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The Fireside Fiction Report and SFWA

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Outside the comfort zone is where the best art lies.
I apologize for not blogging about this sooner. It’s been a busy month, and things are only getting busier, with Worldcon tomorrow and then China in September. Someone wrote asking me to comment on the Fireside Fiction report, and this is what I’ve been thinking.

Like many folks, I read the Fireside Fiction report with dismay and anger, but not a lot of surprise. We’ve been talking on the SFWA Board about the findings this past week.

What can SFWA do about it? I could go in full guns blazing and demand that every editor involved in the situation resign and threaten to take markets off the Qualified List if they don’t shape up immediately. This action would, however, probably get nipped in the bud the minute I proposed it to the rest of the board. As I’ve noted before, SFWA is slow and hard to steer. Enforcement on this level is also difficult and impractical, I think, because this selection doesn’t usually happen in the open or in an overt way.

One of the reasons I keep insisting that magazines should be reading blind is that unconscious bias plays a major part in selecting things, which has been demonstrated in study after study. Conventions should be doing panels not on why to read blind, but how to implement it in a working way. Can we insist that magazines read blind? It might work better to encourage it, perhaps, by publicizing the ones that do. And I will point out that magazines who specifically say they welcome diverse stories seem to get more. Submission guidelines do matter.

So do slush readers. They’re one of the first lines of defense around those markets. Magazines need to pay attention to their slush readers, and train them read outside their comfort zone in order to find good stuff. A editor that doesn’t dip into the rejected pile every once in a while may miss some gems as well as a chance to teach their slush readers. That’s how I found Jessica Lee’s Superhero Girl.

One of the more radical things SFWA’s done during my time on the Board is to admit independently and small press press writers. One focus since then has been making sure we give those writers the resources they need not just to write, but to promote their work. This is a good step, but insufficient in this case. Self-publishing is one of the ways around the gatekeepers, but L.E.H. Light mentions this in her piece, “The Fireside Fiction Report: A Reader/Critic’s Perspective“, saying:

“What level of segregation are we headed towards when we get comfortable with having ONLY our own publications as our voice in the genre? And what alternative sources of success, cash flow, and critical acclaim are we walking away from? Can we not have both our own publications and inclusion in “mainstream” works, thereby reaching wider audiences and providing opportunities for more writers? This is an eternal debate, and one which there need never be a solution to. But it is one we need to continue to have, in conjunction with a dedication to support both “streams” of production when possible, so that we pressure the industry both from within and without.”

Writing workshops are a traditional means of networking and support for new writers, but we must acknowledge that scholarships are not enough. The writers workshops tend to advantage the people who already have a good bit of economic privilege, and while scholarships help folks get into the workshop, it’s primarily middle-class folks who have the resources to take six weeks off work and travel.

Remote education may be one of the best bets, material that people can learn from on their own speed and schedule. Right now we’re working on an initiative, led by Maggie Hogarth, called SFWA Ed, that I hope will be helpful in this regard. Classes will focus on craft, business stuff, and the history of speculative fiction. One of the early efforts being worked on right now is an overview of copyright basics, aimed at writers, that will help them from being taken advantage of, for instance.

Setting a good example is one of the best things SFWA can do. Making sure that our Board is a diverse range of members as well as trying to listen to member needs. Making sure our programming at the Nebula Conference doesn’t use black writers only on diversity panels, and that the Recommended Reading list covers a wide range of writers. I actively hunt for good stuff to add to the reading list and I try to find the stuff that people might not run across elsewhere.

Sponsoring more studies like this, trying to get at some of the whys and wherefores, would be great. Unfortunately, something like that would have to get added to the 2017-2018 budget; there’s no room in the current budget, which has been flensed to the point where some efforts had to be shelved.

Personally, I have found the best way to combat bias in yourself is to self-educate “” and then act using that knowledge. I belong to a Facebook group called How to Talk to Other White People about Race”, which has furnished me with a lot of useful tools, but I don’t want to wade into the fray acting like I know everything, because I don’t. I want to help, and I worry that some actions don’t accomplish that or actually detract from the conversation. If you’ve got suggestions, feedback, commentary, or resources, I’m listening.

Some additional useful links:

#sfwapro

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Two Seattle Memorials to Ursula K. Le Guin

We’ve got two coming up in the next couple of weeks and I’ll be at both.

