1. Saturday, October 3rd was 24-Hour Comics day, in which cartoonists write and draw a full comic book in a single day. Local cartoonist Henry Chamberlain just posted his 24-hour comic, which stars the Fremont Troll, at the Comics Grinder.

2. Over at Okey Panky, Isaac Cates contributes a handful of comic strips based on a comics game of his own invention: select two comics panels from a deck of previously-created panels. Your job is to illustrate two panels that connect them. (My favorite part of the game: in the end, all four panels, including the middle two you've created, go back into the deck, thereby adding to the possibilities for future installments.) What follows is a wonderful meditation on poetry, comics, and the connection between the two. The form and content of Cates's "essay" mirror each other beautifully.

(This post has been updated to reflect the fact that Cates is the inventor of the panel-selection game.)

Your Week in Readings: The best literary events from October 5 to October 11

MONDAY Your week begins with a weird, wonderful mashup of fiction and poetry at University Book Store, where poet Dennis Milam Bensie reads from his book Flit.The description for the event begins “Used twenty-one times in The Catcher in the Rye, the word "flit" was introduced by J.D. Salinger as a term for a homosexual man in 1951.” This book mashes up Salinger’s classic and 40 other works of fiction that use homophobic slurs to create a new narrative.

TUESDAY You’re going back to the U District tonight for a reading at University Temple United Methodist Church, where sci fi authors Greg Bear and Ann Leckie will read. Leckie is the author of Ancillary Justice, which Kate MacDonald reviewed for us back in August. She’ll be reading from the conclusion to the Ancillary series. Local author Bear will read from Killing Titan. You can get your church and your science fiction in the same place — how often does that happen?

WEDNESDAY This is a big night for SRoB. Our co-founder Martin McClellan will read from his brand new debut novel California Four O’Clock at Mercer Street Books. It’s an evening with books and drinks and prizes and that new-book smell. I’ll be on-hand to interview Martin about his book and the process of bringing it into the world, and it’s all free. Stop by and say hi!

But naturally, since there’s a conflict of interest here, we want to provide you with an ALTERNATE WEDNESDAY event, too, and this should really be something. At Hollow Earth Radio, local poet Anastacia Tolbert, who published a poem with us not so long ago, will read as part of the Furnace Reading Series, which combines readings with soundscapes and music and all manner of Hollow Earth-y goodness. Tolbert reads from her work “The City,” which is a story told by and about Seattle.

THURSDAY Joe Bar Gallery hosts a comic book art show presented by Short Run Seattle as part of Capitol Hill Art Walk. Otherworld features comics by artists including Hellen Jo, Keenan Marshall Keller, Krystal DiFronzo, Alisha Davidson, Darin Shuler and Bjorn Miner. Shuler and Miner are local, and the others are from all over the place: LA, Chicago, Toronto. This is your first October Short Run event. Go and have fun, but make sure you pace yourself; October is packed full of Short Run goodness.

FRIDAY Hugo House hosts a reading celebrating this year’s Best American Poetry. Editor Sherman Alexie will MC, and he'll be joined by poets including Natalie Diaz, Ed Skoog, Cody Walker, and Jane Wong. Those are five wonderful readers of their own work. Of course, this is maybe the only installment of Best American Poetry to ever be controversial. Hopefully, Alexie will discuss the controversy and perhaps allow for some audience conversation. That seems likely to me; he’s such a candid stage presence that whatever happens will be raw and real and unplanned.

SATURDAY Head to Town Hall for a reading from novelist Amitav Ghosh, who will finally deliver Flood of Fire, the long-awaited conclusion to his Ibis Trilogy. Ghosh, whose name I mistype as “Ghost” every single time, is one of the best novelists in the business today. He writes about Indian history and colonialism and the Opium War with China. If you attend the California Four O’Clock reading on Wednesday, be sure to ask Martin about Amitav Ghosh. He will be effusive.

