’t getting a lot of attention publication-wise. I think the most surprising thing about putting the collection together was that those poems (which at the time seemed like failures to me) suddenly made sense as a part of a collective whole. They spoke to each other in a new way. So that was my process, finding the pieces that I loved and wanted to contrast with each other to create new meaning.

Continue reading “Poet Spotlight: Holly Lyn Walrath on hybrid writing and the idea of femininity”