The Summer 2018 edition of the Diversity Trust Newsletter has been released. Given that one of the things we are celebrating in the issue is the 100th anniversary of (some) women’s suffrage, Berkeley asked me to write the introduction. As usual you can find that issue, and all previous issues, on our website.
Feminism
Naked Podcast on SoundCloud
For those of you who don’t have Apple kit and can’t be bothered with iTunes, here is the Naked Podcast on SoundCloud. Happy listening!
The Popelei Naked Podcast
As promised, here is the link to my interview on Tamsin Clarke’s Naked Podcast. As you’ll see, it is Apple only at the moment. If, like me, you would rather sit in a nest of fire ants than install iTunes on a Windows PC, and you have no Apple device to listen on, that may be a problem. I’ll chase Tamsin about other formats.
If you can listen (and thankfully iTunes works fine on my iPad) you’ll see that we discussed getting naked in the sauna in Finland, and the process that strongly binary trans women like myself have to go through in order to get a body they are happy to be naked in.
Today on Ujima – Birthday, SF, Basketball, Nudity & Sex Work
Today was Ujima’s 10th birthday, and I was lucky enough to be presenting the first live show of the day. Thankfully I had a line-up that lived up to the occasion.
My first guest was Heather Child, a new addition to Bristol’s superb collection of science fiction and fantasy authors. Heather’s debut novel, Everything About You, is available from Orbit and is a fascinating exploration of how an AI in a smart device can get under its owner’s skin if it knows more about you than you can remember yourself.
Next up was Emma from Bristol Flyers, the local basketball club. They will be running a summer camp for girls with a view to ramping up the quality of their female teams and entering them into the national leagues. Basketball is in an interesting position in the UK. It has the third largest level of participation of any sport, but very little government funding. That’s a shame. I might find the NBA rather dull to watch, but away from the top flight the sport is a lot of fun and very cheap and easy to play.
The first hour of the show is available on Listen Again here. The Ujima website is currently being renovated so you might see it say that there are 0 minutes to play, or that there’s an issue with Flash, but if you just click on the download link it should play fine.
I kicked off the second hour with a fair amount of giggling as Tamsin Clarke and I discussed the Naked Podcast. I very much enjoyed being a guest on the show, but of course I’m very relaxed about getting naked with groups of women because I have spent so much time in saunas in Finland. We also discussed Latin American football, and Tamsin’s next theatre project.
Finally we got to the serious politics discussion of the day. In Parliament today they have been discussing further regulation of sex work. There was a big demonstration outside, of sex workers protesting about losing their livelihood. In the studio I had Angelica from the Bristol Sex Workers Collective and Amy from One25, a charity that works with street sex workers in the city. We talked about the different ways in which women can end up in the sex trade, and the best ways to help them survive and get out. I hope our politicians will listen.
The second hour of the show is available on Listen Again here. As with hour 1, you need to click on the download link.
The music for this week’s show was as follows:
- Americans – Janelle Monae
- Every Breath You Take – The Police
- Sweet Georgia Brown – Brother Bones and His Shadows
- Jam – Michael Jackson
- Totally Nude – Talking Heads
- Strip – Adam Ant
- Lady Marmalade – Patti Labelle
- Backstreet Luv – Curved Air
As you can see, most of the songs were chosen to fit with the subject under discussion. The Janelle Monae song, however, was chosen specifically because it is July 4th today. Happy Independence Day, America. Here’s hoping you keep that precious freedom.
Suffragette History in Bristol
Saturday saw the Vote 100 celebrations at M Shed, celebrating the 100th anniversary of some British women getting the vote. I was MC for the main stream of programming so I got to see some great talks.
Sumita Mukherjee based her talk on her new book, Indian Suffragettes. The story was pretty much as you would expect. I was pleased to hear that the Suffragette movement did at least try to find some African women to involve as well, and that there was no race bar to voting in the UK. There was some interesting discussion of the contrast between New Zealand, where the Maori were given the vote, and Australia, where Aboringal people were not.
Next up was Lyndsey Jenkins talking about Annie Kenney, one of the younger firebrands among the Suffragettes. She was part of a group called the Young Hot Bloods, which is totally the name of my next band. There was a lot of interesting discussion about how you can’t run a revolution without a whole lot of people willing to do the ground work of going out and sticking up posters, talking to the electorate and so on. However, the thing that leapt out at me was the revelation that many of the younger Suffragettes were heavily into Theosophy. There’s a Cthulhu story in there somewhere.
