Given the extraordinary circumstances through which we are living, I decided to devote the first half of today’s radio show to talking to some experts about mental health. First up was Subitha from CASS Bristol who are your one-stop shop for mental health support if you live in the Bristol area. She’s followed by Dr. Dominique Thompson who is a former GP and has written a number of books on mental health, specifically for students.
In the second half of the show I was delighted to welcome back Tamsin from the Popelei Theatre Company. She and her colleagues have launched a Women in Lockdown project, calling for 4-minute monologues featuring women who, for various reasons, are restricted in their movements.
I only had three interviews this week. I was keeping the fourth slot free for some boat-dwelling pals who were being treated very shabbily by Bristol Harbour. Thankfully we made enough noise on social media for them to get picked up by the BBC so they didn’t need me. I got to play some fun music instead.
Today was a little bit of Wizard’s Tower work then finishing off the editing for my next radio show. This one will have a big feature on taking care of your mental health during lockdown, plus my fabulous Venezuelan friend, Tamsin Clarke. Regular followers will be pleased to hear that, despite doing an interview over Zoom, Tamsin and I kept our clothes on for the whole thing.
Social media in the UK today has been mainly about the government’s threat to ban outdoor exercise if people don’t stop flocking to parks. Reaction seemed to be split between those people stressed out by having to stay indoors, and those stressed out by fear of catching the virus. Me, I’m happy to stay at home as much as possible. I note that Pilates was developed as a means of keeping fit while a prisoner of war. Most people should be able to do some exercise. As far as I’m concerned the big issue is not space, but shortness of breath.
I’ve just seen a report that Boris Johnson has been admitted to hospital for tests. There’s no means of knowing how serious this is.
Elsewhere there are reports that the US Federal Government has seized a shipment of vital medical supplies bound for Barbados. There have been earlier reports that Trump has also intercepted shipments paid for by individual state governments within the USA. The word for this is piracy. Meanwhile the British newspapers are apparently demanding that we sue the Chinese for reparations over the virus. I’m assuming that they will agree provided that they can sue us over the opium wars. Goodness only knows where it is going to end.
I have been much more quiet on social media today as the insanity of yesterday has gone away. Juliet seems to have sold a good number of books, which is very welcome.
Instead today I have been doing interviews for next week’s radio show. The main focus of the show will be on mental health as I think we are all struggling a bit these days.
I also got the opportunity to watch some of HistFest: Lockdown, the online history festival that replaced the big event due to take place in London this weekend. My good friend Dan Vo was one of the presenters, and there were several other talks I found very interesting. The whole thing can be found online here.
By the way, if all goes according to plan then Dan and I will have some exciting news for you next week.
Tomorrow I get to attend my first ever virtual science fiction convention.
And finally, for those of you who have access to the BBC, this Mark Gatiss documentary about the great Aubrey Beardsley is well worth a watch.
The infection and death rates in the UK continue to accelerate. There were just short of 700 deaths reported today. For comparison, it appears that the number of people who die of the flu in the UK in an average winter is around 17,000. We only have 3,605 COVID-19 deaths in the UK at the moment, but the vast majority of those have occured in the last two weeks and things are getting worse.
Today on my radio show I interviewed a bunch of people from around the world about how they are coping with the cornavirus pandemic. These days my shows are all pre-recorded as I can’t go into the studio, but Miranda and the back office team at Ujima do a great job of getting me on air. Here’s the list of people that I interviewed:
Kevin Standlee (Nevada, USA)
Tansy Rayner Roberts (Hobart, Australia)
Celia Neri (Nice, France)
Sabrina Mittermeier (Munich, Germany)
Rhonda Garcia (Port of Spain, Trinidad)
Mihaela Perković (Zagreb Croatia)
Maria Turtschaninoff (Helsinki, Finland)
Juliet McKenna (Oxford, England)
Of those I think the government of Trinidad has probably come out of it best. Celia’s stories of teaching school kids on line, Sabrina’s need to flee the USA, and Mihaela’s story of the Zagreb earthquake stand out.