SUNDAY It’s one of the best weekends of the year! Geek Girl Con is happening at the Washington State Convention Center all weekend long. There are panels about (real) science and (fictional) science and womens’ roles in horror movies and how to write book reviews (swoon!) and a panel titled “From Doom Patrol to Sense8: Trans Narratives in Popular Culture.” Geek Girl Con fills a necessary space in nerd culture, and it does it in a fun, supportive, intelligent way. This is a convention that deserves your love all weekend long.

The Sunday Post for October 4, 2015

Writing Better Trans Characters

Cheryl Morgan offers guidance on writing trans characters on Strange Horizons. Her audience here is SF writers, but nothing in her advice should be limited to that genre. Any writer could benefit from this read.

I reject the idea that trans characters should only be written by trans people because cis folk are bound to get it wrong. While there are some really fine trans writers, there simply aren't enough of us in the world to do what is needed. We have to be part of all fiction, not just fiction that we write ourselves.
Future Reading

Craig Mod, one of the best investigators we have into the form of the book and how it is changing, looks here at the future of reading, and the formats we may be reading in. This is a delightful, deep, and personal essay. Highly recommended:

From 2009 to 2013, every book I read, I read on a screen. And then I stopped. You could call my four years of devout screen‑reading an experiment. I felt a duty – not to anyone or anything specifically, but more vaguely to the idea of ‘books’. I wanted to understand how their boundaries were changing and being affected by technology. Committing myself to the screen felt like the best way to do it.
Why We Need to Build More Diverse Worlds in Fiction

We’ve been talking about diversity this week quite a bit on the SRoB. Bernard Hayman took a look at diversity in world building recently over at The Toast.

What we learn about our own reality can often prove as fantastic or strange as anything in fiction. Anyone who has spent hours on a Wikipedia bender that starts at “toothpaste” and ends at “Tesla coils” understands that part of the appeal is not simply understanding the “what” of a thing, but the “why” and the “how.” Fiction encourages readers to engage with the reality we already know with our views slightly tilted — to see the world we live in with fresh eyes. The imagining and understanding of new worlds can encourage us forward in the real world, towards a different or better state.

Rahawa Haile’s short stories of the day, of the previous week, for October 3, 2015

Every day, friend of the SRoB Rahawa Haile tweets a short story. She gave us permission to collect them every week. She’s archiving the entire project on Storify

SRoB tipper Nick Hanover alerted me to this excellent Graphic Policy story by Janelle Asselin about former Dark Horse Comics editor-in-chief Scott Allie, alleging that Allie frequently engaged in "out of control behavior while drunk and biting." Yes, biting. As in, his nickname around the office was supposedly "Bitey the Clown." Allie was removed from his job this fall after he publicly assaulted two people at a convention, but rumor has it that Dark Horse Comics in specific, and the Portland comics scene in general, has been covering up for Allie for years. (And in fact, Allie still works at Dark Horse, under the title "executive senior editor.")

As Graphic Policy notes, there's a long history of harassment and sexual assault in the comics industry, and professionals have demonstrated a willingness to cover up for decades' worth of bad behavior. The silence is starting to break, but that bad behavior is still everywhere in the industry.

If you have experienced sexual harassment in the comics industry, we want to hear your story. It's bad enough that this behavior is considered typical in comics; it's downright disgusting to think that the Pacific Northwest has been home to this culture of silence for decades.

The Help Desk: The joy of parenting and the Joy of Sex

Every Friday, Cienna Madrid offers solutions to life’s most vexing literary problems. Do you need a book recommendation to send your worst cousin on her birthday? Is it okay to read erotica on public transit? Cienna can help. Send your questions to advice@seattlereviewofbooks.com.

Dear Cienna,

I'm a single dad and my ten-year-old daughter apparently found my copy of Story of O. She confessed after I found her posing Barbie over Ken's lap for a spanking. How the heck am I supposed to explain something as complex as power fantasies to her, or at the very least help her from seeing her dad as a big creep?

Ermine, University District

Dear Ermine,

Awhile ago I met a nice Christian woman who believes sex before marriage is amoral but regularly masturbates her male dog before competitions because she says it relaxes him. I asked, but no: she is not married to her dog.