Prof. Karen Hunt talked about the split in the women’s suffrage movement between those who wanted to get the vote for everyone, and those who wanted it restricted to those deemed capable of using it responsibly (i.e. rich white people). Nothing much changes. The right will always try to split progressive movements by suggesting that certain people are “going too far”. And they will always find snobs eager to do their work for them (looking at you, Christabel Pankhurst).
After lunch we got a performance of the play, How The Vote Was Won (written by lesbian Suffragettes, Cicely Hamilton and Christopher St. John). It was just as hilarious as promised.
And finally we had a discussion panel, chaired by Laura Rawlings of BBC Bristol, that asked what having the vote has done for women, and what still needs to be done. Naturally the second question took rather longer to answer. The panelists were Thangam Debbonaire MP, Cllr. Asher Craig, Eleanor Vowles of Bristol Women’s Voice, Sumita Mukherjee and myself. In the course of the panel we got to discuss pretty much all of the Women’s Equality Party manifesto, which I regard as a significant success.
The day seemed to go very well, and I only made a couple of slip-ups which most people didn’t seem to notice. Huge thanks are due to Lucienne Boyce and June Hannam of the West of England and South Wales Women’s History Network who put the programme together, to Karen Garvey of M Shed for providing and organising the venue, and to the rest of my colleagues on the steering committee. Also kudos to my colleague, Frank Duffy, who designed the exhibition stands and the programme booklet.
If you missed the event, there will be an exhibition of local Suffragette history in the Central Library during July and August.
If anyone from the Government Equalities Office is reading this, we spent a lot of your money on BSL interpreters, and we had several deaf people in the audience.
And on Saturday the West of England and South Wales Women’s History Network has its annual conference at which I will be presenting a paper. It is in Bath. There is an entry fee, but if you are interested there are details here.
Diversity Trust Social Impact Report
Those of you following my Twitter feed will know that I have been doing a lot of work for The Diversity Trust over the past year. Of course my colleagues have been very busy too. If you would like to know more about our work, we have just issued a Social Impact Report for 2017-18. You can read it here.
Today on Ujima – Trans, Music, Suffragettes & Coercive Control
Today’s show started with a first for me, a live phone-in. Ben has only done one before so he did very well getting it sorted eventually. I’m very glad he did because I had a great chat with Kate O’Donnell about her show which is coming up on Friday. Tom Marshman was in the studio with us providing cover when the phone wasn’t working, and talking about his own part in the evening.
My second guest today was the amazing local singer, Ruth Royall. She has an absolutely fabulous voice, does her own production and plays a lot of the music on her recordings, and is basically just hugely talented. I got to play a brand new song that has never been heard on radio before.
You can listen to the first hour of the show here.
The second hour failed to record, which is annoying, because you will miss the great chat I had with Lucienne Boyce about the special day we are putting on at M Shed to celebrate 100 years of votes for (some) women. The good news is that you can still come along to the event. You can find out more on Farcebook, or download the programme here.
I will be playing hostess in the Studio Room all day, much as I do for LGBT History Month events. I’m also on the final panel which is pretty high-powered. It has belatedly occured to me that I need a costume, or at the very least a sash.
The final segment of the show featured Charlotte Gage of Bristol Zero Tolerance talking about a form of domestic abuse known as Coercive Control. Basically this is where one person in a domestic set-up tries to completely control the behaviour of another. There are various levels to it, but it can get very serious and anyone who is being victimised in this way can now seek help.
The playlist for the show was as follows:
- I Am What I Am – Amanda Lear
- Any Other Way – Jackie Shane
- 4U – Ruth Royall
- Heart on Fire – Ruth Royall
- Wind in My Sails – Ruth Royall
- Sister Suffragette – Glynis Johns
- March of the Women – Ethel Smyth, perfomed by Plymouth Choir feat. Eiddwen Harrhy
- No Man’s Woman – Sinead O’Connor
- I Hate Myself for Loving You – Joan Jett & the Blackhearts
Clothes Off for Feminism
Today I went into Bristol to see my friend Tamsin Clarke of the Popelei Theatre Company. As well as doing great theatre, Tamsin hosts a feminist podcast that addresses body issues. Because bodies are such an issue for women there’s a lot to talk about. Tamsin came up with the idea of recording the interviews with her and the interviewee both naked, presumably because that way all of the body issues are out in the open.