I tried to make the music choices fit as best I could with our current circumstances. Here are the songs I played.
Heroes – Janelle Monáe
Say a Little Prayer – Aretha Franklin
May the Force Be With You – Bootsy’s Rubber Band
4 Leaf Clover – Erykah Badu
A Little Help from My Friends – Ike & Tina Turner
We Are Family – Sister Sledge
When You’re Lonely – Labi Siffre
Dancing in the Streets – Boney M
The show will be available via our Listen Again service for a few weeks. You can find it here.
As I have a bit of free time on my hands thee days I am planning to do more shows to help keep our listeners entertained over the period of lockdown. If anyone has anything Bristol-related that they want to feature, please let me know.
I was hoping to get lots done today. I did, just not all of the things I expected to get done. This isolation thing is turning out to be exceptionally busy.
In theory you were supposed to get a new issue of Salon Futura today. In practice it is not going to happen. And I’m certainly not planning to stay up all night making it happen. It will be there tomorrow, which is shaping up to be an even busier day than today.
In other news, I finished off editing this week’s radio show today, so that will be broadcast on Wednesday as scheduled. Many thanks to all of the people who agreed to be interviewed.
Also the hardcovers of Juliet McKenna’s Tales of Einarinn books should be available today. Amazon appears to be having issues getting them, or the paperbacks, on sale, but given the state of the world right now that could be for a whole variety of reasons. I’m happy to allow them a little slack.
In other news I’m pleased to see that the numbers of new virus cases and new deaths in the UK have been fairly flat for the past few days. That may be a sign that the restrictions on movement are starting to take effect. For a full-blown epidemic those numbers should get larger each day. Then again, I suspect that numbers of cases are being massively under-reported because people with mild symptoms don’t want to bother the over-stretched health services. Who knows?
Today was a cooking day. I made a batch of prawn and lobster risotto. That sounds pretty posh, but actually it is a mostly storecupboard meal. It needs an onion, but they keep well. Other than that it is rice, a tin of lobster soup, some frozen prawns, and seasoning. I flung in some sherry as well. Dead easy really, unless you start cooking the risotto before defrosting the prawns, which is a bit silly. You can tell I hadn’t cooked it for a while.
I have spent most of the day recording and editing interviews for Wednesday’s radio show. I have 8 interviews altogether, from different places around the world. While most people have similar experiences of government-mandated shutdowns, attitudes towards the effectiveness of government responses vary wildly. Hopefully it will be an interesting show.
Where does the time go? I had another full day mainly on Wizard’s Tower work today. Tomorrow will be similar, but I also need to start work on my next radio show. Ujima is still on the air. A few people are allowed in to the studios to keep things running, and the rest of us are putting together shows at home. Personally I love doing live radio, but I’m happy to do pre-records if that’s all that is possible. Weirdly they might take me less time than doing a live show, so I might end up doing more shows. If it provides a useful service to people in these difficult times, it is worth doing.
Anyway, the plan for next week’s show is to interview people from around the world to find out how the pandemic is affecting them. I have the USA and France covered. I’m looking for people from other countries. If I can get enough I will only need a few minutes per person, which is about enough time to introduce yourself, say if you are well and have work, and bitch about how badly your government is doing. All interviews will be via Zoom. If you are interested, let me know.
In other news I gather than our government has promised a package of help for the self-employed. But no one will get any money before June. I think they are hoping that we’ll all be dead by then.
Today I got a message through the door from some people down the street. They are looking to put together a little community support group. I gather this sort of thing is happening all over the country, which is heartwarming. Unfortunately I’m not much use in such things. Firstly, as I may have the virus, I should not be socialising. And second, my first thought on seeing it was that if I got to know the rest of the people in the street then pretty soon they’d all know that I was trans and I’d have to find somewhere new to live.