My point is people compartmentalize sex in individually weird ways. Reading Story of O doesn’t make your daughter damaged or you a creep – in my book, nothing short of competitively masturbating your pet in public while praying for the salvation of sluts does.

It’s not your job to explain power fantasies to your daughter. It’s your job to buy her ice cream and tell her that what she read was fiction and a bit above her reading level. Then, it’s your parental duty to purchase a copy of The Joy of Sex and give it to a cool female friend to give to your daughter (trust me, no young woman wants to get a sex manual from her dad). My grandmother bought me the Joy of Sex when I was about 10 and once I got over the horror of being handed a sex thing by a near dead thing, I treasured it (sex ed in Idaho in the 90s doubled as our “Faces of Meth” campaign). Hopefully your daughter will stop snooping through your erotica as she practices hundreds of new positions to put Barbie and Ken in, all while developing an appreciation for diverse body types and prize-winning bushes.

Just keep her away from your dog.

Kisses,

Cienna

Jonathan Raban is the closest thing the Seattle literary scene has to a paterfamilias. His brilliant, incisive writing taught us how to think about the city around us, and he's influenced countless local writers from Lesley Hazleton to Charles Mudede.

Raban has been out of the spotlight for the last few years due to health-related issues, but I'm excited to report that he's reading at the Frye tomorrow afternoon, from 3 to 4 pm. It's free. I can't recall the last time Raban gave a reading; this is a big, important event for literary Seattle.

It's time to fund APRIL

The APRIL Festival — it stands for Authors, Publishers, and Readers of Independent Literature — just launched a fundraising drive for their 2016 festival. A tremendous cast of local literary all-stars has put together a video for the project:

This is a worthy cause. APRIL puts on a number of events — most of which are free — featuring a diverse array of artists. You should think about donating what you can. Even ten bucks would help, although if you can spring for $25, APRIL co-founder Willie Fitzgerald will make you your very own literary meme. Really, who wouldn't want one of these bad boys?

These are people who care about non-corporate books. Do you care about non-corporate books? Do you care about like-minded book-lovers connecting in a fun and friendly environment? Do you want to support authors and publishers and readers? You do? Then give what you can, okay?

Make it hurt so good

Published October 01, 2015, at 2:00pm

Julia Cook review Lauren Groff's Fates and Furies.

Lauren Groff's short fiction is what you'd get if Carver or Yates tried to write a fairy tale. Does her new novel live up to her best work?

Read this review now

Portrait Gallery: Charles Mudede

Each week, Christine Larsen creates a portrait of a new author for us. Have any favorites you’d love to see immortalized? Let us know

Mudede reads Friday Night at Hugo House, as part of the celebration for the Seattle: City of Literature anthology from Sasquatch Books.

Thursday Comics Hangover: Godzilla goes to hell

Most licensed comics, let’s be honest, are terrible. Comics as merchandising spin-offs are usually afterthoughts, completely irrelevant to the movie or TV show that spawned them. Nothing happens in licensed comics, and somehow the approval of a fleet of corporate lawyers makes the officially licensed spin-offs feel even more like bad fan-fiction. They’re safe and boring and bland.

But every so often you’ll encounter the proverbial exception that proves the rule. And sometimes that exception is titled Godzilla in Hell. IDW’s miniseries is exactly that: a miniseries about Godzilla in hell. Each issue is written and drawn by a different artist, with the flimsy insinuation that Godzilla is descending through the various circles of the underworld providing the barest of narrative threads between installments. Luckily, these comics are so fun and so unrepentantly weird that they don’t need a narrative.

The first issue of Godzilla in Hell, illustrated by rising indie star James Stokoe, was so simplistic that it was almost too slight. In a wordless comic, Godzilla fell into Hell and then fought his way around. Only Stokoe’s noodly, effervescent art kept the issue from being a pantomime bore; you could stare at the whorls of fire and brimstone that Stokoe layered into the back of every panel for hours. The second issue, by Bob Eggleton, was a bit more traditional for a Godzilla comic: giant monster fights overlaid with some overwrought narration.

