Radio

Today on Ujima – LGBT History Month Part II

~ Cheryl

LGBTHMStarting off today’s show we had Terry Starr giving us some background on the history of LGBT radio, in particular the fabulous Shout Out show that he and Mary Milton founded.

Also in the first hour, and other Shout Out stalwart, Steve Shepherd, joined us to talk about his work as an LGBT advocate in the Unite trade union.

You can listen to the first hour here.

We open up the second hour with Lesley Mansell from the Bristol North NHS Trust, who talks to me about equalities issues in the health service. There’s quite a bit of trans coverage in that.

Finally I am joined by Judith Brown of the Bristol Older Women’s Forum and we discuss a variety of issues facing older people in the city.

You can listen to the second hour here.

The music for the show is all gay disco anthems, which were a lot of fun to play. Yes, I did get Amanda Lear and Dana International in the same show.

Next week, floods willing, I’ll be joined in the studio by C.N. Lester and we will talk about opera, boys playing girls, and castrati. C.N. has promised me a 17th Century opera, written by a woman, which is all about gender. It will, as they say, be awesome.

The Shout Out Awards, 2014

~ Cheryl

Last night I was in Bristol for the second annual Shout Out Awards ceremony, hosted by my good friends from Shout Out Radio. A full list of winners and runners up is available here.

The award for Best Trans Event went to Glitzy Girls. Huge congratulations to them. But in second place was the Trans Day of Remembrance Ceremony. I think that a memorial ceremony doing that well in a set of awards that are mainly for the LGBT night life scene in Bristol speaks volumes for how important human rights issues still are for trans people. Thanks are, of course, due to Bristol City Council for providing the venue for the event. Not many cities in the world do that. But mainly this award is a message of support from the people of Bristol to the people, almost all of the trans women of color, who live in fear of their lives simply because of who they are.

Congratulations are also due to Steffi Barnett who was runner up in the Best Community Radio Show category for her Handbags & High Heels show on Bradley Stoke Radio.

And finally, I was overjoyed to see Orange is the New Black come in as runner up in the Best TV Show category. Doctor Who won, of course, but it is great to see a show featuring a fine trans actress getting such recognition. Well done, Laverne Cox. I may have whooped a little loudly on air when that was announced.

Congratulations to all of the winners, of course, including my pals at Bristol Bisons, and to the lovely Daryn Carter.

Today on Ujima – LGBT History Month Part I

~ Cheryl

LGBT History Month logoToday’s show started out slightly chaotically because our regular engineer, Seth, wasn’t available, and Paulette had to cover running the desk. We got there in the end, but there was a bit of mild panic in the process.

My guest for the first half hour was the thankfully unflappable Daryn Carter who helped me give an introduction to the various events happening in Bristol over LGBT History Month. In the second half hour we were joined by an amazing older lesbian, Patsy Staddon. She talked with great honesty and bravery about what it was like being a lesbian in the 1970s. What Patsy has to say about marriage equality is perhaps a little controversial, but I’m perfectly happy with people having whatever family arrangements suit them.

The first half of the show is available to listen to here.

The second half of the show begins with a pre-recorded interview with Nalo Hopkinson. My apologies for some of the sound quality. That appears to have been my microphone, which is a bit odd as I’ve done lots of podcasts with it. Thankfully Nalo herself is nice and clear, and she is awesome as always. We followed the interview with Paulette talking a bit about what it means to write in Jamaican, or indeed any other Caribbean language.

Finally I’m joined by Sarah Thorp of the Room 212 Gallery to talk abut some of the great new art projects happening in the Gloucester Road area. We make vague plans for a show about May Day, which I now need to write to Liz Williams about.

You can find the second hour of the show here.

Throughout February I will be playing music inspired by LGBT History month. Today there were several songs from my teenage years, and one that is bang up to date. Did I get to play the Tom Robinson Band and Against Me! on the radio? Why yes, I did. Hopefully you like the selection. Next week will be all gay disco anthems, because I am nothing if not eclectic in my musical tastes.

Some Words from Brighton

~ Cheryl

The latest episode of Claire Parker’s Time 4 T radio show is now available as a podcast. It includes a segment featuring Brighton-based poet, Alice Denny, and a lengthy interview with a trans woman who financed her surgery by working as a dominatrix. In between these is a segment featuring James Marcus Tucker who, together with Michael Urwin, has been producing a fascinating series of videos interviewing the QUILTBAG community in Brighton. The most recent two episodes feature Fox from My Transsexual Summer, Alice Denny, and E-J, whom I met when I gave a paper in Brighton last year. There are also a couple of guest appearances by a very cute cat whom I believe is Fox’s owner. They are quite short and worth a listen if you are interested in trans issues.

