Author: Cheryl

Women’s Outlook Has a Podcast

~ Cheryl

With the Listen Again system having problems, I needed to find a new way to share the Women’s Outlook show with you. Fortunately there was a recording of the August 1st show, so I asked the station managemnt for permission to create a podcast feed and post parts of the show there. The downside of this is that I have to edit out the music and ads. The upside is that the material will stay there for as long as we pay to host the site. Management said go for it (thanks Miranda!), so we now have a podcast!

Podcast hosting is relatively inexpensive these days, but it still costs so I have added a patronage system to the site. Right now all I’m hoping to do is to get 9 people to pay $1/month because that covers the hosting costs. If we get more support we’ll have to think about what we might offer as rewards. Let me know if you have any ideas.

Right now all that I have up are the four interviews from August 1st. Yaz says they want to put some of their material up too, in in weeks where we don’t have a show I’ll start running the occasional interview from the archives. There’s some great stuff in my old shows.

Of course we have to have a Twitter feed to go with all this. I haven’t done a Facebook page yet, but will do so if there is sufficient demand.

While you can listen to the interviews I have put up by going to the podcast site (or by downloading the Podbean app to your phone or tablet), I can also embed the material here, so here goes.

First up we had Nik Jovčić-Sas playing his violin live in the studio, and talking about his LGBT+ activism. There were a few issues with sound balance along the way. It turns out it is very hard to balance sound between a backing track and the live mic when the live instrument is in the studio. I learn something about the technology each time we try something like this. Apologies to Nik for this, but I think we captured enough of his playing for you to hear how good he is.

My second guest was Helen, a newly qualfied recruit from Avon Fire & Rescue. She’s amazing: a single mother raising two daughters who has been an Olympic weight lifter and is now a firefighter. I think there’s a role for her in the next Wonder Woman movie.

Next up Molly and Helen from Women’s Adventure Expo encouraged us to get out of our comfort zines and have an adventure. I think I am a bit old for skiing to the North Pole, but I still love traveling and am looking forward to visiting Austria in December for the Worlding SF conference.

Finally the lovely Sharifa Whitney James from Bristol Ageing Better came to tell me what she’ll be doing to improve the lives of older LGBT+ folks in Bristol.

The playlist for the show, excluding Nik’s contributions which I didn’t need to edit out, was as follows:

  • Pointer Sisters – Fire
  • Fontella Bass – Rescue Me
  • Bat for Lashes – Travelling Woman
  • Minnie Ripperton – Adventures in Paradise
  • Blondie – Die Young, Stay Pretty
  • Little Feat – Old folks boogie

Heather Child Interview

~ Cheryl

The interview that I did with Heather Child back in July is no longer available on the Ujima Listen Again system, so I have posted it to Salon Futura. In it Heather and I talk about her debut novel, Everything About You. This is a near-future science fiction novel which looks at what might happen if smart digital assistants know so much about you that they know you better than you do yourself. Have a listen.

The Worldcon Runners’ Guide

~ Cheryl

The agenda for this year’s World Science Fiction Society Business Meeting was released last night. I’ll have more to say about this year’s business in due course, but I was surprised to see that I got a name check. Don’t worry, I don’t think I have done anything awful. I just happen to be one of the people responsible for updating the WSFS wesbites, and I got named in connection with a particular update that has just been made (because I did it).

The job in question was to upload a copy of the current version of the Worldcon Runners’ Guide.

“The what?” I hear you ask. After all, following the recent meltdown over programming at Worldcon 76, lots of people were asking on Twitter why there is no means of passing wisdom on from one Worldcon to the next. Well of course there is. It is just that people tend not to take any notice of it, or in some cases deliberately ignore it. But the Guide is also badly out of date, and work is in progress to update it.

As I understand that problem (and I haven’t been involved in the responsible committee so I may be wrong here), what happened in this. Back in the days when the Internet was a new and shiny thing, people came up with the bright idea of putting the Guide online as a wiki. However, they soon discovered that there was far more work involved in protecting it from spammers and trolls than might have been saved by having it editable online. So a bunch of people are in the process of editing it back down to an offline document, and hopefully updating it to include things like sections on diverse programming, use of the Grenadine programming software, and social media management.

In the meantime, a version of the existing material has been posted on the WSFS website. You can find it here. Please note that it has a bunch of formatting issues, and as I said it is out of date. If you want to be helpful, I’m sure that the people responsible for creating the new version would prefer you to wait until they have finished tidying it up before commenting. On the other hand, if you would like to offer your expertise and be part of the editing committee, they would probably be delighted to hear from you.

