Category: community

My LTUE schedule 2012

- Stacy 8 Comments

I’ll be in Utah this February again this year for the excellent science fiction/fantasy convention Life, the Universe, and Everything. It’s the convention’s 30th anniversary this year. Normally it’s hosted at Brigham Young University, but due to scheduling difficulties it’ll be held this year at neighboring Utah Valley University only a few miles away—and a few miles closer to my greatest restaurant love, a restaurant I have yet to find matched in New York City (seriously), Sakura. Seriously, best deep-fried sushi (sometimes called tempura—not just for shrimp!) that I’ve found anywhere. Particularly the Geisha, Spider, Firecracker, Ninja, and Hawaiian rolls. If you’re in Utah and you haven’t discovered this place yet (and you’re not Jessica Day George) GO. It’s SO GOOD.

But I digress. (Good sushi can do that to me.)

Anyway, my point is that you need to attend LTUE, especially if you live in the Intermountain West. Sure, they’ve started charging a nominal fee (it used to be free), but that fee makes sure this great convention can continue to happen every year, giving them a modest budget for facilities, guests of honor, and so forth. The committee that runs the con are all volunteers.

Speaking of guests of honor, I’m looking forward to meeting a longtime internet but not (yet) real-life friend, James A. Owen. He’ll be talking about both writing and illustration, including a whole seminar on how to draw dragons, so if you’re an illustrator, you want to come to this LTUE.

Also attending will be the Writing Excuses team—not just locals Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler, but also SFWA vice president, puppeteer, and author Mary Robinette Kowal, not to mention a number of locally-based pros, writers and editors like Mette Ivie Harrison, Larry Correia, James Dashner, Bree Despain, J. Scott Savage, Tyler Whitesides, Chris Schoebinger, Robert J. Defendi, Lisa Mangum, and many more.

Check out the full schedule here (where there may be some tweaks to the schedule, so you might want to check back before the con), but here’s my schedule:

 

Thursday, February 8, 2012

10:00 AM—What Exactly Does an Editor Do, Anyway? (Rick Walton (M), Stacy Whitman, Suzanne Vincent, Lisa Mangum, Kirk Shaw)

11:00 AM—Middle-grade books for boys (Tyler Whitesides, E. J. Patten, Michael Young, Stacy Whitman(M))

2:00 PM—Feeling Fake: What to do about that pervasive feeling that everyone belongs in the publishing world except you. (Sandra Tayler, Jason Alexander, Ami Chopine (M), Stacy Whitman)

7:00 PM—A Vampire is NOT your Boyfriend!: Real Vampires (Mette Ivie Harrison, Michael R. Collings, Dan Lind, Stacy Whitman(M))

 

Friday, Febrary 10, 2011

No panels for me, though I will be around the convention, so I’m open to individual meet-ups for lunch (particularly at Sakura…). I’m also looking forward to James Owen’s main address this day, and the Writing Excuses live podcast. .

EDIT: I have been added to the below panel to give the editorial side:

6:00 PM—Book Bombs: How to make an Amazon.com bestseller (Randy Tayler (M), Robison Wells, Larry Correia, Stacy L. Whitman, Michaelbrent Collings)

 

Saturday, February 11, 2012

1:00 PM—Writing Cross-Culturally: Mistakes to Avoid, or, How to Avoid Cultural Misappropriation (Stacy Whitman)

This will be a workshop in which we talk about all the mistakes that even well-meaning authors can make in diversifying our writing, and how to use strong worldbuilding and characterization to prevent that. Also: how making mistakes doesn’t mean we’re racist—it just means we’re willing to learn.

2:00 PM—Plots, Subplots, and Foreshadowing (Bree Despain (M), J. Scott Savage, Brandon Sanderson, James A. Owen, Stacy Whitman)

 

I’m not on the following workshop, but want to highlight it because both Sandra and Mary are people to learn from, and given that the workshop will be two hours long, you’ll get an opportunity to really go in depth.

3:00-5:00 PM

– The Published (and aspiring) Author’s Toolbox: Learning skills for networking, blogging, social media, and self-promotion.  This workshop will teach principles and give you a chance to practice skills to integrate networking, blogging, social media, and self-promotion into your professional life without being the person who annoys and without pulling you out of balance with yourself.