On the Gender Binary

On Stealth

Last Week On ShoutOut – Trans & Awards

~ Cheryl

Bristol’s LGBT radio show, Shout Out, had a great trans story last week. Steff, one of the trans presenters on the show, brought her family in to talk about how they coped with her transition. It is my long term hope that providing access to gender medicine to young people will eventually put an end to the heartbreak that transition late in life causes to families, but in the meantime Steff and her family provide a great example of how love can overcome a really difficult situation.

You can listen to the show here. Steff’s segment is about half way through.

In addition the final round of voting is now underway for this year’s Shout Out Listeners’ Awards. I don’t know a lot about many of the categories because I don’t participate much in the LGBT social scene in Bristol. However, some of the categories are much more general, and if you have ever listened to one of the Shout Out shows I have linked to then you are certainly a listener. The ballot is here. Categories you may have an interest in include:

LGBT Role Model Of The year — I’m delighted to see Janet Mock and Paris Lees in there. I might actually have to vote for one of them ahead of Gareth Thomas.

Bigot Of The Year — Doubtless Vladimir Putin will win this hands down, but I would love to see a lot of votes for Julie Burchill. She’s from Bristol so the message would mean a bit more.

Best TV Program — You might be voting for Doctor Who, but I am voting for Orange is the New Black.

Go ye forth and click.

Today on Ujima РPortland Caf̩

~ Cheryl

Ujima is running a number of staff training days this month and one of mine overlapped with today’s show. Paulette has a big crew so having me out for most of the show is no problem. I’m a bit sad about it though, because from 12:30 to 13:30 they ran an interview with a lady called Di Parkin who has been a feminist activist since 1968. The team was buzzing about the interview in the post-show debrief, so I’m looking forward to listening to it.

I finally got into the studio at 13:30 when I did an interview with a lovely young lady called Salàma Kefentse who runs the Portland Café, just round the corner from the Ujima studios. Kevin and I ate there when he was over for BristolCon and we can recommend it.

The show is available through the usual Listen Again system. You can find the first hour here and the second hour here.

Some Afrofuturism Links

~ Cheryl

Odysella: Empress of NarOver the Holidays I finally got around to editing the Afrofuturism special I did on Ujima for podcast. It has two songs in it that needed to be removed for copyright reasons. As you may recall, it features Tade Thompson in the studio, plus interviews recorded at World Fantasy with Bill Campbell, Tobias Buckell and Rochita Loenen-Ruiz.

The podcast mentions two specific books that are available in the bookstore: Mothership, and Adventure Rocketship. I’ve also started tagging books as Afrofuturism if they seem to fit the description. You can find all of them here.

You can listen to the podcast of the show here:

The cover illustrating this post is not from a book in the store, it is something that was sent to me for review, a book called Odysella: Empress Of Nar. If you are looking at it and thinking, “yeah, self-published”, well you are right. However, bear in mind that people of color have much greater difficulty selling books to big publishers than white folks. Also, as this post makes clear, author Shirley Hardy-Leonard has a successful career as a playwright and scriptwriter behind her, so she knows what she’s doing. I’m possibly not the best person to review it, if only because my knowledge of hip-hop could be written many times over on Tim Maughan’s smallest fingernail, but hopefully some of you will take a look. For an actual review, go here.

Finally, via the @BlackSciFi Twitter feed, I discovered this IndieGoGo project to crowdfund a science fiction movie in which black folks get to save the planet. Good luck, Earth Squadron, I hope you get made.

Today on Ujima: Gareth L. Powell

~ Cheryl

I’ve been in Bristol today to help host another Women’s Outlook Show on Ujima radio. My main guest for the day was Bristol’s own Gareth L. Powell who has just launched his latest novel, Hive Monkey. Gareth and I got to spend half an hour chatting about his career, why everyone loves the sweary monkey, and some of the cool ideas Gareth uses in the book. The latter is a bit introductory for most SF readers, but I have to explain words like cyborg for the Ujima audience.

I was expecting to do a segment on the fabulous “This is not an excuse” anti-rape campaign that Bristol is running at the moment. Sadly that had to be postponed, and I ended up getting asked to host a segment on consumer rights law instead.

Those two segment make up the first hour of the show, which you can listen to here.