I’m continuing to get “helpful” messages from all sorts of corporations. I use scare quotes because today I got messages from two different delivery companies. Both said they were introducing new procedures to avoid contact and that I should go to their website to enter my preferences. In both cases the website is not set up to enable you to do that.
As the day job hasn’t been chasing me today, I’ve been able to spend another day on Wizard’s Tower work. I’ve done most of the work on layouts for the new Tate Hallaway book, Unjust Cause, so that will be coming your way some time in April.
I have also been doing some testing with Zoom. Going into Bristol for a radio show is not a good idea, so I’m hoping to do some interviews remotely and put together a pre-record show. The plan for the April 1st show is to talk to a bunch of people from different countries around the world about how people are dealing with the pandemic where they live. So if you have always wanted to be on the show, this is your chance. Let me know.
Today’s cooking was proper store-cupboard stuff. Tuna, tomatoes, and some spices makes a great pasta sauce. Serve with conchiglie, obiously.
Today’s radio show sat on the cusp between the end of LGBT History Month and the arrival of International Women’s Day. (International Men’s Day is on November 19th, thank you for asking.) I began the show by looking backward and running an interview with my friend and sometime colleague, Dan Vo, that I had recorded in Cardiff over the weekend. Dan is a professional Queerator, that is, someone whose job it is to go around museums and find queer stuff in their collections that they can use to be more LGBT inclusive.
In the second slot I welcomed Rebecca from Watershed who is part of their cinema team. In particular she has been helping put together their International Women’s Day programme which features the Feminista Short Film Festival. There are also some great women-centered feature films coming up. Rebecca is also involved in QueerVision, the Watershed’s regular celebration of queer cinema. There’s a short film festival coming up for that and she’s looking for submissions.
Slot three should have been a feature on drink spiking featuring Andy Bennett from Avon & Somerset Police, but some sort of operational emergency claimed his time and I had to fill in with the chat and extra music. Hopefully we can do that piece another time.
Finally I welcomed Sian and Laura from the Bristol Festival of Women’s Literature. They have loads of great talent lined up for this year’s event, including the very wonderful Juliet Jacques talking about memoir writing. You can find more details of the programme here.
An event of particuar interest to me is the launch party at Spike Island on the 27th as it is being run in conjunction with the wonderful people from Comma Press who are publishing Europa 28, an anthology of writing about the future of Europe by women from all over the continent. It is political essays rather than SF, but these days the one quickly shades into the other. And of course much of the content is translated.
If you missed the show live it will be available through our Listen Again service for a few weeks. Go here to listen.
The playlist for the show was as follows:
Duffy – Rockferry
Tracy Chapman – She’s Got Her Ticket
Selecter – On My Radio
Rihanna – Only Girl in the World
Janet Kay – Silly Games
The Weather Girls – Its Raining Men
Bat for Lashes – Horse and I
Thelma Houston – Don’t Leave Me This Way
Janelle Monáe (feat. Grimes) – Pynk
Aretha Franklin – Until You Come Back
Sian and Laura, this is the famous Monica Sjöö painting that was one of the inspirations for Janelle Monáe’s video for Pynk.
Because I’m going to be in Canada with Kevin for the first part of April, my next show will not be until April 15th.
I was live on Ujima again today. It was a bit of a scramble getting the show together and huge thanks to those guests who came on board yesterday. Also huge thanks to my old pal Valentin who used to run the desk for Paulette back in the day when I was a trainee presenter. As Ben was on holiday this week, Valentin stepped in to help out. Ben messaged me to say he was listening to the show online, which is incredible devotion to duty, and probably means that we had a listener in Kenya this week.
The first hour of the show was devoted to LGBT History Month events in Bristol. First up I was joined by Claire from Aerospace Bristol. They, in conjunction with The Diversity Trust, OutStories Bristol, and South Gloucestershire Council are putting on an event specifically aimed at engineers, and the aerospace industry in particular. The headline speaker is the wonderful Caroline Paige, and I’m particularly looking forward to the panel with the young people from Alphabets who will be discussing what they want from employers in the future. That event is on Saturday. I will be there with both my DT and OSB hats on. Full details are available here.
