Author: Crow, Editor

Treehouse Writers Out and About

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Writers hanging out in the Treehouse have been sighted out and about on the Web this month.

Writers Drinking CoffeeNancy Jane Moore was just interviewed on the podcast Writers Drinking Coffee about everything from her forthcoming novel For the Good of the Realm to the poetry class she took at the 92nd Street Y in New York City (with assistance from Zoom).

Earlier this month, Madeleine Robins talked on the same podcast about Race, Romance, and Regency.

Meanwhile, since March is Women’s History Month, Gillian Polack has been hosting writers discussing that subject on her blog. Nancy Jane wrote there about being in college marching band and the relevance of Joanna Russ’s story “When It Changed” to that experience. Meanwhile, Gillian herself wrote about her experiences in debate and how they tie into current political upheaval in Australia.

And over at Strange Horizons, Judith Tarr has an essay on the importance of care in science fiction, a very topical subject these days.

A New Book

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coverThe humans in the treehouse think they can sneak things past us, but we crows see all. One of the humans, Pati Nagle, has just published a book, Intermezzo: Household Matters by Patrice Greenwood. That’s not the name she uses around here, but humans are funny sometimes.

This is a short book, all about characters in a series of mysteries. Here’s the announcement she tried to sneak by us.

She calls this an ebook, which seems to mean that it exists only in the imagination, but she says there will be a version on real paper soon, with a shiny cover. Those are more fun for us.

Solstice Tidings

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As regular readers know, the Treehouse exists simultaneously in the United States and Australia and as such it makes an effort to celebrate astronomical phenomena in both hemispheres and on both sides of the Earth.

Since it’s already Tuesday December 22 in Australia, we’re later for the summer solstice than we are for the winter one (which occurred about 13 hours ago in North America), but we are still at the beginning of summer in the southern reaches and winter in the northern ones and still feel celebratory. So we want to  send best wishes to all of our fellow Earthlings (along with our hopes for a much improved New Year).

Happy Summer Solstice

Happy Winter Solstice

From Your friends in the Treehouse

Gillian Polack Wins A. Bertram Chandler Award

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Gillian Polack at work The Australian Science Fiction Foundation has named Dr. Gillian Polack the 2020 winner of its A. Bertram Chandler Award for outstanding achievement in Australian science fiction.

The Chandler Award, which is juried, is given for lifetime achievement in science fiction. In announcing the Gillian’s selection, the Foundation noted her significant work in fandom as well as her outstanding fiction, including her Ditmar-award-winning novel The Year of the Fruit Cake.

We here in the Treehouse are delighted to see Gillian’s multifaceted skills and projects recognized by the Foundation. Congratulations to Gillian for the award and to the Foundation for making such an excellent choice.

The Pandemic and the Economy

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Masked Creatures with Graph

Nancy Jane Moore has one final post on the Edge of Chaos Blog symposium: What the Pandemic Shows Us About the Economy. She advocates for establishing economic systems that can pause for crises. Comments and discussion appreciated.

The essays in this symposium will soon be available as a PDF.

Edge of Chaos Blog Symposium

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Edge of Chaos - Boiling Water

The Edge of Chaos Blog Symposium, which is bringing complexity thinking into concepts of social justice, is ongoing. This symposium was put together by author and economist Beth Plutchak. Contributors include Dr. Clare Hintz, Debbie Notkin, Steven Schwartz, and Treehouse resident Nancy Jane Moore. Five essays are up and more are coming. Comments appreciated.

Edge of Chaos Blog Symposium

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Edge of Chaos

Starting today (November 5, 2020), the website Social Justice at the Edge of Chaos is presenting a blog symposium. The symposium is curated by Beth Plutchak, a writer and visionary thinker with a background in economics and social justice.

As the introductory post explains, this symposium is part of an effort to bring the science of complex adaptive systems to bear on the difficult problems facing us today.

Treehouse resident Nancy Jane Moore will be participating in the symposium. Other participants include Debbie Notkin and Dr. Clare Hintz.

New essays will go up each day, followed by responses. The symposium continues through November.

You can sign up for email notifications here.

Gillian Polack Wins Ditmar for Best Novel

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The Year of the Fruit CakeTreehouse writers are thrilled to report that fellow resident Gillian Polack won Australia science fiction’s 2020 Ditmar Award for best novel for The Year of the Fruit Cake. The book was published by IFWG Publishing in Australia.

Since Gillian was unable to attend the awards, Yaritji Green and Gerry Huntman accepted on her behalf. The Ditmar Award has been given at Australia’s national science fiction convention since 1969.

Gillian said on Facebook, “I was so subversive in this novel that I still have trouble believing fans voted for it. This gives me a ridiculous amount of hope at a time when hope is not everyday.”

In The Year of the Fruit Cake, five women meet up by chance when they end up sharing a table in a café. They are all very different, and one of them — though we’re not sure for a long time which one of them — is an alien from a culture of multiple genders in which the beings change genders several times over a lifetime. On Earth, however, she is trapped in the unchangeable body of a menopausal woman and has a confused mass of memories about who she really is.

The book is available internationally.

News from the Treehouse

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Apparently hanging out in the Treehouse isn’t all these humans get up to. Madeleine Robins has a new story, “‘Omunculus,” in the July/August issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. As your Editor Crow understands it, paper copies have gone out to subscribers and to bookstores, and can be ordered here; eb00k c0pies can also be ordered from Weightless Books starting July 1. Madeleine describes it as a steampunk mashup of Pygmalion and R.U.R., which sounds shiny to us.

Support Clarion and Clarion West

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Although both Clarion and Clarion West have cancelled their six-week workshops for this year due to the pandemic, they are holding write-a-thons this year to raise funds and scheduling online readings and panel discussions.

You can choose a writer to sponsor here for Clarion West and here for Clarion. Nancy Jane Moore is participating for Clarion West and you can sponsor her here. Other participating writers are welcome to leave their name and pages in the comments.

If you’d like to write for one of the write-a-thons, both are still accepting signups. Go here to sign up for Clarion and here for Clarion West.

Clarion is featuring a series of conversations on Wednesdays, starting June 24 with a panel moderated by Karen Joy Fowler. You can register for the different sessions here.

Clarion West is holding a Tuesday reading series, which begins on June 23 with Andy Duncan. You can register for those readings here.