The third issue of Godzilla in Hell, written by Ulises Farinas and Erick Frietas with art by Buster Moody, is a nice blend of the two issues that came before. Godzilla wanders around hell and fights Space Godzilla, but he also encounters a hive of angel-Mothra hybrids that try to trick him to do their bidding. Christian imagery is everywhere — at one point, Space Godzilla shatters a hellish replica of Rio’s Christ the Redeemer statue with a force bolt — and then Godzilla stares at a giant purple mountain made out of angry eyes that tries to hypnotize the giant lizard. “SUBMIT, SERVE PEACE SUBMIT, SERVE PEACE SUBMIT, SERVE PEACE” the eyes chant at Godzilla, whose scowl gives away the fact that he’s not having any of it.

Godzilla in Hell is one of those batshit ideas that offers no clue as to how it came to be. Was it really just as simple as someone watching a creature feature and thinking, “I wonder what would happen if Godzilla starred in Dante’s Inferno?” Because if so, that person deserves a medal. So far, Godzilla has not squared off against Satan himself. If the series ends without that showdown, I will be very disappointed. And if the quality holds up, I’m hoping for some sequels. Godzilla in Heaven, perhaps? Godzilla Vs. God? Godzilla starring in Paradise Lost? Why not? The lawyers don’t seem to be watching, so we might as well have some fun.

On diversity, criticism, and Seattle: City of Literature

As a co-founder of the Seattle Review of Books, I am proud to publish Donna Miscolta’s piece about minority representation in the Seattle: City of Literature anthology. This piece is a perfect example of why my partner Martin McClellan and I created this site: to engage in conversation with books and with the city, and to help bring compelling pieces of writing to an audience that cares passionately about books.

I wish I could just conclude with that statement of pride and be done with it. But the truth is, I’m writing this Note because I’m a contributor to Seattle: City of Literature, and I have to acknowledge my part in the book’s failure to represent minorities.

Last year, when I was still books editor at The Stranger, Seattle: City of Literature editor Ryan Boudinot approached me to contribute a piece to the anthology. Ryan’s idea was that I would publish a review of the book as an afterword to the book. It was, and is, a very clever idea, one that I’ve never seen done before. So Ryan sent along a mostly-assembled PDF proof copy of the book shortly before the publication deadline. I read the proof and wrote a review of the book, which you can now find at the end of Seattle: City of Literature.

In my review, I didn’t acknowledge the anthology’s nearly 90 percent whiteness that Miscolta pointed out in her review this morning. The truth is, though it's glaringly apparent to me now, I didn’t even notice the whiteness at the time. And I absolutely should have. It’s an important part of any critic’s job to keep representation in mind, by which I mean representation both in which books they choose to review and in the content of the books they review. In particular, a book claiming to represent the history and flavor of an entire literary scene should be intensely scrutinized to ensure that those claims are accurate. As Nicola Griffith told me a couple months ago, it’s vitally important to count voices, every time.

As Martin and I wrote on our About page, the Seattle Review of Books is “actively dedicated to diversity in the books that we cover, and in the reviewers who cover them.” It’s important to us that this is a part of our site’s mission statement because the thing about failures of representation is that they’re almost never made out of malicious intent. Usually, failures of representation happen because people get lazy and fall back on the default societal settings, which, in America favor straight white males. People get lazy when they’re not held accountable for their actions. And what is a critic’s role, after all, if not holding people accountable for their actions? The point is this: I should have counted, and I should have questioned, and I should have advocated for minority writers.

But of course, it’s easy to come forward and talk about what I would’ve done had I known then what I know now. What will I do to make sure I don’t wind up in this situation again? Well, institutionally, Martin and I have already announced our intention to hire an ombudsperson for the Seattle Review of Books once or twice a year to write reports cataloguing the diversity of both the books we cover and the freelancers we hire to write about books. On a personal level, this incident has taught me to count and catalog the diversity of contributors to anthologies I review in the future. And when I make mistakes — because mistakes will always happen — I promise to be transparent in my failures and explain how they came to be. There’s always something to learn by examining your mistakes

Seattle’s literary scene would be nothing without its diversity. Homogeneity does not produce meaningful culture. Members of this community who enjoy great privilege must continually remind themselves that they need to practice tireless vigilance and allyship. Every voice is valuable, and too many voices have been left out of the conversation due to inattentiveness. I’m so grateful for brave people like Donna who are willing to stand up and demand those voices be heard, because the voices that she’s advocating for are the ones that we most need to hear.