Next I welcomed back Karen from M Shed, along with Zoltán from Freedom Youth. I’m not curating the M Shed event this year. We’ve turned the whole thing over to the young people, and they have done an amazing job of putting together a programme. You can find details of their event here. It is on Saturday 22nd, and sadly I will be in Salzburg that weekend, but I hope some of you will go along and let me know how it turned out.
We also mentioned two other great events coming up in Bristol this month. The leading civil rights lawyer, Johnathan Cooper, will be at Bristol University Law School on the evening of the 19th to talk about, “Policing Desire: LGBT+ Persecution in the UK, 1970 to 2000”. Tickets are available (for free) here. Also there is the Black Queerness event that we covered in last month’s show. That’s on at the RWA. It is officially sold out, but there’s a wait list that you can get onto here.
The second half of the show began with my being joined by Coral Manton from Bath Spa University. Coral describes herself as a “creative technologist”, which basically means that she gets to do fun things with computers all day and gets paid for it. One of her projects is Women Reclaiming AI, which looks to do something about the sexist bias in electronic personal assistants.
We all know that most of these things (Alexa, Siri, etc.) come with female-coded voices, and that’s because the companies who make them decided (probably after some market research) that customers wanted a subordinate and submissive identity for their personal assistant. (Interestingly SatNavs work the other way: male drivers won’t take instructions from a female-coded voice.) Because these software constructs are maninly created by men, the personalities that they have are not based on real women, but on what men want their female assistants to be like.
This leads us down all sorts of feminist rabbit holes. Most notably, before Coral and her colleagues could create a “real” female personality for an AI, they had to decide what it meant to be a “real” woman. Part of the process has been running workshops in which groups of women get to have input into the process of creating the AI personality.
It turns out that one of the things that they asked for was that the AI would have the right to decline to help every so often. Real women can’t drop everything and help their families whenever they are asked to do so, so artificial women shouldn’t either. That sounded good to me, though I did have visions of Hal 9000 saying, “I’m sorry Dave, I can’t do that”; and possibly of Portia from Madeline Ashby’s vN saying, “NO, you will obey ME!”
I could have happily have talked to Coral about this stuff for the whole two hours. Hopefully you find the discussion as interesting as I did.
My final guests were Ali & Loo from some local mental health charities, and Shani, a poet who works with them. Tomorrow is Time to Talk Day, on which people are encouraged to talk about their mental health issues. There’s a whole lot going on in Bristol tomorrow, and you can find links to it all here. I particularly love Loo’s event making pom poms to support the Sunflower Suicide Prevention Project.
The other event that I had to mention is the one coming up at Foyles in Cabot Circus on the evening of the 25th. That will be Emma Newman, Emma Geen, Liz Williams and myself in conversation with Kate Macdonald on the subject of women in science fiction. I understand that it is sold out, but there is probably a wait list. Details here.
You can listen to today’s show via the Ujima Listen Again service here.
The playlist for today’s show was:
Faint of Heart – Tegan & Sara
So Strong – Labi Siffre
Two Old Maids – The Vinyl Closet
Cream – Prince
Come Alive – Janelle Monáe
Are Friends Electric – Tubeway Army
Dock of the Bay – Otis Reading
I Need Somebody to Love Tonight – Sylvester
And in case any of you haven’t seen it, here is the wonderful video for the Tegan & Sara song. Watch carefully and you will spot Jen Richards and Angelica Ross in there as well.
Talking of Angelica, I see that there are rumours that she’ll feature in the Loki TV series. There have also been hints that Sera, one of Marvel’s current openly trans characters, will be in Thor: Love & Thunder. It is tempting to tie the two together, but what I really want to see happen is for Angelica to play Loki alongside Tom Hiddleston, because it won’t be proper Loki without some gender-flipping and it would be awful if they put Tom in drag for that.