This is not a problem for me. I spend a lot of time in Finland and am therefore very used to sitting in a sauna with a bunch of other women, totally naked, chatting about all and sundry. The big difference was that this was not a general chat, but an interview about my body, which is inevitably an intreview about being trans.
The podcast won’t be out for a few weeks yet, and when it does come out it may well have a content warning because there is discussion of surgery. There’s also discussion of sex, and there’s swearing. It is not a radio thing.
Goodness only knows what the trans-exclusionary mob will make of all this. There’s me “penetrating” a feminist podcast. And not only that, but doing it in a woman’s home (Tamsin lives on a boat currently moored in Bristol) and doing it naked. Doubtless I will be accused of forcing myself on poor Tamsin, and of waving my political willy* in her face. So before there are comments let me state categorically that I was invited to be on the podcast. Also Tamsin and I spent an hour or so on Monday talking through it and making sure that we were both comfortable with what we were going to do.
Anyway, that’s another thing I have now done that I never thought I would ever do. And before anyone asks, I am so not doing a naked interview on TV. Not unless someone offers me enough money to buy immigration to the USA.
* A Political Willy is one that doesn’t actually exist except in the minds of people whose political phliosophy holds that anyone with a Y chromosome is forever male, in possession of a penis, and a violent rapist.
May the 4th
RESIST
Please sign your name on the dotted line
Yesterday on Ujima – Sculpture, Gender Stereotypes & Dirty Computer
Yesterday’s show was a bit thrown together due to my being in Oxford the night before, but I think I managed to make it work. That’s thanks in part to two great guests, and in part to the inimitable Janelle Monae.
My first guest was Harriet Aston who is a fellow member of a feminist SF discussion group based in Bristol. She’s a sculptor working mainly in industrial paper. She makes large figures that don’t yet move, but with enough magic might be persuaded to do so. We talked about how people view sculpture as compared to paintings, about theatre and the Greek Chorus, and about Harriet’s upcoming show at Centrespace. And because we are geeks we also talked about Catherynne M. Valente’s Space Opera, which is just as wonderful as everyone says it is.
You can listen to the first half of the show here.
In part two my guest was Natalie from TIGER (Teaching Individuals Gender Equality & Respect), a wonderful Bristol-based organisation that goes into schools and colleges teaching about gender stereotypes and how to resist them. TIGER has been running an art project with local young people that is going to be exhibited at Easton Community Centre for a month from the 19th. I will be one of the speakers at the launch event on the 18th. Natalie and I spent quite a bit of time talking about toxic masculinity and the need for a men’s movement to combat it. Obviously we also talked about those silly Trans Exclusionary people (who are neither Radical nor Feminist).
You can listen to the second hour of the show here.
The music for the show came entirely from Janelle Monae. I played the whole of (the clean version of) her new album, Dirty Computer. I make no apologies for that, it is all wonderful.
V.E. Schwab’s Tolkien Lecture
Last night I was in Oxford to attend the J.R.R. Tolkien Lecture on Fantasy Literature. This year’s lecture was given by V.E. (Victoria) Schwab. She’s not a writer that I am hugely familiar with, but she’s clearly hugely popular given how quickly the lecture filled up. I’m pleased to say that she provided a rousing defense of the need for diversity in fantasy literature. Also anyone with whom I can squee about the wonderfullness of K. Arsenault Rivera’s The Tiger’s Daughter is OK by me.
Of course many of you were unable to attend the lecture. But the folks at Pembroke College have been amazingly efficient and a video is now available online. It went up earlier today and I see that it already has almost 2000 views. That’s seriously impressive. If you’d like to watch, here it is.
Yesterday on Ujima – Hate Crime, Jazz & LGBT in Africa
There were a whole pile of significant anniversaries to consider with last weeks’ show. I’m annoyed that I missed out on wishing 90th happy birthday to Maya Angelou. I did get in that it was the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. But we began the show looking back on the 25th anniversary of the murder of Stephen Lawrence. Alex Raikes of SARI, Bristol’s hate crime service, joined me in the studio to look at the state of hate-based crime in the UK, and specifically in Bristol, today.