The New Queen of Cricket

~ Cheryl

During the recently concluded and absolutely enthralling test match between England and India, there was much talk of how Virat Kohli has inherited Sachin Tendulkar’s mantle as the best cricketer in the world. But it isn’t just men’s cricket in which India is producing star performers. The Western Storm’s latest recruit is India’s Smriti Mandhana. She’s played five games thus far, and this is her record:

  • v Yorkshire Diamonds – 48 off 20 balls
  • v Surrey Stars – 37 off 21 balls
  • v Loughborough Lightning – 52 not out off 19 balls
  • v Southern Vipers – 43 not out off 27 balls
  • v Lancashire Thunder 102 off 61 balls

That’s an average of 94 runs per completed innings, and a strike rate of 190.54 — almost 2 runs per ball. Along the way she has hit 29 fours and 16 sixes.

That’s stunning. All I can say is that I hope that run of form continues all the way through to Finals Day.

Dublin Wants YOU!

~ Cheryl

I have email from the programming team of the Dublin Worldcon. Due to restrictions caused by the GDPR legislation, they can’t get lists of programme particiants from other conventions and reach out to them. They have to wait for people to come to them. Therefore they are reaching out to the SF&F community and encouraging people to apply to be on programme.

You don’t have to be a published author to be on programme. And you defnitely don’t have to be an old, white man. If you think you have something interesting to say, please put your name forward.

You can find the application form here. And there is a Q&A about the process here.

Today on Ujima – Slightly Delayed

~ Cheryl

Today’s show on Ujima was a bit frantic as we were doing some adventurous tech things. We had Nik Jovčić-Sas playing violin live in the studio, and an amazing lady firefighter on the phone. We then went on to talk about women having adventures, and about support for elderly LGBT+ people in Bristol.

This is obviously the point at which I would point you at the Listen Again pages, but something seems to be going badly wrong with the tech. It isn’t just my show that’s affected. However, my colleagues at the station are aware of the issue had have been making backup recordings.

So, I have a copy of the show, but it isn’t hosted at Ujima. That means I’m going to have to upload it to a podcast feed before you can listen to it. And before I can do that I will have to edit out the music that is under copyright.

Hopefully I will get that done at the weekend, if not before. Please bear with me.

Lobsters for Emojis

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

When I was at Trans Pride in Brighton I was rather confused by some people in the parade apparently dressed as lobsters, and carrying plastic lobsters, and flags with lobsters on them. I mean, I’m very fond of lobsters, but why at Trans Pride?

Being a good investgative jouralist, I looked for them in Brunswick Gardens and, having found their stall, asked them what this was all about. It turns out that it is all the fault of Google, Apple and Facebook. Bear with me.

Of course most things bad in the world are the fault of Facebook these days, but lobsters are not bad, and why Apple and Google as well? Well, because they are all voting members of an IT industry body called Unicode which is responsible, among other things, for regulating emojis.

You may have noticed that there are a lot of flags missing from the set of emojis available on your phone or tablet. There is no Welsh flag, for example. Almost as importantly for me, there is no trans flag. That would be very useful. Apparently it is one of the most commonly requested new emojis. But Unicode says there is no need for one.

And yet, when a small group of people petitioned Unicode for a lobster emoji, apparently on the grounds that having to use a shrimp or a crab would be confusing, this was quickly granted.

As a result, the lobster has become a symbol for the campaign for a trans flag emoji. And this, as the petition points out, is rather apt, because lobsters are one of the select group of creatures that can become gynandromorphs. That is, you can find lobsters that are male on one side of their body and female on the other side. Biology is way more complicated than the average anti-trans activist would like to admit.

So if you see me using a lobster emoji on Twitter in future, you will know what it means.

New Venue for Queer Historical Fiction

~ Cheryl

Earlier this week Manifold Press announced a re-launch and change of management. Farah Mendlesohn will be the new Managing Editor, and the company is looking for works of historical fiction with queer themes. Knowing Farah, I’m sure this will be a great venture, and if only I a) had some time, and b) could write better, I know just the book I’d pitch her.

Those of you who fancy writing queer historical fiction, you now know where you can get a favorable hearing. That includes trans-themed historical fiction. If you need ideas for that, you know where to come, right?

Trans Pride Happened

~ Cheryl

I appear to have had one of those weeks in which I had lots of good intentions to blog about Trans Pride, but ended up too busy or too tired to actually do so. Certain issues with Worldcon might have had something to do with this, not to mention some UK politics.

Anyway, Trans Pride in Brighton (the original, and still the biggest) happened last weekend, and give the state of the world I went along to show solidarity. It was great. The march appears to have had between 4,000 and 5,000 people, and Brunswick Gardens was buzzing all afternoon.

My favorite stall in the park was one being run by a group of midives from the local NHS trust. They were keen to help any trans guys and non-binary folks who wanted to get pregnant, and even had advice for trans women on breastfeeding. The things that can be done these days are just amazing.

