TOD 040 Black Women in Speculative Fiction Panel from BlacktastiCon 2018

February 8, 2019
9 mins to read

In this podcast The Outer Dark presents the ‘Black Women in Speculative Fiction’ panel from Blacktasticon 2018 featuring Sheree Renée Thomas, Valjeanne Jeffers, Kenesha Williams, Linda D Addison, Nicole Givens Kurtz, Violette L. Meier, Susana Morris, Letitia Carelock, and Christine Taylor-Butler, plus an exclusive interview and special presentation with Linda D. Addison and The Outer Dark Symposium 2019 update. The panel and presentation were recorded live at Georgia Tech Student Center in Atlanta, Ga., on Saturday June 16, 2018.

The Outer Dark Symposium on the Greater Weird is a unique immersive one-day event featuring more than 40 program participants and approximately 16 hours of panels, readings, signings and social activities centered around contemporary Weird and speculative fiction. The third annual event will be held March 22-23, 2019 at Silver Scream FX Lab and Hotel Indigo-College Park in Atlanta, GA. Limited to 75 attendees. Buy your memberships here.

Intro: The Outer Dark Symposium 2019 Update & Special Guest Linda D. Addison

Scott and Anya update listeners on the latest news about The Outer Dark Symposium 2019 (00:05:20) Then author/poet Linda D. Addison joins us to introduce the panel, share the ‘mind-blowing’ experience of attending and being a guest of honor at Blacktasticon 2018, the importance of mentoring and building community, Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, editing the Bram Stoker Award-nominated Sycorax’s Daughters anthology, and more.

Show Notes

(00:21:28) The Outer Dark presents the ‘Black Women in Speculative Fiction’ panel from Blacktasticon 2018 featuring Sheree Renée Thomas, Valjeanne Jeffers, Kenesha Williams, Linda D Addison, Nicole Givens Kurtz, Violette L. Meier, Susana Morris, Letitia Carelock, and Christine Taylor-Butler. The panelists introduce themselves and their work, and then discuss why black women’s representation matters in speculative fiction including both prose and film, breaking through gatekeepers in publishing and other media, signs of resistance and change in creating space for other voices, hope through independent publishing, transitions in mainstream editing and publishing, the importance of the storytellers being black, diversity and allies in the science fiction and horror communities, the need for better representation of black female leads and characters in SF/F/H media, signs of progress, supportive networks, the importance of distribution, and what’s next for black women in speculative fiction and these authors in particular including getting your foot in the door and holding it open for the next author.

(01:38:36) The panel is followed by a one-on-one special presentation/Q&A with Linda D. Addison, who was a BlacktastiCon guest of honor. It’s all the awesome that is Linda, talking about how her career began 45 years ago, hurdles she had to overcome, her quest to get published in Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine, lessons learned from Nancy Kress, going to cons and discovering Tananarive Due, how the Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction in the African Diaspora anthology ‘changed everything’ for her, more milestones in anthologies featuring black authors, her response to pushback on these collections, the birth of BlackSci-Fi.com, her passion to bring ‘self-growth in the black community’ into the outer world, why Sycorax’s Daughters was a milestone, her commitment to mentoring young writers, her own mentor Jack Ketchum, a frank discussion of how happy she is to no longer be a ‘black unicorn’ on the Stoker Awards ballot and in the horror community, and the essential need for diverse voices on editorial staffs.