I spend a bit of time in the studio at the start of the second hour. We managed a brief break from tradition and did a “Lighter Look at Life” segment that actually had us laughing. After that we handed over to Paulette for some serious local politics, which she does much better than I do. That is all available here.

Good Show, Paris

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

While I was out hosting BristolCon Fringe last night, Radio 1 was airing a rare documentary. The primary subject was Laura Jane Grace, the lead singer of the punk rock band, Against Me, and one of the more famous trans women in the world. This was then used as a hook to discuss trans issues more widely. The show was hosted and probably largely scripted by trans journalist, Paris Lees, and also featured the trans comedian, Bethany Black, both of whom I have had the honor to hang out with. There are also snatches of interviews with various young people, some of whom I’m pretty sure are friends of Roz whom I have met at some point.

I note these connections, not to name drop, but to emphasize that this was a mainstream national radio show produced by and for, and featuring, people like me. It is probably the only time in my life that I have heard such a thing. Sure there have been shows on local radio in Bristol and Brighton, but this is the BBC, this is national. In a small country like the UK, that matters a lot.

The great significance here is that trans people are getting to tell their own stories on national radio. Previous coverage on radio and TV has all been a case of cis people interpreting the trans experience for a cis audience. Frequently, even when such shows were well-intentioned, the message that trans people would get from them is, “you freaks are difficult to understand and people will not accept you”. Even a show like My Transsexual Summer was deliberately packaged as entertainment for cis people, with the real narratives of the stars often being bent to fit that requirement.

In contrast, while Paris was happy to explain things along the way, she, Laura and Beth were also talking to trans people. In particular there was mention of hormone blockers for trans kids, and encouragement that the world is getting better for people like us. The most common type of comment I have seen on Twitter about the show is how much hope it will give to currently closeted teenagers.

I’m not going to give the BBC too much credit here. They probably see Paris as someone new and different and edgy that can give them a bit of street cred. That won’t stop them from airing dozens of comedy programs that humiliate trans people before the next time they allow her on air. And we’ll doubtless see some concerned feminist writing in The Guardian soon about how Radio 1 is promoting child abuse. But I also have perspective. I also know how far we have come, and how big a step into the future this has been.

Well done, Paris, love. May this be the first of many.

You lot probably already understand most of what was said, but if you are interested the show is available on iPlayer here.

Launching the Monkey

~ Cheryl

Hive Monkey - Gareth L. Powell
Yesterday a whole bunch of us converged upon Forbidden Planet in Bristol for the launch of Gareth L. Powell’s latest novel. Hive Monkey is the follow-up to the hugely successful Ack Ack Macaque. I know lots of people have been looking forward to it, because when Gareth read a couple of extracts from Hive Monkey at the BristolCon Fringe we had over 700 downloads. You can listen to that here (warning: contains the usual monkey swearing).

If you would like to know more, I will be talking to Gareth on Ujima Radio at Noon on Wednesday.

Books for Trans Girls

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Last Thursday my friends at Shout Out did a great segment with author B.J. Epstein about her new book, Are the Kids All Right? Representations of LGBTQ Characters in Children’s and Young Adult Literature (which is sadly not available as an ebook so I don’t have it yet). The show is available as a podcast here (28th Nov. 2013 show — we need direct links for individual shows, Mary — Update: here is it, thanks!).

That’s recommended, but what I want to talk about here comes from a conversation I had with B.J. on Twitter yesterday about the representation of trans kids in literature. Here’s the important bit.

Like B.J. says, trans boys are getting much better coverage in YA novels than trans girls. It is useful to have books like Luna available, but it gives a really unflattering impression of what a young trans girl might be like (my brief review here). So why are there so few good books about trans girls, as compared to books about trans boys (I recommend f2m: the boy within; B.J. recommends I Am J), or YA books with trans women in them (such as Eon)?

Well, I’m reading the new Julia Serano book, Excluded, right now, so I know the answer. It is all about different social attitudes towards gender transition.

Any YA book containing trans characters is going to need support to get it to market. You won’t get that from conservative people who regard all trans people with horror. So you need to get left wing people on your side. If you write a book about a trans boy, what you’ll be seen as doing (by people who don’t understand trans issues) is writing about a girl who does boy things and ignores girl things. So the kid might have an interest in cars, or science, or being a rock guitarist, but will have no interest in clothes and make-up. This will be seen as feminist, because it is showing a girl doing things that are traditionally “boy things”. Your left wing friends will approve.