(Sandra Tayler, Mary Robinette Kowal)

 

Celebrating diversity booklist

- Stacy 1 Comment

Given that today is Martin Luther King Day, and that we’re still dealing with book banning based on race even today, I’d like to make a booklist in honor of those books banned in Arizona. Let’s crowd-source. This can be a pretty wide list, and some of the books might be a little radical, if by “radical” we mean considering that Columbus might not have had the best of intentions when it came to indigenous peoples in the Caribbean and on the American continents, but I think that books like this are important to the discourse in this country, especially in places like Arizona where they’re dealing with the confluence of several cultures with conflicting goals. After all, couldn’t that apply in so many places in this world? How will we come to understand one another’s points of view if we ban those viewpoints? From the Salon.com article:

Another notable text removed from Tucson’s classrooms is Shakespeare’s play “The Tempest.” In a meeting this week, administrators informed Mexican-American studies teachers to stay away from any units where “race, ethnicity and oppression are central themes,” including the teaching of Shakespeare’s classic in Mexican-American literature courses.

Here’s the list of books banned in the Tucson school district last week (source). What other books like this should we celebrate?

*For more on the situation in Arizona, see here and here.

BANNED MEXICAN AMERICAN STUDIES READING LIST
Curriculum Audit of the Mexican American Studies Department, Tucson Unified School District, May 2, 2011.

High School Course Texts and Reading Lists Table 20: American Government/Social Justice Education Project 1, 2 – Texts and Reading Lists

Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years (1998), by B. Bigelow and B. Peterson

The Latino Condition: A Critical Reader (1998), by R. Delgado and J. Stefancic

Critical Race Theory: An Introduction (2001), by R. Delgado and J. Stefancic

Pedagogy of the Oppressed (2000), by P. Freire

United States Government: Democracy in Action (2007), by R. C. Remy

Dictionary of Latino Civil Rights History (2006), by F. A. Rosales

Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology (1990), by H. Zinn

Table 21: American History/Mexican American Perspectives, 1, 2 – Texts and Reading Lists

Occupied America: A History of Chicanos (2004), by R. Acuna

The Anaya Reader (1995), by R. Anaya

The American Vision (2008), by J. Appleby et el.

Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years (1998), by B. Bigelow and B. Peterson

Drink Cultura: Chicanismo (1992), by J. A. Burciaga

Message to Aztlan: Selected Writings (1997), by C. Jiminez

De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views Multi-Colored Century (1998), by E. S. Martinez

500 Anos Del Pueblo Chicano/500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures (1990), by E. S. Martinez

Codex Tamuanchan: On Becoming Human (1998), by R. Rodriguez

The X in La Raza II (1996), by R. Rodriguez

Dictionary of Latino Civil Rights History (2006), by F. A. Rosales

A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present (2003), by H. Zinn

Course: English/Latino Literature 7, 8

Ten Little Indians (2004), by S. Alexie

The Fire Next Time (1990), by J. Baldwin

Loverboys (2008), by A. Castillo

Women Hollering Creek (1992), by S. Cisneros

Mexican WhiteBoy (2008), by M. de la Pena

Drown (1997), by J. Diaz

Woodcuts of Women (2000), by D. Gilb

At the Afro-Asian Conference in Algeria (1965), by E. Guevara

Color Lines: “Does Anti-War Have to Be Anti-Racist Too?” (2003), by E. Martinez

Culture Clash: Life, Death and Revolutionary Comedy (1998), by R. Montoya et al.

Let Their Spirits Dance (2003) by S. Pope Duarte

Two Badges: The Lives of Mona Ruiz (1997), by M. Ruiz

The Tempest (1994), by W. Shakespeare

A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America (1993), by R. Takaki

The Devil’s Highway (2004), by L. A. Urrea

Puro Teatro: A Latino Anthology (1999), by A. Sandoval-Sanchez & N. Saporta Sternbach

Twelve Impossible Things before Breakfast: Stories (1997), by J. Yolen

Voices of a People’s History of the United States (2004), by H. Zinn

Course: English/Latino Literature 5, 6

Live from Death Row (1996), by J. Abu-Jamal

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven (1994), by S. Alexie

Zorro (2005), by I. Allende

Borderlands La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1999), by G. Anzaldua

A Place to Stand (2002), by J. S. Baca

C-Train and Thirteen Mexicans (2002), by J. S. Baca

Healing Earthquakes: Poems (2001), by J. S. Baca

Immigrants in Our Own Land and Selected Early Poems (1990), by J. S. Baca

Black Mesa Poems (1989), by J. S. Baca

Martin & Mediations on the South Valley (1987), by J. S. Baca

The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America’s Public Schools (19950, by D. C. Berliner and B. J. Biddle