One important announcement came from Jane Fae. On September 8th there will be a conference in London called We’re Still Here. There will be workshops on all sorts of interesting things. It looks like it will be very interesting.

I, however, won’t be there, because the date clashes with the Women’s Equality Party conference, and someone has to be there to defend trans rights. WEP has been fairly heavily targetted by the anti-trans brigade in the past, and I’m sure they’ll see this conference as an opportunity to futher their attempts to turn all cis women against trans people.

Life, it keeps coming at you. But sometimes it is fun, as proof of which here is the My Genderation film from last weekend.

Two Anthology Calls of Interest

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Feminist bicycle science fiction is a thing. Who knew? Not me, clearly, but I should have done because the fabulous Elly Blue has produced four volumes of it already. Volume five, Bikes Not Rockets, is currently raising money for publication via Kickstarter. Volume 6, Dragon Bike, is currently being edited, and Elly has just issued a call for submissions to Volume 7, provisionally titled The Great Trans-Universal Bike Ride. As you might have guessed, this is a trans volume. Elly says, “For this issue, we’re looking to feature trans and nonbinary writers writing trans and nonbinary characters.”

So, I have until Nov. 15 to write something. And apparently it should be about actual pedal bikes, not motorbikes. Insert sad face emoji here. Full details are available here.

Also of interest is Disturbing the Beast from the fabulusly named Boudicca Press. This is going to be an anthology of weird fiction by women. Kirsty Logan is already signed up. They appear to be looking for work in a similar vein to Carmen Maria Machado’s fiction. The deadline is Sept. 14. Full details here.

Fringe Tomorrow

~ Cheryl

Tomorrow night sees the July event for BristolCon Fringe. Our headline guest is Mr. Jonathan L. Howard, of whom it has been said. As I cannot possibly compete, I will allow him to introduce himself, and his fellow reader.

I will be hosting, and performing the inquisition, as usual. I can see that I may need extra thumbscrews. 7:30pm start at The Gryphon, Colston Street. Full details here.

Bristol Pride Happened

~ Cheryl

To be fair, it has been happening for a couple of weeks now. Daryn, Freddie and the rest of the crew have done an amazing job putting on a whole festival of LGBT+ goodness. However, this weekend was the culmination of all that, and it all began on Friday night with the city’s first ever official Black Pride event at City Hall. The photo above shows some of the organizers, along with the Guest of Honour, Lady Phyll Opoku-Gyimah.

The event also saw contributions from the Deputy Mayor, Asher Craig (Labour), and the Lord Mayor, Cleo Lake (Green). Cleo (shown above) got totally into the spirit of things with some amazing hair.

The big concern about Saturday was that there would be some sort of attempt by anti-trans extremists to disrupt the march, as happened in London the previous weekend. Daryn and the LGBT+ Group of Avon & Somerset Police worked hard to make sure that we would be prepared in the event of an attack, and they kindly kept me informed throughout the process. Thankfully everything went quietly, or at least as quietly as any Pride event can be. The March was led by the folks in the picture above. That’s the Elected Mayor, Marvin Rees (Labour); the Independent Police & Crime Commissioner, Sue Mountstevens; Asher Craig and Cleo Lake. They carried the front of the enormous flag though the whole parade. Here we are temporarily halted while the police cleared some buses from the road ahead.

And finally, durign the afternoon the big screen in Millennium Square provided the first public showings of the Talking LGBT+ Bristol film produced by Bristol 24/7. The film is now available online, so you can all watch. My thanks to Caragh, Connie, James, the folks at Tusko Films, the Heritage Lottery Fund and all who made this possible. My OutStories Bristol colleagues, Charlie and Robert, are superb in this.

New Diversity Trust Newsletter

~ Cheryl

The Summer 2018 edition of the Diversity Trust Newsletter has been released. Given that one of the things we are celebrating in the issue is the 100th anniversary of (some) women’s suffrage, Berkeley asked me to write the introduction. As usual you can find that issue, and all previous issues, on our website.

British Fantasy Awards

~ Cheryl

The short lists for this year’s British Fantasy Awards have been released. Obviously there are a lot of my friends up for awards, including obvious candidates like Neil Gaiman, Sarah Pinborough and Mike Carey. There are also a whole lot of people from our little South West community: Emma & Pete Newman, Jo Hall & Lucy Hounsom.

I’m pleased to note that Gender Identity and Sexuality in Current Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by Francesca Barbini, is up for the Non-Fiction award. That includes essays by both Juliet McKenna and myself. There is a review of the book in the new issue of Fafnir.