Today was my first day back at work that involved leaving home. I was back in the Ujima studios for another Women’s Outlook. It had been a bit of a challenge pulling this one together because no one was answering email before Monday, so I had two days. Nevertheless, we had some guests.
The first slot was empty so I played some music to talk about the unpleasant prospect of at least 5 years of the UK being ruled by Blue Meanies. I then played a few songs to send a message to a certain orange-faced person over in the USA.
My first guest was Carolyn from Bristol Women’s Voice. There was a time when people like me were distinctly unwelcome at that organisation, but I’m pleased to report that they have turned a corner and are happy to include all women again. Carolyn was particularly there to promote their Volunteer Network Event later this month, but we also discussed current campaigns, and of course the International Women’s Day event in March.
Next up was Helen from Royal West of England Academy. She was on the show to talk about the amazing Celebrating Black Queerness event coming up in February, and the associated Africa State of Mind exhibition. Celebrating Black Queerness is a joint event with Kiki, Bristol’s QTIPOC organisation, and will feature luminaries such as Lady Phyll and Travis Alabanza.
My final guest should have been Jo from Diverse Insights, but she suffered a transport malfunction on the way to the studio so I had to fill in for her as best I could. The event she was due to talk about is Screen Futures 2020, which is an amazing day of workshops for people interested in pursuing a career in television and radio.
That was my final Women’s Outlook show for 2019. This is what we talked about.
First up I re-ran my interview with Rivers Solomon from last year. We talked mainly about The Deep, and it is published in the UK tomrrow. I’m sure there are a lot of listeners who might buy it but who have forgotten about the interview by now. If anyone wants to see my review of the book, you can find it here.
My first studio guest was Lisa Whitehouse from Interculture. She’s currently crowdfunding for money to run three series of courses that are aimed at bringing various cultural groups in Bristol together so that they can get to understand each other better. Lisa and I spent quite a bit of time talking about whiteness and how we, as white people who work a lot with BME communities, can avoid making everything all about us.
Next in the studio was Sammy Walker, a young trans woman who has been a key part of this year’s Rainbow Laces campaign. She’s a very good soccer player, but is currently playing for Bristol Panthers, an inclusive LGBT team with mainly male players, because she doesn’t want to have to deal with all the politics around trans women in sport. The conversation expanded from football to trans women in sport in general.
I had a really bad coughing fit at the start of the interview with Sammy. I’ve just listed back to it and it isn’t too bad, but my apologies again to everyone for that, and thanks to Ben the engineer for his bottle of water.
The conversation with Sammy went on for about 45 minutes and I filled the rest of the time with a bit of Christmas music because it is that time of year. Here’s the full playlist:
The Deep – clipping
Americans – Janelle Monáe
Money – Jackie Shane
Unstoppable – Lianne la Havas
We Are Family – Sister Sledge
My Feet Keep Dancing – Chic
Run, Rudolph, Run – Chuck Berry
All I Want for Christmas is You – Maria Carey
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen & Sleigh Ride – The Ramsey Lewis Trio
My first guest on today’s radio show was Kate MacDonald of Handheld Press, a wonderful local publisher based in Bath. Kate will be familiar to people on the UK SF&F circuit as she was at FantasyCon and BristolCon. She doesn’t just publish SF&F, but when she does it is pretty spectacular. You will have heard me enthusing about her Vonda McIntyre reissue, and she has had great success with a Nicola Griffith book. On the show we talked about a book by Rose Maculey which inspired Brave New World. John Clute gets a starring role in the story of how Kate got to publish that one. And if we’d had more time we’d have talked about the new Sylvia Townsend Warner book, Of Cats and Elfins, which has a Greer Gilman introduction and a Neil Gaiman front cover blurb.
That was hard to top, but for the second section of the show I welcomed Nick Young from Creative Youth Network and two wonderful young actors who will be performing in The Edge, a play about the dangers of reality TV. The play is written by my friend Edson Burton, and will be staged at Colston Hall later this month. As the advertising says, it will be an immersive live performance. You’ll have to listen to the interview to find out just how clever they have been.