Drink Cultura: Chicanismo (1992), by J. A Burciaga

Red Hot Salsa: Bilingual Poems on Being Young and Latino in the United States (2005), by L. Carlson & O. Hijuielos

Cool Salsa: Bilingual Poems on Growing up Latino in the United States (1995), by L. Carlson & O. Hijuielos

So Far From God (1993), by A. Castillo

Address to the Commonwealth Club of California (1985), by C. E. Chavez

Women Hollering Creek (1992), by S. Cisneros

House on Mango Street (1991), by S. Cisneros

Drown (1997), by J. Diaz

Suffer Smoke (2001), by E. Diaz Bjorkquist

Zapata’s Discipline: Essays (1998), by M. Espada

Like Water for Chocolate (1995), by L. Esquievel

When Living was a Labor Camp (2000), by D. Garcia

La Llorona: Our Lady of Deformities (2000), by R. Garcia

Cantos Al Sexto Sol: An Anthology of Aztlanahuac Writing (2003), by C. Garcia-Camarilo, et al.

The Magic of Blood (1994), by D. Gilb

Message to Aztlan: Selected Writings (2001), by Rudolfo “Corky” Gonzales

Saving Our Schools: The Case for Public Education, Saying No to “No Child Left Behind” (2004) by Goodman, et al.

Feminism if for Everybody (2000), by b hooks

The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child (1999), by F. Jimenez

Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools (1991), by J. Kozol

Zigzagger (2003), by M. Munoz

Infinite Divisions: An Anthology of Chicana Literature (1993), by T. D. Rebolledo & E. S. Rivero

…y no se lo trago la tierra/And the Earth Did Not Devour Him (1995), by T. Rivera

Always Running – La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A. (2005), by L. Rodriguez

Justice: A Question of Race (1997), by R. Rodriguez

The X in La Raza II (1996), by R. Rodriguez

Crisis in American Institutions (2006), by S. H. Skolnick & E. Currie

Los Tucsonenses: The Mexican Community in Tucson, 1854-1941 (1986), by T. Sheridan

Curandera (1993), by Carmen Tafolla

Mexican American Literature (1990), by C. M. Tatum

New Chicana/Chicano Writing (1993), by C. M. Tatum

Civil Disobedience (1993), by H. D. Thoreau

By the Lake of Sleeping Children (1996), by L. A. Urrea

Nobody’s Son: Notes from an American Life (2002), by L. A. Urrea

Zoot Suit and Other Plays (1992), by L. Valdez

Ocean Power: Poems from the Desert (1995), by O. Zepeda

ETA: Also appropriate to this discussion, OTHER things that MLK once said besides the quotes you normally hear on this day:

Hugo nomination time

- Stacy 3 Comments

Since it’s award nomination time for the Hugos in particular, and because other awards are either gearing up for nominations or are getting toward the voting side of things, I thought I’d follow the example of John Scalzi, Lou Anders, and the Writing Excuses crew and let you know that Tu’s first books are eligible to be nominated. Lou had a good idea in also letting readers know who’s responsible for art, as there’s a whole category for that. Note that I am NOT eligible in the editor category this year, as I only edited three books that came out in 2011 and the requirement is at least four (at least, unless my work on Jeff Sampson’s Vesper before it was canceled by Mirrorstone and published by HarperTeen counts, which I don’t think it does since I wasn’t the final editor at the house that published the book), but I’ll be eligible next year, and what matters more is that you know about the authors and artists. I’ll follow Lou’s format:

 Galaxy Games: The Challengers
by Greg Fishbone
art by Ethen Beavers
art direction & design by Neil Swaab

Tankborn
by Karen Sandler
art/design by Einav Aviram

Wolf Mark
by Joseph Bruchac
art/design by Kelly Eismann

 

 

 

If you attended last year’s WorldCon or become a member of this year’s Worldcon by Jan. 31, you are eligible to nominate for the Hugos. See here for more on eligibility and membership.

NY SCBWI schedule

- Stacy 6 Comments

If you didn’t already know, I’m going to be speaking at the end of the month at the New York SCBWI National Conference at the end of January. I’m excited to be talking about multicultural books, particularly writing them—pitfalls to avoid, things to consider when you write cross-culturally, maybe highlight some of my favorites from the last few years for writers to look to as examples. If you’re going to be there—and even if you’re not—feel free to mention in the comments your favorites from the last two or so years, or to give me an example of a mistake that authors or movies make in the name of “diversity” that you wish they would do better.