Reflections by and about white people

Published October 01, 2015, at 9:00am

Donna Miscolta review Ryan Boudinot's Seattle, City of Literature.

Donna Miscolta looks at the new Seattle, City of Literature anthology, and finds it missing something important.

Read this review now

Good news! The Seattle Weekly now has a weekly comics column in whch a local cartoonist illustrates an interview with a local band. In the first installment, the fabulous Robyn Jordan illustrates Janice Headley's interview with the band Childbirth. If you don't know Childbirth, they're a poppy punk band that wears hospital gowns onstage and sing catchy, awesome feminist songs like "I Only Fucked You As a Joke."

This is great stuff, and it manages to highlight our amazing comics scene and our amazing music scene, simultaneously. What's not to love?

We love a good book review here at SRoB, and "Donald Trump Reviews The Lord of the Rings," over at the Tusk, is a wonderful book review. This is what we mean when we keep grabbing people by the shoulders and shaking them violently and shouting "BOOK REVIEWS ARE LITERATURE!" This piece employs satire to comment on a book while also addressing current events. Go read it. (Also, sorry about the grabbing-you-by-the-shoulders-and-shouting thing. We just get a little overexcited every now and then, is all.)

You can hear the whole city from the porch at 12th Ave S and S King St.

Porchlit is a yearlong site-specific literary installation founded by Yonnas Getahun, Campbell Thibo and Omar Willey. The idea is a relatively simple one: every day of the year, they record someone reading a piece on the porch of a particular Little Saigon home. Then they post a Soundcloud embed of the reading on the project’s website. When they started the project, they operated under the assumption that the building attached to the porch was abandoned. Then, when the owner of the house left the building during a recording session, they realized their mistake; after a brief explanation, the owner gave her blessing and the project continues.

Getahun lives near the house and says that for months before Porchlit began he was “intrigued” by it. He says he "initiated doing an artistic daily reading ritual at the porch." As he drew in more people to develop the idea, the project became centered around, as Getahun describes it, “the sharing and the love of literature with the study of the city.” The team invited Willey to incorporate a historical element, which took the form of a podcast titled Beyond the Porch. They’ve been at it religiously ever since.

Porchlit began on April 23rd, 2015—the 399th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. It will run through April 23rd, 2016. On November 22nd the final phase of Porchlit begins, as the readers will record one of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets every day through the end of the project. But before the sonnet portion of the project begins, the organizers realized they had an opportunity to develop other themes, and so the month of September became a celebration of local literature, in which Porchlit authors only read work by Seattle writers.

Getahun explains, “there’s a rich history of writers in Seattle and an active literary culture in Seattle and so we said okay, let’s celebrate that.” Lit Crawl Seattle helped them procure talent for the project. Organizers told all their readers, “we want you to cover authors who lived here, were born here, or worked here in some way or another.” The month has been a resounding success, with authors like Chelsea Werner-Jatzke reading Stacey Levine and Elissa Washuta reading Laura Da’.

When asked if he learned anything about Seattle’s literary history this month, Getahun comes clean: “I know in the arts, my experience is that people want to seem cooler or more knowledgeable than they are and I’m not going to play that card. I’ve learned a lot.” Getahun says he knew big names like Theodore Roethke and he’s a self-professed “ big fan of Karen Finneyfrock,” but he said the project directly introduced him to the work of Tess Gallagher. Getahun still sounds a little shocked by the quality of her “incredible poetry. And I had never heard of her until that day!”