But what I am most pleased about is seeing Ben Baldwin in the list for the Artist award. Ben has done some great work for Wizard’s Tower over the weekend, including the covers for Shadow Histories of the River Kingdom (above) and The Green Man’s Heir.

Good luck, everyone!

No Eurocon or Finncon for Me

~ Cheryl

Earlier this year I was looking forward to spending much of July in Europe. I very much wanted to go to the Eurocon in France, and the fabulous Lauren Beukes is a GoH at Finncon this year. Sadly there is so much politics going on in the UK at the moment, with the release of the Gender Recognition Act consultation, that I simply can’t afford to be away, even for the odd weekend. In particular I absolutely have to be around for Bristol Pride on the 14th.

Profuse apologies to anyone who was expecting to see me at one of those conventions, and to anyone who was hoping to buy a copy of The Green Man’s Heir from me.

Film Preview Night #LGBT247

~ Cheryl

Some of you may remember that the lovely people at Bristol 24/7 have been working on a film project about LGBT life in the city. I got asked to be it in, as did many of my friends. Tonight at the Arnolfini there will be a preview screening. I think there are still tickets left if you are interested. And if you can’t make it, the film will be screened a lot on Pride weekend.

Here’s a sneak peek.

The Popelei Naked Podcast

~ Cheryl

As promised, here is the link to my interview on Tamsin Clarke’s Naked Podcast. As you’ll see, it is Apple only at the moment. If, like me, you would rather sit in a nest of fire ants than install iTunes on a Windows PC, and you have no Apple device to listen on, that may be a problem. I’ll chase Tamsin about other formats.

If you can listen (and thankfully iTunes works fine on my iPad) you’ll see that we discussed getting naked in the sauna in Finland, and the process that strongly binary trans women like myself have to go through in order to get a body they are happy to be naked in.

I Get Royalties

~ Cheryl

It is always a pleasure to get royalties on a book you have been involved in. This time I am even more pleased, because I’m actually being paid for writing about trans characters in SF&F. My essay is part of a great book too: Gender Identity and Sexuality in Current Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by Francesca Barbini. It includes Juliet McKenna’s BSFA Award nominated essay on the barriers for women and minorities in the publishing industry. Clearly other people have enjoyed the book (and I know that Luna Press sold out of the copies they had brought to Worldcon in Helsinki), so why not get a copy?

Today on Ujima – Birthday, SF, Basketball, Nudity & Sex Work

~ Cheryl

Today was Ujima’s 10th birthday, and I was lucky enough to be presenting the first live show of the day. Thankfully I had a line-up that lived up to the occasion.

My first guest was Heather Child, a new addition to Bristol’s superb collection of science fiction and fantasy authors. Heather’s debut novel, Everything About You, is available from Orbit and is a fascinating exploration of how an AI in a smart device can get under its owner’s skin if it knows more about you than you can remember yourself.

Next up was Emma from Bristol Flyers, the local basketball club. They will be running a summer camp for girls with a view to ramping up the quality of their female teams and entering them into the national leagues. Basketball is in an interesting position in the UK. It has the third largest level of participation of any sport, but very little government funding. That’s a shame. I might find the NBA rather dull to watch, but away from the top flight the sport is a lot of fun and very cheap and easy to play.

The first hour of the show is available on Listen Again here. The Ujima website is currently being renovated so you might see it say that there are 0 minutes to play, or that there’s an issue with Flash, but if you just click on the download link it should play fine.

I kicked off the second hour with a fair amount of giggling as Tamsin Clarke and I discussed the Naked Podcast. I very much enjoyed being a guest on the show, but of course I’m very relaxed about getting naked with groups of women because I have spent so much time in saunas in Finland. We also discussed Latin American football, and Tamsin’s next theatre project.

Finally we got to the serious politics discussion of the day. In Parliament today they have been discussing further regulation of sex work. There was a big demonstration outside, of sex workers protesting about losing their livelihood. In the studio I had Angelica from the Bristol Sex Workers Collective and Amy from One25, a charity that works with street sex workers in the city. We talked about the different ways in which women can end up in the sex trade, and the best ways to help them survive and get out. I hope our politicians will listen.

The second hour of the show is available on Listen Again here. As with hour 1, you need to click on the download link.

The music for this week’s show was as follows:

  • Americans – Janelle Monae
  • Every Breath You Take – The Police
  • Sweet Georgia Brown – Brother Bones and His Shadows
  • Jam – Michael Jackson
  • Totally Nude – Talking Heads
  • Strip – Adam Ant
  • Lady Marmalade – Patti Labelle
  • Backstreet Luv – Curved Air

As you can see, most of the songs were chosen to fit with the subject under discussion. The Janelle Monae song, however, was chosen specifically because it is July 4th today. Happy Independence Day, America. Here’s hoping you keep that precious freedom.