Suppose, however, you are writing a book about a trans girl. What might her interests be? Well if she is anything like me when I was a teenager she’ll be interested in pretty clothes, make-up, boys and babies. She may well be interested in traditional “boy stuff” too, but what she will really want are the things she can’t have because her family are raising her as a boy.

Of course there are plenty of books for young women that deal with those things, but they tend to get published by conservatives types who won’t want to touch trans issues. If you take a book like that to left wing types you’ll probably get told that you are “reinforcing the binary”; that you are damaging young women by encouraging them to focus on “trivial” things like clothes and appearance.

Now of course as trans women grow up they will come to their own accommodation with femininity. Some of them will end up presenting very boyish, because that turns out to suit them. Others will still want to present feminine, but will have a better understanding of the social implications of that choice. However, if you are writing a book for teenagers, about a teenager who is struggling to claim her femininity in the face of social opposition, you need to allow her to be traditionally girly. That will incur the wrath of many cis feminists, which will in turn make it hard to get the book to readers.

Doubtless we’ll get there in the end, but there is a long, hard struggle to be fought first against feminism’s traditional distaste for things feminine. We need more Julia Seranos.

Bonus #TDOR2013 Content

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

BCFM ran a one-hour trans-themed special this evening. There are little bits of interview with me spread about the broadcast, but don’t let that put you off. There’s plenty other content from Nathan, co-presenter Steffi, studio guest Tara and so on. Part of me wants to quibble that it is trans awareness broadcast rather than a TDOR thing, and I tend to get very angry with people who say that TDOR is too gloomy and we should focus on positives instead. Focusing on positives doesn’t stop trans people getting killed, it just allows those who are not getting killed to feel less guilty about it, which in turn stops them doing something about it.

Then again, education is badly needed, and this show has gone out to a mainstream audience. I’m sure that it will have done some good.

You can listen to the show here.

My #TDOR2013 Events Today

~ Cheryl

As it turned out, some of what Paulette had planned for today’s Women’s Outlook show didn’t come off, so we ended up with a whole hour discussing the Trans Day of Remembrance. It was a little disjointed, but the young folks we had in the studio asked some great questions, and I’ve had some positive feedback. You can listen to the show here.

The event at UWE was really good. Huge thanks to Sebastian for putting it on and getting a good audience. Sadly Nathan and I had to rush off and get a cab part way through because Bristol traffic is awful and we needed to be sure we’d be at City Hall by 6:00pm.

The memorial ceremony itself went very well. Huge thanks again to Annabelle and the City Council for providing the space. It was also great to have people attending from the Bristol Hate Crimes Service, and Avon & Somerset Police. We are very fortunate to have such good civic support.

Of course there are people who need support far more than we do. In particular it was heartbreaking to again have to read out the names of so many people from Latin America, so many of them very young. It is trans women of color who bear by far the greatest burden of violence. Most of them may be far away, but the whole point of today is that we should never, ever forget them.

The other 364 days of the year we can be looking for ways to help them stay safe.

Ujima Part II: Hate Crime and White Ribbon

~ Cheryl

For the first 15 minutes of the second hour I handed over the Judeline and the rest of the crew for the Lighter Look at Life segment. I gather that they discussed movies, including Gravity. I have no idea whether Paulette mentioned my drooling over Thor prior to the show. After that I was back in the studio for a 15 minute chat with Sam from the White Ribbon Campaign, which is basically men doing something to help stop violence against women. Well done Bristol on getting special recognition from the Campaign.

The final half hour was spent talking to Alex, Sarah and Daryn from the Bristol Hate Crimes Service, a wonderfully intersectional multi-pronged approach to tacking the problem. The cases they have to deal with are often heart-rending, but it is an absolutely amazing service and I was proud to be able to talk to them on the show.

You can listen to the second hour of the show here.

AfroFuturism on Ujima

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

The whole of the first hour on today’s Ujima show was taken up with a discussion of AfroFuturism. It included three interviews that I recorded at WFC. They were with with Bill Campbell, who published and co-edited the Mothership anthology, plus two contributors: Tobias Buckell & Rochita Loenen-Ruiz. In the studio with me was another contributor, Tade Thompson, who was amazingly good and is welcome back on my radio shows any time. We also had music from George Clinton and Janelle Monáe, as one should. I haven’t listened back to it yet, but assuming all has gone well the whole show is available to be streamed here.

Huge thanks are due to all of my interviewees, both pre-recorded and live, and to Seth my engineer.