To lighten the mood a little I was joined after the news by Dave Merrick of local jazz & blues group, Small Days. Dave and his colleague, Natalie Davis, have been wowing audiences around Bristol for some time now, and they have a new show coming up at the Zion Community Arts Centre in Bedminster. The show, called “Ladies First”, is dedicated to jazz divas and will feature covers of songs from the likes of Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington and Nina Simone.
You can listen to the first hour of the show here.
My third guest of the day didn’t turn up. Thankfully she’s OK. I found an apologetic email when I got home. Sometimes life gets in the way of being on the radio. Ben the Engineer and I managed to find enough content on the fly to fill in.
In the final segment I played an interview I made at the LGBT History conference in Liverpool last month. It is with Prossy Kakooza, who works with African LGBT asylum seekers in Manchester, and Frankie Edozien, who has recently written a book on LGBT life in Africa. Annoyingly the Listen Again recording cut off with about 9 minutes of the hour to go, but I have the full recording and I’m going to put it out on one of my podcast feeds.
You can listen to (most of) the second half of the show here.
The music for yesterday’s show was as follows:
- Winston Groovy – The Stephen Lawrence Song
- The Specials – Nelson Mandela
- Small Days – God Bless the Child & Ain’t Misbehavin’
- Small Days –
- Clipping – The Deep
- Labi Siffre – So Strong
- Janelle Monae – Make Me Feel
- Big Mama Thornton – Hound Dog
- Jackie Shane – Any Other Way
- Jama – No Borders
And if you would like to hear more from Small Days there have lots of free songs on SoundCloud.
An Evening with Tom Robinson
I am in Liverpool for the Outing the Past academic conference. The Friday evening programming of this event is always the Alan Horsfall Memorial Lecture. Horsfall, as Peter Tatchell explained in his introduction to the event, was a founder and mainstay of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality for many years, and someone who was never satisfied with whatever compromise for limited rights was brokered with politicians at the time.
This year’s lecture was given by Tom Robinson. If you are less ancient than me you might ask, “who”, but to anyone of my generation the guy is a hero. He’s the man who penned that great anthem, “Glad to be Gay”. And he made an additional step forward for equality much later when he found, to his surprise, that he was bisexual. It has taken a long time for the LGBT+ community to come to terms with this, and I am sure that there are pockets of people who are still furious. I’m delighted that the conference is finally honoring a bi celebrity.
Tom’s lecture was essentially a coming out story. Or rather two because he had to come out first as gay and then as bi. But it is a story which, for the second half, was lived in the full glare of tabloid publicity as one of the most famous gays in Britain. If you think “Glad to be Gay” is bitter about the media, you should hear Tom talk about them now. Though he did note that these days if the papers tell a bunch of porkies about you then you can at least tweet about what crap they are printing.
Obviously coming out is useful politically, but Tom also focused on the importance of intersectionality. Back in the days of Rock Against Racism, and of Lesbians & Gays Support the Miners, we were intersectional without having a word for it. The same rules apply now. We are stronger together. No one is free until we are all free.
Naturally the evening ended with a rendition of “Glad to be Gay”. My thanks to Tom for encouraging the crusty old academics in the audience to sing along so that I wasn’t the only one doing so.
I had a quick word with him afterwards and grabbed a selfie for Twitter. He told me that he’ll be playing the Fleece Bristol in October, and that the band will be playing songs from Power in the Darkness. The dates haven’t been officially announced yet but it won’t be the day of BristolCon because some guy called Ed Sheeran is booked in that night.
Here’s a taster of the sort of thing you might expect.
I do love the way Tom adapts lyrics as time goes on. The version of “Glad to be Gay” he sang tonight only had the first verse in common with the original single.
Anyway,that’s enough for tonight. I have a busy day tomorrow and could do with some sleep.
What? You want an encore? Oh, alright. Here is a much younger Tom. Y’all sing along now.
My #IWD2018 Ujima Show
A day early for International Women’s Day, I devoted most of my show yesterday to feminist issues. However, I started out in Australia by welcoming film critic, Tara Judah, to talk about Sweet Country.
Tara is from Melbourne originally, so we had a lot to talk about. However, we did our best to keep the discussion to matters of race relations in Australia. Things continue to be pretty bad there, and I very much hope that this film shines a necessary spotlight on the situation.