Before I give you my schedule, though, let me remind you that tonight on Twitter is #yalitchat, where I and Tankborn author Karen Sandler  will be talking about writing cross-culturally. Especially if you can’t make it to SCBWI nationals, drop by tonight at 9 pm EST. Even if you’re not on Twitter, you can follow the conversation at search.twitter.com (search for “#yalitchat”) or one of those sites that let you search hashtag conversations (sorry, I can’t think of a good one right now, but maybe someone in the comments might know what I’m talking about and give us a link?).

Here’s my SCBWI schedule:

  • VIP party and Art Show on Friday night (Jan. 27)
  • Presentation on Saturday, January 28th:  11:45 am-12:45 pm, 3:15-4:15 pm and 4:30 pm-5:30 pm
  • Gala Reception for attendees on Saturday from 5:30 pm-7:30 pm

If you’re attending, I hope to see you at one of those events, and if they end up doing a KidLit Drinks Night again this year, perhaps I’ll pop in there too. We’ll see how exhausted I am by the end of the day Saturday!

 

Hm, that’s weird

- Stacy

Sorry, LJ people, again. Since I switched the LJ cross-posting app, it seems that anything crossposted to LJ is turning comments off, even if they’re actually on by default. I’ve never turned them off on LJ, so I’m not sure what’s up. I’ll look into it and let you know when I figure it out. Sorry to make you have to come to the main site to comment!

Simmons alums unite!

- Stacy 4 Comments

In celebration of my Simmons classmate Anna Staniszewski’s new book release, I thought perhaps we could make a list of children’s and young adult books by Simmons College children’s lit program alumnae. (The women’s college is open to guys in the grad programs, but I think most of the alums who have been published are women. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.)

I only know of a few, but I bet my Simmons friends out there can add to this list!

Anna Staniszewski, My Very UnFairy Tale Life

Kristin Cashore, Graceling, Fire, and the forthcoming Bitterblue

Jo Knowles, Lessons from a Dead Girl, Jumping off Swings, and Pearl

Karsten Knight, Wildefire

Juana Dehesa, Pink Doll (Mexico)

 

Who else? And make sure to congratulate Anna on her book’s publication!

New York Comic Con

- Stacy 2 Comments

Who’s going to New York Comic Con? We’re excited to be there for the first year, featuring Tu’s first three books! Make sure you stop by booth 2846 and say hi on your way to ogling slave Leias or taking pictures with Stormtrooper Elvis (or both). (Does Stormtrooper Elvis come to NYCC, or is he strictly a SDCC guy? I’m actually not sure.) I’ll be in the booth all day every day of the con, minus lunch breaks and some time to run around the show floor and attend a couple panels.

In fact, you should know that Galaxy Games series author Greg Fishbone will be dropping in on Saturday from 2-3.

Also, Tu’s books will be discounted at our booth, so come by for a good deal, too!

Koreafest and parade

- Stacy 2 Comments

My cousin is in town this weekend, and we have a tradition of walking around wherever we are with our fancy cameras and seeing who can get a great shot. Not so much a competition as just a way of sharing our interest in photography (me: semi-pro hobbyist who used to think about photography as a career, him: indie filmmaker and professional at the Armed Forces Network). Today, neither of us brought our good cameras, so we had to rely on our cell phone cameras (me: a Droid X which is EXTREMELY slow in reaction time, him: iPhone).

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It just so happens that there was a parade and festival in Koreatown today. I found out because I saw a poster on the wall outside the restaurant on 32nd Street last night where I stopped for dinner on my way home from work.

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So we saw a bit of the parade—there were some really gorgeous hanboks

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예뻐다!!

and other traditional clothing in several groups–

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and then wandered down the street sampling ddukboki and kimbap and stuff like that. One of the drumming groups (below) was practicing for a performance on the stage. Not sure if they got the chance to perform—we left when it started to rain and when I came back to walk to the train on my way home, they were gone. The stage had a roof on it so hopefully they were able to perform. (Again, crappy cell phone pictures. I kind of like the blur, but I hated how I had no control over it.)

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Below, here they’re making injeolmi (which I believe is the sticky rice paste needed to make things like ddukbokki—someone correct me if I’m wrong). I had a hard time getting the right information from my fellow bystanders because the two women I was standing next two disagreed on who was right. I think the one to my left was Thai, and she said it started out the same kind of sticky rice as Thai glutinous sticky rice, but the other lady said no, no, it’s injeolmi, which I have no idea how it relates to other kinds of sticky rice. I’ll have to look it up. I loved seeing the way they pounded it—I imagine this is much more of a traditional form of pounding it than something that’s currently practiced widely. But I could be wrong.