In part three I welcome Lowie Trevena, the new LGBT+ Affairs correspondent of Bristol 24/7 to talk about the upcoming Trans Pride South West. Lowie did a preview of the event for the paper yesterday, and we went a lot more into detail on that. We also talked about what it means to be a non-binary person, and how non-binary does not mean androgynous.
Finally I re-ran parts of my 2014 interview with Tobias Buckell to celebrate his win (along with Paulo Bacigalupi) in the World Fantasy Awards last weekend. Their book, The Tangled Lands, won the Best Collection catageory. In the 2014 piece Tobias and I talk about hurricanes in the Caribbean, climate change, and some interesting regional politics that allowed Tobias to create a unified Caribbean state for some of his work.
I have a fairly busy week coming up. I have a radio show on Wednesday, which all of you can enjoy. That will include an interview with Kate MacDonald of Handheld Press and will look forward to Trans Pride South West. However, there are also two evening events that may be of interest to those of you who are local.
On Thursday night from 6:30pm I will be at the Framework Co-working centre at 35 King Street taking part in the 2019 Bristol Tech Festival. I will be on a panel called Invented Futures which will look emerging technology and the stories we tell about it. You can find more details about the event, and reserve a free ticket, here. I’m looking forward to meeting my fellow panelists, especially Coral Manton because I want to learn more about the Women Reclaiming AI project.
And on Friday night from 7:30pm at Foyles in Cabot Cirus there will be a science fiction event featuring three of our finest local authors: Peter F Hamilton, Emma Newman and Gareth L Powell. That’s £3 a ticket and you can get one here. I might have to skip that one, depending on how much I manage to get done on Friday durign the day and how tired I am by the end of it, but it should be great..
If you follow UK news you may have seen that my friend, Professor Olivette Otele, has a new job. She has been given a new post at the University of Bristol and has been asked specifically to investigate the city and university’s connections to the slave trade. Here’s a BBC report.
Now obviously this is nowhere near as cool as making a documentary with Lupita Nyong’o. However, it is hugely important for the city. I’m sure that Ujima will be following Olivette’s work very closely.
In the meantime, because it is Black History Month, I have resurrected the radio show that Olivette and I did last year. I cut it into two parts for podcasting. You can listen to it here via the links below.
I was back in the Ujima studio today, and my first guest was friend and colleague, Dr. Jamie Lawson of the University of Bristol. Jamie has written a children’s book on LGBT+ history called Rainbow Revolutions. It is published tomorrow, and I’m very impressed with it. We had a great conversation about the use of the word “queer”, Section 28 and why people are worried it might come back, Ball Culture and the success of Pose, and so on.
Next up I dragged in Harriet Aston who roomed with me at Worldcon. It was her first big convention and understandably she was a bit overwhelmed, which makes her an ideal person to represent that first Worldcon experience. I was impressed that Harriet felt that she was swimming rather than drowning by day 4.
The rest of the show was devoted to women’s cricket and the triumph of Western Storm in the final year of the Kia Super League. I played my interview with Raf Nicholson, and passed on the latest news about the women’s part in the stupid new “The Hundred” series. It is possible that a new Western Storm might rise from the ashes of the KSL after all.
You can catch up on the show via the Listen Again service here.
The playlist for today’s show was as follows:
Gil Scott Heron – The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Grace Jones – This Is
Thin Lizzy – The Boys Are Back In Town
Earth, Wind & Fire – September
Bob Dylan – Shelter from the Storm
Billie Holiday – Stormy Weather
The Impressions – We’re A Winner
Jim Steinman – The Storm
My next show will be on October 2nd and will feature an interview with Ellen Datlow that I recorded while we were in Ireland.
As trailed last week, I spent the weekend in Brighton watching the Finals Day of the Kia Super League. The weather was fine, the cricket was exciting, and best of all, WE WON!
