Interested in the intersection of disability and science fiction?

[kestrell]

Then check out virtual Boskone Feb. 18-20!

Boskone 59 will be happening February 18-20, 2022, and it will be a hybrid event, but for anyone interested in exploring the intersection of disability and science fiction, many of the most fascinating events will be virtual. The Guest of honor is writer Ted Chiang, but Boskone will also feature two amazing female writers with disabilities who will be reading and speaking about their fiction and participating in panels about how to create more inclusive spaces.

Elsa Sjunneson-Henry is a Hugo Award-winning speculative writer and a disability rights activist. in 2018 she was the Co-Guest Editor in Chief of
Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction
https://uncannymagazine.com/issues/uncanny-magazine-issue-twenty-four/
Her new memoir, _Being Seen: One DeafBlind Woman's Fight to End Ableism_,
https://www.snarkbat.com/being-seen
is available to registered readers with disabilities as a downloadable audiobook on Bard and also on Bookshare.org. Read about her many other writing credits and her activism at https://www.snarkbat.com/about

Ada Palmer
https://adapalmer.com/
is a professor of Renaissance history and an award winning writer, who also maintains the history blog Ex Urbe, where you can read
her Campbell Award and Invisibility Disability speech
https://www.exurbe.com/campbell-award-invisible-disability/
The book for which she won the award, _Too Like the Lightning_ (2016) is available from Bard, while Bookshare has Palmer's non-fiction scholarly work, _Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance_ )2014).

Among the virtual panaels which these guests will be speaking on are:
Inclusive Design For the Future
Monstrous Façade: Disability and Disfigurement as a Villainous Trope
Creating Inclusive Cons
and they will also have Kaffeeklatsches and readings.

In addition, media studies and fan studies scholar
Henry Jenkins
https://henryjenkins.org/ (
and my Dumbledore! er, former head of the media studies program at MIT), will be leading this workshop: Civic Imagination Workshop
Join this hands-on workshop for social change, that teaches attendees how to borrow principles from areas of fandom and apply them to real-world activities to help generate lasting, positive change. The workshop will apply ideas from activities such as speculative worldbuilding and fan fiction writing.

The convention schedule is available online in two forms, interactive and non-interactive
https://boskone.org/program/schedule/

The virtual membership rate is $25, and the in-person adult membership is $70. Convention rates are good through February 20, 2022.
You can buy a membership here
https://boskone.org/registration/buy-a-membership/

Comments

Mmmmmmmm -- that sounds great!

[jesse_the_k]

One thing the pandemic has taught me is that virtual cons are not, after all, easier than in-person ones. I definitely save energy not traveling, not snaking through crowds and scents, etc. The downside is that seeing/listening to a con via the net doesn't feel like participating.

I'm halfway through Sjunneson's memoir -- she does good work in the trenches of liminality. She advocates for the power of the disability label. That's particularly useful for her because she grew up without any "special needs" support: passing as nondisabled was important to her mom and thus to her until she hit college.

And who knew! Her name is pronounced like “Who-ness-ohn”

Re: Mmmmmmmm -- that sounds great!

[kestrell]

I'm currently reading _There Plant Eyes: A Personal and Cultural History of Blindness_ by M. Leona Godin. There are bits that I feel like arguing with her about: she only traces the blind bard back to Homer but, as with a lot of Greek culture, the blind bard was a tradition which they swiped from the Egyptians, and the Egyptians had images of blind harpists painted inside the tombs of their kings, because the blind harpists would tell them of the afterlife. That information is actually widely known in Egyptian archeology, there are examples of the images on the Internet, and it is discussed in a previous cultural history of blindness which traces images farther back to the non-Western cultures of Israel and Egypt. There are also blind bards in Celtic tradition, which she doesn't mention, and it makes me feel as if her research sticks to a pretty narrow, well-traveled path, so I have to stop after a while, or else I start ranting to the plushies, and the dragon tends to get fired up, and then it's a fire hazard, and well, it's just better not to get the dragon fired up in the first place.

Re: Mmmmmmmm -- that sounds great!

[jesse_the_k]

Yep, I finished Godin's book a couple months back. Didn't feel like I learned anything, sadly. She also tilts more literary theory than my patch, the out-loud radical disability justice screamer. (Except I'm screaming more quietly these days.)

I whole-heartedly recommend anything by Georgina Kleege -- she's an excellent writer. I was particularly delighted by Blind Rage: Letters to Helen Keller.

Getting that Bookshare link, I encountered yet another double listing. I chose the one which had the publisher's blurb and name. The other hit https://www.bookshare.org/browse/book/29747 omits some of that info while crediting the proofreader.

That surprises me -- I'm used to libraries having a firm grip on their catalog. Any tea to spill?

Re: Mmmmmmmm -- that sounds great!

[kestrell]

First of all, the Bookshare search engine itself is kind of hit or miss, and often gives really broad results on the one hand, while not including more specific information, such as whether the book is publisher qualitr scanned by an individual, and how many pages are in it. I didn't even realize that there were two copies and that they differed, but then, I was only doing a quick search to verify that Bookshare had those books at all. Still, considering that Bookshare is supposed to be a reliable source of textbooks and research materials, including for grad students and working professionals, I really think they should have a higher quality search engine, and I've mentioned that in feedback recently.

I might give up on the _Plant Eyes_ book, as I want to read Elsa's book before Boskone, and _Plant Eyes_ does seem to go over a lot of ground that I already know at least as well.

So past my bedtime...why am I still awake?? I have three Zoom meetings tomorrow...

Re: Mmmmmmmm -- that sounds great!

[jesse_the_k]

Elsa's book is much more fannish register, so you'll have no prob getting through it. She also does some 101 background on braille and canes and dogs so easy-skip-able.

Sleeeeep well.