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As we stood eating ddukbokki and kimbap, a cameraman came up and asked me if I knew what I was eating. “Of course, it’s ddukbokki,” I said. He filmed me and asked me a few more questions (do you know why there’s a parade today, what do you know about Korea, why are you interested in Korea) and I answered him in a combination of English and my broken Korean (because he had just been talking with a group of ajummas next to us in Korean, so I knew he spoke it, and later he confirmed he’s with Korean TV station KBS).

So… if you’re in Korea, if you see coverage on KBS of the New York City Koreafest, maybe you might see me on TV! He seemed to expect that I wouldn’t know what I was eating, so he might not use it at all if he found someone who had no clue. Who knows?

 

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Here’s my cousin and his friend trying on some mascot heads for a resort planned I believe on Jeju Island, which if you don’t know, a lot of Koreans describe as their version of Hawaii. Jeju is known for its tangerines and, I just learned from watching Tamra Island, had some pretty matriarchal traditions even in the years in which the rest of Korea was strictly patriarchal, due to the importance to their economy of the women who dove for abalone. I have a feeling that the show, of course, exaggerated a lot more than the comic-book nature of the plot, so I’m not sure how much of what they portrayed about the women wearing the “pants” of the family is historical fact, but it’s pretty cool and something I want to know more about. By the way, that show is called “Tamra” here in the U.S. but I’m unclear on why. If you listen to the actors when they refer to the old name for Jeju Island, they’re clearly saying “Tamna,” which is also what the Hangul says (탐나는 도다, Tamnaneun Doda).

And yes, I just about exhausted my knowledge of Korean right there, same as when I told the cameraman that “ddukbokki joayo” (ddukbokki is good) and being there made me “hangbokae” (happy). I’m sure I slaughtered the conjugation of the verb that means “is good,” but hey, I’m still a beginner. Also, if you end up watching Tamra the Island, don’t worry about Caucasian mullet-boy who’s supposed to be English but who speaks better Korean than he does English. It’s quite cheesy and the English is downright laughable at first in the first episode or so (the Korean actor is better at English than the “English” one who is actually a French model) but it’s a cute, comic-book-esque story that is worth sticking around for.

And I had a number of other interesting conversations with people who were surprised when I told them I watched Korean dramas. I thought the Hallyu was becoming a big thing now, but apparently it’s still surprising enough when a Caucasian is interested?

By the way, if you’re interested in learning Korean, I’ve found Talk to Me in Korean very fun and friendly to learn from. Their podcasts and videos are short (usually around 15 minutes) and very conversational, starting with very basic phrases like annyeonghaseyo (hello) and building from there in a nice logical way, and explaining things in a way that makes things make so much more sense culturally and linguistically, which is more than I can say for the book I’d been using before that. Living Language has been great in many ways, but they made what I’d already learned from my Living Language set make actual sense, and it felt like I was talking to one of my Korean friends rather than studying out of a book and listening to static phrases. I’m still going to use the Living Language book to study from, but I’m going to rely on TTMIK to tell me what it all means.

Hurricane update

- Stacy 1 Comment

The hurricane was downgraded to a tropical storm by the time it hit us early Sunday morning, and in my neck of the woods (northern Manhattan), it was pretty much just a strong thunderstorm that I slept right through. I didn’t lose power and it was sunny by 11 am.

However, not as much can be said for other areas of the greater NYC area—New Jersey, Queens, and Brooklyn all had areas with power outages, downed trees, and flooding, and it was even worse in upstate New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and some parts of Massachusetts, where they’re still recovering from flooding and power outages. But the worst part of the storm for New England seems to be in Vermont, at least according to the reports I’ve seen from friends who are currently trapped in their house (thankfully on a hill) because their whole road just washed away; bridges are washed away and in nearby towns the whole downtown is flooded. I hope that despite the millions in damage to farms and businesses, that the people and animals who live there are okay.

Here are a few links and videos from Jo Knowles, a YA author who lives in Vermont, who is the friend I heard about the situation in VT from:

The Bennington, VT Banner reporting on damage in that area

Ottauquechee Over Banks Flooding Rt. 4 West

 

 

This one gets down to show how it’s affecting Vermonters on a personal level—their whole road is washed away.