Again.
Western Storm are now the only team to have won the KLS title twice. And because the league is being discontinued, we get to keep the trophy forever.
There will be much more coverage of the event in my radio show on Wednesday. It will include some good news about the future of women’s cricket in the West Country. I promise not to play The Wurzels, even though “Combine Harvester” is the official team song. But I might have a few storm-related songs.
Today I was in the studio at Ujima with lots of studio guests.
First up I welcomed Graham from My Burrito, a fabulous Mexican eatery in Bristol. We had a great chat about the glories of Mexican food. I was hungry by the end of it, as were Ben, my engineer, and Keziah, the studio manager. You probably will be too.
Next in the hot seat was Tom Denbigh, Bristol’s first LGBT+ Poet Laureate. I met Tom at an event that was part of Bristol Pride and loved the poem he read so I knew I had to get him on the radio. Sadly Ofcom rules about swearing on air rather limited what he could read. It’s about time the regulations caught up with everyday speech.
Guest three was Heather Child, who was no problem to interview as I had already done it last week at her book launch. We talked again about The Undoing of Arlo Knott and the various places where you can find out more about the book.
Finally I was joined by Jon Turney from Zero West to talk about local renewable energy projects.
Much of the music I played was inspired by my time doing the live coverage of Bristol Pride. The full playlist was:
Today’s Women’s Outlook show was one of those where it seemed mostly calm on the surface, but it was all frantic paddling underneath. Yesterday I had one of my guests drop out, so I had a half hour to fill. Thankfully the pre-recorded interview I had would stretch to three segments, and I had enough to talk about to fill the final one I needed. Also Ben, my usual engineer, was unavailable, and the replacement we had arranged was unable to come in, so I ended up with an emergency holographic engineer. Huge thanks to Mikey who did a great job for me.
We began the show with Aled and Acomo from Brigstowe, a local charity that specialises in HIV/AIDS issues. They are one of two charities in England who are running pilots with PrEP, the drug which can protect you from HIV if you take it before having sex. PrEP is already widely available in Scotland and Wales, but as Aled explains the English authorities have fought tooth and nail to prevent it being made available. Now that the courts have forced the NHS to do some trials, Brigstowe needs help getting them done.
They are looking in particular for women from marginalized communities who are willing to get trained on the use of PrEP and can then go out into their communities to srpread the word. They’ll be working closely with my pals at One25 to make sure the drug gets to sex workers, who are some of the people who need it most. They are also very interested in recruiting trans women.
The pre-recorded interview with was Amal El-Mohtar and was made while we were at Åcon. We talked about a range of issues, but obviously there was particular focus on the forthcoming book, This is How You Lose the Time War. I loved this book. There will be a review coming soon.
As I had a bit of time to fill I played a couple of songs with Nordic connections. I have probably enthused about the Swedish electrojazz duo, Koop, before, but I should mention that the particular song I played had guest vocals from Ane Brun who is Norwegian and Sami. She has also worked with Peter Gabriel, taking Kate Bush’s part on “Don’t Give Up” when he was touring.
I also played the Miike Snow song that Amal mentions during the interview. The core of that band is Swedish too. If you are intersted in the very gay video for the song, you can find it here.
Finally on the show I was joined by Cai and Amie from Paper Arts who are a wonderful organisation that helps young people start a career in the arts.
You can listen to today’s show via the Listen Again function on the Ujima website.
Our local media in Bristol keeps an eye on what the local BBC offices are up to. Today they had news of a new science-fiction audiodrama. Forest 404 is a post-apocalyptic story set in a world where forests no longer exist. The lead character, Pan, is a sound archivist who uncovers recordings of forest life from centuries before. She’s played by Pearl Mackie who will be best known to you as Bill Potts from Doctor Who.
The 27-part podcast series will also include, “factual talks from a range of speakers including musicians, bioethicists and anthropologists who guide the audience through the themes and issues the podcast presents.”