By the time the year is through, Porchlit will represent a fantastic resource: part literary performance piece, part historical document, part snapshot of literary life in Seattle in the years 2015 and 2016, part appreciation of Shakespeare’s sonnets. It's an entire year in the life of a city, an entire revolution around the sun, but it never once moves from a single welcoming porch. Instead, the readers serenade the street with words as the whole world passes by.

The news broke today that Twitter is considering ways to allow users to write posts that are longer than its current 140-character limit. This is, obviously, a bad idea. Twitter with no limits is just blogging. Everyone has problems squeezing words into a tweet every now and again, but the constraint is what makes Twitter magical.

I'd argue that the constraint is the thing that makes Twitter so appealing to literary types, too. Most of my favorite writers are on Twitter, and they are unbelievably fun. The brevity plays out like a cocktail party: a few witticisms, some chatter about current events, and a little polite conversation. There may be a way for Twitter to handle long tweets that doesn't ruin this magic formula — if photos and links didn't count toward the 140-character limit, that would be fine with me, for example — but they'd better exercise an abundance of caution as they plan for the future. With all the ads and noise and celebrity on Twitter lately, I'm sure I'm not the only person actively looking for a reason to quit the service.

Sorry, that got pretty dark pretty quick. I've just loved Twitter for a long time now, and news like this is disheartening. For a lighter take on today's gossip, you can't do better than Eric Raymond's tweet:

This post at Lady Business begins:

This project demonstrates that SFF books by or about cis women are less likely to win awards than books by or about cis men. Trans and nonbinary authors do not win awards at all, and trans or nonbinary protagonists are extremely rare. Overall, there were more award-winning books written by cis men about cis men than there were books by women about anybody...

While of course the news they deliver is bad, it's heartening to see other people taking up Nicola Griffith's charge to count the number of womens' voices in literature. Go read the whole thing and then spread it far and wide.

Seattle Public Library defends rebranding campaign in the face of public protests

Marcellus Turner, the City Librarian at Seattle Public Library, has issued a letter responding to public criticism of the library's rebranding campaign, which I wrote about last week. Turner writes that the rebranding has...

...generated a flurry of interest and opinions from media representatives and the public. A recent exchange with a passionate Library supporter got at the heart of the concerns voiced by many around the Library’s proposed rebranding. That supporter didn’t see the need for changing the library name or brand.

Turner says this was proof that "we didn’t do a good job setting the stage for why we need to do this." He then goes on to claim that technology and changes in the publishing industry "are contributing to the decline in the circulation of print materials and an increase in digital use in libraries across the country." He admits that library leadership nationwide is in flux:

Nationally and internationally, our professional organizations are working with think tanks and agencies to understand what is happening in libraries, how our role and value can be strengthened, and how to rebrand the profession accordingly.

This hints at something that I pointed out in my earlier post: libraries around the country are devaluing the work of librarians in favor of an institutional shift to something more like community centers. Librarians argue that those declines in circulation of print materials are happening because libraries are raising fees and reducing the number of titles patrons can check out at any given time. Nationally, they say, library leadership is stripping libraries of the very things that make them special in order to prove their own point. Locally, it's certainly interesting to note that the word "librarian" appears nowhere in Turner's letter, except for his own job title.

There can be no doubt that the role of libraries in American society should change as technology changes. The internet has changed the way we access information. But a smart organization would respond to this information explosion by emphasizing the importance of its highly trained staff. Librarians can connect you with books that an Amazon algorithm simply can't. Librarians can teach you how to filter out the excessive noise of online research to help you find the information that's truly relevant. In an age of information overabundance, we need librarians more than ever. It's a shame that Turner doesn't seem to realize this.

As a response to Turner's letter, I'd encourage you to fill out the rebranding survey with the importance of librarians in mind. And I'd remind you that the next Library Board of Trustees Meeting happens at the Central Library at 5 pm on Wednesday, October 28th. That's your best opportunity to publicly speak directly to the board about what matters. Turner's letter is proof that the library hears public outcry on this matter loud and clear. Now we need to make sure they understand our message: Seattle's librarians are what makes our libraries special.