After the news I started playing the interviews that I had picked up at the International Women’s Day event put on by Bristol on Saturday. They included comments from Penny Gane, Eleanor Vowles, Leonie Thomas, Rosa Taggert, Sian Webb and Elizabeth Small of Ra Cultural Consultancy.
Normally I would tell you to go to the Listen Again feature for all of this, but for some reason only 10 minutes of the first hour recorded. It is still worth it for a few minutes of Tara who is an amazing guest, but the IWD interviews are not there. Thankfully I still have the originals, and I hope to post them as a podcast at some point.
The second hour kicked off with more IWD interviews featuring No More Taboo, Sandra Gordon and Alex Raikes. The singers that Alex refers to are Pitch Fight, the Bristol University a capella group, whom you can find more about here.
The African Queens project that I talked about with Sandra is a project photographic Bristol women of color cosplaying famous women from African history. It was done for Black History Month last year. You can find out more about it here.
Finally I was joined in the studio by a couple of people I met on Saturday. Charlotte Murray is a young student who was interested in finding out more about radio, to I invited her into the studio. Jane Duffus is the editor of The Women Who Built Bristol, a fabulous collection of stories about the famous, and not so famous, women from the city’s history. If you are interested in buying the book, please order it through Bristol Women’s Voice because if you do all of the proceeds go to the charity.
Thankfully the second hour recorded correctly, and you can listen to it here.
The music for the show was as follows:
- Walking the Dog – Jackie Shane
- Natural Woman – Aretha Franklin
- Make me Feel – Janelle Monae
- Independent Woman – Destiny’s Child
- Our Day Will Come – Amy Winehouse
- We Are Family – Sister Sledge
- Cyndi Lauper – Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
- It’s Raining Men – Weather Girls
Sadly I had to cut off Janelle after a minute or so because I did not want to bleep out the swears. Once I have a copy of the clean radio mix I will be playing that song regularly.
For #IWD2018 – Artemisia Does Snark
For International Women’s Day I want to feature one of my favorite women from history, the hugely talented 17th Century painter, Artemisia Gentileschi. This picture (currently owned by the Queen) is probably a self-portrait. Much more importantly than that, however, it is a response to this picture by another Italian, Cesare Ripa.
That is from Ripa’s famous work, Iconologia, and it is intended to represent an allegory of “painting”. The woman in Gentileschi’s picture is a physical embodiment of that allegory, sharing many of the iconographic elements. But there is one symbol that she has chosen to omit. I think you can probably spot it.
Well played, Artemsia, well played.
International Women’s Day in Bristol
I have already posted about the film event on Saturday night, but I will be in Bristol all day because Bristol Women’s Voice has a huge International Women’s Day event happening at City Hall. You can find the full program here.
If you looked at that you will have noted that I am on a panel about women in the media from 2:15pm to 3:00pm. There are loads of other good things happening too. I am particularly looking forward to the Goddess in Prehistory talk. Also I have a radio show next week so I need to get some interviews. Hopefully I will see some of you there.
Queering the Classics
Ha! As if Greece and Rome needed any queering from us. But we did it anyway.
I spent yesterday at Reading University at a conference on “LGBT+ Classics: Teaching, Research, Activism” organized by the Women’s Classical Committee. Given that I am not an academic and have no training in the Classics beyond a few years of schoolgirl Latin, I was deeply honored to be asked to give a paper. As they asked for Activism, I gave them Activism, and I am delighted to report that the talk appeared to go down very well.
It was only a small conference, but of such efforts big things can grow. I was particularly pleased to share the platform with Nicki Ward of Birmingham who is one of the authors of this superb guide to Queering the Curriculum. I have noticed that in the work I do training universities on trans issues, academic staff are conspicuous by their absence. Part of this is doubtless due to overwork, but we still hear the “I treat all people the same” excuse for avoiding diversity training. Classicists have absolutely no excuse for not including queer material in their courses, and if yesterday was anything to go by they are delighted to do so. It is a start.
Anyway, huge thanks to Katherine Harloe, Talitha Kearey and Irene Salvo for a great event. Hugs to Liz Gloyn who was unable to get there. Thanks to all of the speakers, especially the wonderful Jennifer Ingleheart. I learned a lot, and made some great new contacts. We should do this again.