Tuesday, February 20, 2018
7:00 PM
$10 at the door
$8 for Folio Members, SFWA Members, and Town Hall Members
Complimentary wine reception to follow

Folio Forum
A Tribute to Ursula Le Guin
Noted local authors and fans honor the great writer.
Plus a recording of Le Guin, reading her famous story

Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum
314 Marion Street, Downtown Seattle
Parking tips and map: www.folioseattle.org

Many deeply mourn and greatly esteem Ursula Le Guin, the famous, and famously prolific, Portland-based writer of science fiction, fantasy, and many other works. To honor Le Guin, who died last month at the age of 88, Folio is hosting a gathering of authors and readers moved by the works of this remarkable author. Le Guin wrote poetry, children’s books, essays, and short stories. Her science fiction works attracted an immense readership and she brought literary depth and a tough-minded feminist sensibility to science fiction and fantasy.

A highlight of the evening will be hearing Le Guin on a recording where she reads from one of her most famous stories, “The ones who walk away from Omelos.” Those sharing memories and tributes include Cat Rambo, president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) and critic Edward Wolcher of Town Hall Seattle.

That weekend:

Sunday, February 25
7:00 PM (please support our venue by buying food and drink!)
$free
Celebration of the Life and Work of Ursula K. Le Guin
Blue Moon Tavern, 712 NE 45th St, Seattle, Washington 98105

Please join us for a reading to commemorate the words and worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin (1929″“2018). One of the most beloved writers of our time, Ursula K. Le Guin inspired generations of readers with her science fiction and fantasy literature, from Earthsea to Hain-Davenant. Let’s keep her spirit with us always.

Our evening celebration will consist of readings of Le Guin’s work by Eileen Gunn, Nisi Shawl, Cat Rambo, and you. Please bring up to five minutes of your favorite writing by Ursula K. Le Guin to share during open mic. This event is *free* and open to the public.

There will be a sign-up at the venue for open-mic readers. (Slots will be limited, readers selected in order of sign-ups.)

#sfwapro

...

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Talking About Fireside Fiction's #BlackSpecFic Reports, Part 1 of 2

sound-1283826_1920A few days ago Steven Barnes, Maurice Broaddus, Tananarive Due, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Tonya Liburd, and Nisi Shawl were kind enough to let me record their conversation about Fireside Fiction’s reports on blacks in speculative fiction. The discussion centered specifically on what SFWA can learn from the report in order to improve/expand existing efforts as well as things it should or shouldn’t be doing.

The Subject Under Discussion

For those unfamiliar with the report, you can find Antiblack Racism in Speculative Fiction: #BlackSpecFic: A Fireside Fiction Company special report (2015) here, and the follow-up 2016 #BlackSpecFic Report here.Both reports are accompanied by a wealth of essays by black writers.

Here is the central fact they present. Black writers are underrepresented in fantasy and science fiction short fiction magazines. The 2015 figures: 2039 stories in 63 magazines, of which 38 stories were by black authors, in 2015. The report noted the flaws (I’ll talk more about some of the reactions later) but it was a pretty good effort at analysis no one had done before.

In preparing for the conversation, I went not just through the reports, but the accompanying essays and some of the pieces inspired by the topics that had been raised. One of the pieces of data I acquired recently that wasn’t answered earlier was the results of the survey SFWA administered in 2017 to its members: information about the composition of the organization’s membership. Here it is from the survey, administered during the middle of this year.

Ethnicity:
Answer Choices Responses
White 85.40% 778
Hispanic 0.77% 7
Black 0.99% 9
Asian 2.09% 19
Pacific Island 0.00% 0
Mixed Race 3.07% 28
Indigenous 0.11% 1
Prefer not to answer 7.57% 69
Other (please specify)* 25
Answered 911
Skipped 38

(The answer to “Other” ranged from the serious to the not-so-serious.)

For the sake of very broad comparison, American demographics as of July 2016 (according to Wikipedia) were 13.3% African American, 17.8% Latino/Hispanic, and 61.3% white. Like the magazines when it comes to publishing black writers, SFWA’s population skews much whiter than figures might lead one to assume.

The Roundtable
I’m very grateful to the participants for a discussion that was illuminating, informative, and always interesting. I tried to assemble a group that could talk in an informed way and come from different perspectives.

I asked Liburd if she would be our representative of a newer writer, someone who’s hit many of the barriers. At the same time, she has her editorial experience from working with Abyss and Apex. Barnes and Due come from the perspective of long experience with the speculative fiction community. Shawl was one of the people who contributed an essay to the issue. Johnson and Broaddus are both established black writers who work with short fiction.

My apologies for the not-so-great quality. This was recorded via Google Hangout and I do not claim to have anything but the most rudimentary video skills. I ended up converting it to .mp3 file, which is available here:

SFWA Roundtable Podcast on Fireside Fiction’s #BlackSpecFic Report, featuring Steven Barnes, Maurice Broaddus, Tananarive Due, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Tonya Liburd, and Nisi Shawl.

This was a terrific conversation. I was scribbling notes down throughout most of it. In a day or two I’ll post those notes and action items, along with an account of what’s happened so far, but today the focus should be that discussion.

...

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