This novel is the sum and summit of who Vonda was and what her work was about: all of us, imperfect, and doing our best. It’s an alt-history that feels like the beginning of the world. A world we could still have, if we’re lucky.
@mariadahvana.bsky.social I just published an essay co-authored with one of my students, Teddy Valentine, on your Beowulf, titled "'War-wedded to a woe-bringer': Gender Performance and Queer Sexuality in Maria Dahvana Headley’s Translation of Beowulf": boydellandbrewer.com/book/studies...
Congrats!
In the mail today: my editors' copies of Dan Hassler-Forest's FAST AND FURIOUS FRANCHISING!
www.amazon.com/Fast-Furious...
Beginning to see the word "aura" an awful lot in student writing this semester...
Phto of screenshot of text: Mother-Quest: Maternal Remembrance and the Holy Grail in Chrétien de Troyes and Nicola Griffith Brian J. Sheerin - (bio) This analysis of Chrétien's Conte du Graal argues that Perceval's experiences with and quest for the grail are significantly connected to the memory of his mother. An examination of Nicola Griffith's modern Perceval narrative Spear then posits that several of the maternal priorities in Chrétien's narrative are recovered by this retelling.
Screenshot of text: While Griffith's reimagining of Arthurian mythology has been justly lauded for its queering of traditional narratives that prioritize male (also white, heteronormative) heroism,? my interest in Spear lies rather in the way this text helps to recover overlooked themes and desires already latent in medieval storytelling. This recuperative intersectionality, I wish to posit, is particularly compelling as it pertains to Chrétien's Conte du Graal, the original surviving elaboration of the Perceval storyline.
Screenshot of text: Griffith draws heavily on Chrétien's model for her version of the tale, but rather than simply adjusting it to fit modern sensibilities, I hope to show that in many ways her narrative actually draws out priorities in Chrétien that have tended to be overlooked. These priorities are especially concentrated around Perceval's mother, a seemingly minor and even regressive figure in the original narrative who nevertheless refuses to remain forgotten after her official disappearance in the opening pages of the text.
How did I miss this?!
"Mother-Quest: Maternal Remembrance and the Holy Grail in Chrétien de Troyes and Nicola Griffith," Brian J. Sheerin (ARTHURIANA 35,2):
"...several key priorities of Chrétien are recovered by this modern retelling..."
How cool!
#medievalsky
muse.jhu.edu/article/965242
Good thing the show has absolutely no bearing on anyone or anything's pronouns.
@gelatinousstand.bsky.social
I continue to be fascinated by the phenomenon whereby an expert engages with any of the LLMs on their field of expertise and is instantly horrified by the wrong answers, and then goes on to use it for things they are not experts in as though it won’t be just as bad for those.
Image of a battered and well-read novel, Hild by Nicola Griffith, on a carpet
Text screenshot: “Hild," by Nicola Griffith Fiction, 2013 A colleague lent this to me and I'm so glad she did. First because I'm no medievalist, so a book set in this period allows me to dial down my weird, self-imposed vigilance for anachronism. But mostly because Griffith's novel about the young life of Saint Hilda of Whitby is so deft and moving, the best of what historical fiction can be. When we meet the future saint, Hild is merely a young Anglo-Saxon woman living in seventh-century Britain - albeit one with a power of sight that's a source of both respect and fear for those around her. Pleasurable though this is, it is not "light" reading. Griffith is world-building (or at least world-reconstructing), and the time you spend to understand the alliances and pressures, the evolution of the church and the complexities of power is all necessary to the full immersion that is the book's greatest gift. Yes, the publisher provides a handy glossary for the unfamiliar terminology, but you quickly find yourself confident enough in the author's powers that you assume she knows what she's doing. Read if you like: "The Name of the Rose, ," by Umberto Eco; "Pillars of the Earth," by Ken Follett; "Redwall," by Brian Jacques.
So, wow, nearly 13 years after publication HILD is finally reviewed in @nytimes.com. Thank you, Sadie Stein!
(It seems to be one of those days 🤩)
Newly released: the latest critical companion in our series "Palgrave Science Fiction and Fantasy: A New Canon," this time Graham J. Murphy on Marvel's Squadron Supreme: link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
Why are we restructuring the entire world around this technology, again?
I missed that the latest book in the series of critical companions I edit for Palgrave has already reached print, Joseph Rex Young on George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones: link.springer.com/book/10.1007... .
Feel free to pitch us on a potential project if you'd like to write one of your own!
Really interesting stuff: I have an MA thesis student writing on Muir, and this will be helpful.
Favorite finding doing the research: a short-lived gay bar from the 80s named "The Last Unicorn."
I'm really thrilled to share an article that I co-wrote with one of my students, Arwen Paredes: "The First Queer Unicorn?: Reading Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn as Trans Narrative."
www.mdpi.com/2410-9789/6/...
EXTRAPOLATION seeks a reviewer for Mayurika Chakravorty’s FANTASY AND THE POLITICS OF SUBVERSION: SPECULATIVE WRITING IN COLONIAL INDIA. Please send queries to david.wilson@wright.edu.
www.bloomsbury.com/us/fantasy-a...
@bloomsburyacad.bsky.social (2026)
A bio of Charles R. Saunders, an important but sadly too often forgotten Black writer of sword and sorcery fantasy (which he called sword and soul), early critic of racism in fantasy, and journalist is coming out in January.
The author, Jon Tattrie, will be on @mealofthorns.bsky.social, too!
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When we asked ChatGPT to grade it ourselves in the same way, and then repeat the grading a second time, it produced two different scores, and invented new issues not in the actual writing it was claiming to be analyzing and evaluating.
So delighted to learn that my middle schooler's English teacher has started using ChatGPT to grade writing assignments. She received a near failing grade based in part on a diagnosis of specific grammatical errors that were not in fact in the assignment.
Here's a new one from graduate school recommendation systems: rating the "Clarity of career goals" of the applicant, and on a percentile basis. How do you distinguish applicants of the top 2% versus top 5% career goal clarity?
New issue of Science Fiction Film and Television ⬇️⬇️⬇️
liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/toc/sfftv/18/3
Quick reminder that, not only is Christmas around the corner, the deadline for this year's Peter Nicholls Essay Prize is only six weeks away - 11 January. call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/06/...
Surreal experience: a quarter century or so after I'd always be asking my parents to buy me more Magic: The Gathering cards all the time, here I am saying "No, I'm not buying you more Magic: The Gathering cards" to my own twelve-year-old...
Somehow back down in the unicorn hole once again
Proud to be sponsoring this event next summer.
The Earthsea one oddly costs more in print than it did upon publication, but the ebook price has dropped in the same way: link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
I have no idea what governs the price changes for my books even though I now co-edit the series they're published in, but for whatever reason the Beagle book is sitting at a much more affordable price at the moment: link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
Those Starmont volumes are often really great sources, but, yes, can be incredibly rare. I can usually find them held by one library or another when I use Interlibrary Loan, but often the number of libraries is in the single digits.