Thank you to all of last week’s guests for another wonderful week of essays! Here are their guest posts in case you missed any of them:
- “Building an Empire” — Ciannon Smart (Witches Steeped in Gold) shared how she came to create the Jamaican-inspired secondary world of her YA fantasy debut novel.
- “Fantasy as Lucid Dream” — Ashaye Brown (Dream Country) explored the relationship between fantasy and dreams in an ode to imagination and creativity—and discussed why the genre does not deserve the derision often aimed its way.
- “The Mary Sue Club Is Still Taking Applicants” — Chloe Gong (These Violent Delights, Our Violent Ends) discussed the criticism many female characters in YA SFF receive for being “Mary Sues” and these types of characters still being necessary—especially after the We Need Diverse Books movement led to the publication of more books by authors of color.
- Angela Mi Young Hur (Folklorn) discussed weaving retellings of Korean folktales into her soon-to-be-released novel about “the inheritance of myth from parents and culture”—in particular, the inclusion of her ancestress Queen Heo Hwang-Ok, whose story she heard from her mother and now tells her daughter.
- “On the Amorphous Nature of Horror” — Tori Bovalino (The Devil Makes Three, Not Good for Maidens) discussed the horror genre and horror elements in science fiction and fantasy.
All of the guest posts from April 2021 can be found here.
It’s the last week of April, and the rest of this year’s Women in SF&F Month guest posts will go up over the next few days. The schedule for the rest of the month is as follows:
April 26: Nicole Kornher-Stace (Archivist Wasp, Latchkey, Firebreak)
April 27: M. J. Kuhn (Among Thieves)
April 28: Helene Wecker (The Golem and the Jinni, The Hidden Palace)
April 29: Hannah Whitten (For the Wolf, For the Throne)