For those of you who would like to know more about AfroFuturism, I heartily recommend Ytasha Womack’s book. Sadly I can’t stock that one, but I do have Mothership, and I also have Adventure Rocketship #1, which contains articles by Minister Faust about George Clinton, and by N.K. Jemisin about Janelle Monáe.

Today On Ujima – Jonathan L. Howard

~ Cheryl

My guest on the Talking Books segment of today’s Women’s Outlook show was local author (and contributor to Wizard’s Tower anthologies), Jonathan L. Howard. We talked about his career as a video game designer, about his Johanes Cabal books, and about his new YA series for Strange Chemistry. There was also brief mention of the Bristol Literary Festival, World Fantasy and what Jonathan will be reading at his BristolCon Fringe appearance later this month.

Probably the most interesting part of the interview is where Jonathan talks about his decision to write YA. Mostly people talk about it being a big market, or about it being the only way that women can get to write SF. Jonathan did it because he wanted his daughter to have science fiction to read. Which is why the Katya books are more like Heinlein juveniles with a female lead than the sort of romance and coming of age tales more commonly associated with YA.

I’ve now read Katya’s World, and as I probably won’t get around to reviewing it I should note that it is very fast-paced and easy to read. It also contains a few little things that an adult reader is more likely to spot than a teenager. I shall now be getting a copy of Katya’s War.

Jonathan’s interview takes up the first half hour of the show. That and the second half hour, in which I talk to two of the organizers of the North Bristol Arts Trail, are available to listen here.

The second hour of the show is mainly about Steiner Schools and is not of much interest unless you are into educational theory or have a young child needing a private education. Of course, with Michael Gove in charge of our schools, all UK kids are in need of a private education, so I’m rather glad I’m not in the position of needing a school right now. The second half of the show is available here.

Home At Last

~ Cheryl

Kevin is a couple of hours short of touchdown in San Francisco and I’m back in The Cottage. Eventually I’ll get caught up on stuff. Right now, however, I’m preparing for tomorrow’s show on Ujima where I will be interviewing Jonathan L. Howard about his career in video game design, his Johanes Cabal books, his new series from Strange Chemistry and doubtless a few other things as well. We may even chat about World Fantasy.

One thing I did get done while I was away (because I had a deadline) was a brief report on the World Fantasy Awards for the For Books’ Sake website. You can find that here.

Meanwhile, it is back to reading Katya’s World, which I’m enjoying a lot, and then sleep, of which I seem to need rather a lot.

Busy Day in Bristol and Bath

~ Cheryl

There was no bloggery yesterday because Kevin and I were out for the day. First up we went to Bristol to do some sight seeing and various errands. Kevin got introduced to the crew at Ujima and made a brief appearance on the radio. We sampled the food at a local cafe that I’m planning to feature on the show. And we went to see the Roman History exhibit at the City Museum which will also get a mention on the show when I have Ben Kane on (which is scheduled for December 11th).

In the evening we moved on to Bath where The Emporium Strikes Back, the Mr B’s SF book group, was discussing Gareth Powell’s Ack-Ack Macaque. Gareth had kindly offered to come in and answer questions, and a fun evening was had by all (though the Salamander does appear to be a bit too noisy for such meetings). Next month the book under examination will be Jeff Noon’s Vurt, but sadly I can’t be there as I’ll be on my way to Toronto.

Today on Ujima: Literary Festivals & Kadija Sesay

~ Cheryl

Well, that was a busy day. I knew I was going to be on air for at least an hour, but when I arrived at the Ujima studios Paulette informed me that her planned guest had cancelled, but we had two new people, and could I talk to them please. Well, this is live radio, folks, you just roll with the punches. And I think it went very well.

I started off the show with a shout out to my friend Bea Hitchman whose lovely book, Petit Mort, has been picked up for serialization on Radio 4. It will be broadcast in 10 episodes, the first of which will air on Monday 28th October. What’s more they have got Honor Blackman to play the role of the older incarnation of Bea’s heroine. Honor Blackman. Bea is having a fangasm about this, and I can’t say I blame her. I would too.

My first guest on the show was Matthew Austin from an organization called In The City Series, a Lottery-funded project which is doing some very interesting things in Bristol. In particular in November they will be running a Human Library. What’s that? Well, they get a whole load of people to be books, put them in a venue, and then other people can come along, check a person out for 15 minutes, and talk to them. The idea is to generate awareness of the vast array of different cultures and lifestyles in the city by allowing people to interact with other sorts of folk that they may not have encountered before. I may volunteer, but I’m way too busy and I’m going to offer it around the Bristol trans community first.