Yesterday on Ujima – LGBT History & Feminism
Yesterday’s show was given over mainly to previewing the LGBT History Day that is happening at M Shed on Saturday. Full details are available here.
The first hour focused on LGBT music. I talked to Darryl Bullock about his book, David Bowie Made Me Gay, and about the queer black roots of modern popular music. Then I welcomed in my Ujima colleague, Angel Mel, who talked about what is happening on the music scene in Bristol today.
You can listen to the first hour of the show here.
In hour two Karen Garvey and I previewed the rest of the day’s events. We also fangirled a bit over David Olusoga’s A House Through Time TV series.
Along the way I talked about the legal case underway in Trinidad and Tobago which hopes to overturn the islands’ homophobic laws. If you want to donate to the fundraiser to cover the legal costs you can do so here.
Next up I ran an interview with Sophie Walker, the leader of the Women’s Equality Party. With Tuesday having been the actual 100th anniversary of the Representation of the People Act, it seemed appropriate to talk about women and politics.
Of course one of the big issues for feminism in England right now (the rest of the UK seems to be avoiding most of the nonsense) is the status of trans women. Sophie, as she always does, committed to intersectionality. However, there is a TERF* event planned for Bristol this evening and I asked a couple of young trans people from Bristol University to talk about it. Quite what the TERFs want is a mystery, especially as they call their event “We Need to Talk” but won’t tell anyone where it is and don’t want any trans people involved.
You can listen to hour 2 of the show here.
The music for the show was as follows:
- No One Knows You When You’re Down & Out – Bessie Smith
- Hound Dog – Big Mama Thornton
- Jailhouse Rock – Vinyl Closet
- Only God – Sarah Hansson
- Good Golly Miss Molly – Little Richard
- Cream – Prince
- I’m Coming Out – Diana Ross
*TERF = Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist, a term invented decades ago by actual radical feminists to distinguish themselves from people who are neither radical nor feminist, but claim to be both as an excuse for persecuting trans women.
Tomorrow on Ujima
In the midst of all this I still have to do my radio show. Naturally tomorrow I am devoting most of the show to LGBT History Month. I will be joined by Daryll Bullock, a local writer whose book, David Bowie Made Me Gay, has been receiving international acclaim. Darryl will be talking to me about the queer black roots of modern popular music. He’ll be followed by Ujima’s own Angel Mel who will bring us right up to date with news of the queer music scene in Bristol.
In the second hour Karen Garvey from M Shed will pop in and we’ll preview the rest of the entertainment we have planned for Saturday. If you are in Bristol there will be loads of great talks so do pop in.
I also have a short interview with Sophie Walker, the leader of the Women’s Equality Party, that I bagged when she was in Bristol on Sunday. Naturally we talked about the 100th anniversary of (some) women getting the vote, the gender pay gap and so on.
Finally I’ll be talking about plans to hold an anti-trans event in Bristol on Thursday and how the increasingly hostile media coverage of trans issues is leading to an increase in the number of hate crimes against trans people in the region.
Diversity Works
One of the most obvious arguments for diversity is that if the top people in any given field are almost all straight white men then we must be missing out on talent from other segments of the population. Those who support the status quo will, of course, argue that straight white men are just vastly more talented than anyone else, and thus naturally end up on top in a perfectly functioning free market. The rest of of laugh at their hubris.
But can we prove them wrong? If we do go out and look for more diverse talent, do we get better results? Well, this year, thanks to being on the Tiptree Jury, I have been doing a lot more reading than usual. Probably more than I have done since I stopped doing Emerald City. Back then I would see a lot of talented writers coming through, but most of them would be straight white men. This time around I have read five very impressive debut books by women of color, plus two impressive novellas by a non-binary person of color. I can’t say much more than that because they are all being considered by the Jury (and the fact that they are great books does not necessarily make them great books about gender), but I think all of these books are worth your attention in one way or another.
- The Tiger’s Daughter – K. Arsenault Rivera
- Her Body and Other Parties – Carmen Maria Machado
- An Unkindness of Ghosts – Rivers Solomon
- An Excess Male – Maggie Shen King
- The City of Brass – S A Chakraborty
- The Red Threads of Fortune & The Black Tides of Heaven – J Y Yang