Full of pie. So many kinds. Thank you, Phil.

Also I met some quite cool people. And got to swim, and hang out and laugh with Bork. And I saw lightning and drunken sailors and hot modelbody babes waving and jiggling around for some audience that probably didn't consist of me.

All the men there were under 40, so I asked them why, now I'm 53, I keep hearing from men I coulda borned. See, right before I left for Phil's Pie Night I had just gotten my 100th message on this dating site, and it was from a 34-year-old, which is so freakin typical. Phil didn't even have a good guess why. His friend Gord said it was a fad, like bacon.

Fads pass. Maybe someday soon it will be trendy for men to date women their own age.

Pie is the new bacon.

Tags: pie, sex

I did a reading/q&a session at Google last month. They recorded it and posted it on YouTube
. You can tell I'm really, really enjoying myself.

Tags: appearances, fantasy, ifa, science fiction, writing

Completed the second week of the Clarion West Write-a-thon, and found out I have four sponsors I never even knew about! Thank you, Phil, Debbie, Tricia! And thank you, someone who goes by the mysterious sobriquet of "C. Trooskin." This in addition to Sara, Gaiya, Caren.

Four more weeks of Write-a-thon. Four more sponsors to make my goal of eleven. You can do it.

Published my last guest post on the Angry Black Woman blog. This one's called "What are you?" a question I've had to hear more than a few times. It has been so good to clear the vents there a bit, and acquire some tasty comments, too.

Tags: clarion west, writing

Completed my first chunk of 500 words on the collaboration Michael Ehart and I are vowed to draft during this year's Clarion West Write-a-thon. Despite illness, I might add. Am mightily proud of the story so far: 1000 words, with Ehart's section. We're aiming for 5000 to 6000 by the end of July. And it's a freakin *boxing* story, something I never woulda writ on my own. Set in Nigeria, among the Hausa people.

Are you my sponsor? If not, you could be.

Tags: clarion west, science fiction

I am guest-blogging in June on The Angry Black Woman, so that's where most of my blogging energy is going these days. Posts so far are titled "My Goodness," "Smile and Nod," "Glossophilia," "Fatology," "Angry Black Goddesses," "Dear Father," and "OEB Day!" That's from oldest to most recent. Comments welcome. This week I begin participating in the Clarion West Write-a-thon. It's the sixth annual CW Write-a-thon. My second. I have my own webpage where you can read an excerpt of my writing, see my goals, check out the photo Luke took of me, make a donation. Three people have promised to sponsor me. I'd like that to go up to 11. Eight more.

I was given code to paste in for a Write-a-thon banner/progress meter. Lessee, it oughta go right about here:



Yes. Also, this is Octavia E. Butler's birthday. She would be an awesome 62 if she was still alive. Tell someone awesome you love them.

Tags: appearances, clarion west, science fiction

Yes, I have come back from my Midwest tour, featuring a family visit in Kalamazoo and a roadtrip with my awesome Mom to WisCon. I wore the Tiptree tiara and ate a lot of pie and helped people make their own crowns. Now I am here--the kind of here we call Seattle.

I am also the kind of here we call online. Not only am I posting to LJ for the first time in four weeks, I am the subject of an interview called Ain't I a Woman conducted by Eileen Gunn (inf_matrix) for Fantasy Magazine. It is funny and good.

And Monday, June 8, I start a stint of guest blogging for The Angry Black Woman.

Also Monday I will be there--the kind of there we call the Google factory. Google office? The place where one works in Seattle when one is employed by the enterprise of Google. I am going to read and sing to the employees, and they will record it and send it to other Google locations. And in a while they will post it to YouTube, and I will tell you about that when it happens.

Tags: appearances

I am so happy and excited to be one of this year's winners of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award.  When I heard about it last week I was glad I was lying down.  Because otherwise I might have fallen down.  It was so unexpected.  It is so meaningful to me.  Almost every writer I try to emulate has received this award, and I feel like I'm getting a go-ahead signal from the universe:  Write, Nisi, write.

I was told I would be getting the award in confidence, which made the whole experience of learning I had won rather dreamlike.  But now I am awake, and other people I never said anything about it to are congratulating me, and it is so, so real.

My co-winner is Patrick Ness, a Brit, for The Knife of Never Letting Go.  I'm definitely looking forward to reading that one, first of a truly cool-sounding series.

Tags: science fiction, writing

I got to teach there again this year.  Woo-hooo!  It was so much fun.  Water World is for 5th-and-6th-graders.  It's a weeklong collaboration between marine biologists, a visual artist, a dance/movement teacher, and me doing writing.  We wrote dialogs and songs and poems and we retold fairy tales and described scenes.  And saw whales and river otters and eagles and deer till the cows came home.

My friend and colleague Darwin posted some photos from Water World here: http://centrumyouth.ning.com/profile/DarwinNordin.

Tags: writing

Twenty-two years ago I served as "Poetry Editrix" to a zine called Popular Reality.  Here's the text of a letter I wrote in that capacity.


Dear Mr. K______:

I haven't been published nearly as widely as you.  But I have been published in Popular Reality, and for a while it didn't seem you would have that ?privilege?  Anyway, Crowbar made me Poetry Editrix, and I liked one of your poems, and parts of others.  But I wrote you a nasty letter you'll never get about the rest.

Basically, this is the problem.  There are two problems.

The first problem of the problem is a technical problem.  It's your endings.  They really weaken the effect.  My theory is that a poem should be a closed ecology or an endless loop that keeps feeding you back into the positive maw of the opening line.  You should have, in most cases, quit three lines previous to your closings.  See "Flashing."

The second problem of the problem is a problem of content.  I don't believe you are writing about anything important.  Important to you.  If it's not important to you, it sure as hell isn't going to make any difference to your audience.  Seems like you're just writing things to keep your mind busy, to keep it occupied, and off and away from somethinng you won't tell us about.  Someone told me this once, and I denied it, of course.

Poetry ought--ought--to lift you up out of your armchair and revolve you through several involuntary cartwheels, backflips, and bellyspins, returning you safe and comfortable to your seat.  With someone reading over your shoulder.  It ought to change every hair upon the back of your neck into a pig-bristle, or a hollow blade.  And so on and so forth.  And if you are a real poet, worthy of the death of trees, you will do this.

And if not, you will be happy as you are.

Love,

Celeste Oatmeal

Tags: writing

A week ago  I held an ancestor feast in my new home with my new housemate.  We divined to find out what our menu would be.  I use the four cowrie method, which answers yes/no questions with one of five answers.  The answers translate (roughly) as "Oh, yeah!" ""Yes," "Maybe, but that's not really the point," "Probably not," and "No way!"

Gaiya and I got  "Probably nots" for all the green vegetable we asked about.  Here's what we wound up serving:

Mashed potatoes
BBQ chicken
Chocolate ice cream
Frozen corn
Pineapple
Kool-aid
Black-eyed peas
Garlic bread on sourdough
Chips and salsa

Noting that most of the food was red or orange or yellow, I went with that color theme in picking Kool-aid flavors, too.

Eileen was in charge of mixing up the Kool-aid.  It was really good.

Tags: lists