Talking of varied backgrounds, my second guest was Baljinder Bhopal who lives in Bristol, is fairly obviously of Indian ancestry, but was born in Glasgow and has a wonderful Scottish accent. This sort of thing gives me hope for multiculturalism. She’s a great poet (here’s the book she read from), and she’s also an immigration lawyer who helps local people through the Avon & Bristol Law Centre.

Later on in the show we had a bit of a rant about the Racist Van, and the new outrage of Racist Texts. The UK Border Agency is very clearly not fit for purpose. If we had even a vaguely competent government then heads would roll. As it is, I suspect our leaders are quite happy with what the UKBA is doing.

With me throughout the show was my main guest for the day, Kadija Sesay. She had traveled up from London for the day, so we shamefully made full use of her. If you are Googling her you should also look up Kadija George, which is her legal name. Sesay is her mother’s maiden name, which she has adopted for use as a writer. Kadija describes herself as a Literary Activist, and as soon as I started researching her online I knew I had found a kindred spirit. She is the founder of Sable, a literary magazine for writers of color, and a co-director of Inscribe, an imprint of Peepal Tree Press. One of the projects she’s currently involved in is organizing a literary festival in The Gambia. I think she works harder than I do.

There’s more about Kadija in the second half of the show, but in the meantime you can listen to the first hour here.

For London folks (this means YOU, Stephanie), on October 24th Kadija will be taking part is a discussion at the C.L.R. James Library in Dalston Square, London, on the state of Black British Publishing. Like most other artistic endeavors these days, things are not good for people trying to publish writers of color. Kadija and I spent a bit of time talking about ways of financing diversity in publishing, and I introduced her to the Clarkesworld model of fiction magazines.

The second hour begins with the Lighter Look at Life segment, which I ended up having to present. We chatted a bit about entertainment, about how hard comedy is, about how British comedy is so often based on cruelty towards people who are seen as “other” in some way, and about how comedians from within immigrant communities can tell jokes about those communities without it becoming racist. Along the way I said a bad word, we all praised Eddie Izzard, and I recommended Nikesh Shukla who is a very funny writer and whose first book takes a wry look at Indian communities in West London.

After that I had 15 minutes off while Paulette did a stint on the microphone. I’m afraid I missed the feature she did entirely because I was doing preparation for the final half hour in which we had Mike Manson from the Bristol Festival of Literature in to preview some of the sessions. Being Ujima, we focused initially on those events featuring writers of color, but we also found time to bring in many other items including the use of the wonderful Redcliffe Caves and, of course, the science fiction event, The Kraken Rises. So I got to plug that, and BristolCon. I name checked so many people I can’t remember them all.

There is also an SF-themed event on Saturday evening in which Nikesh talks to Toby Litt about post-apocalyptic literature. I’ve got other stuff on during the day (see last week’s show for details) but I’m booked in to see Nikesh and Toby and am looking forward to it. If you are in town for The Kraken Rises then you should come along.

Mention of science fiction reminds me that Kadija is working on a speculative fiction issue of Sable, which she will co-edit with Nnedi Okorafor. I am very much looking forward to seeing that. We also talked a lot about Afrofururism, and in November I’ll be doing a whole hour on that. That is going to be fun. They’ve promised me I can play music.

Oh, and I was delighted to discover that one of Sable‘s most popular issues to date was the LGBTQ one (shout out here to Adam Lowe), Kadija says they are going to do another one. So if you are a writer of color, and identify somewhere in the QUILTBAG, you should check them out.

I think that’s most of what we covered, but I spent so much time chatting enthusiastically to Kadija, some of it off-air, that I am bound to have forgotten something. You can listen to the second hour of the show here.

Whoops, yeah, I forgot Kadija’s book. This one. And the discussion of the sorry state of the Nubian nation. And Pan-Africanism. It was a busy two hours.

Lived To Tell The Tale

~ Cheryl

I did my interview on Radio Bristol today. It was a lot of fun. We talked entirely about science fiction and fantasy. I got to do plugs for BristolCon and the London Worldcon, and name check a whole bunch of people. I also got to rant a little about the lack of women writers on Waterstones’ shelves.

The programme is available for replay here for the next seven days. Sadly my bit is 2 hours & 15 mins into a 3 hour show, and the BBC Listen Again feature does not appear to allow you to fast forward through a show. I will forgive you if you don’t want to listen all the way through just to hear me.

[Update: I’m being told that it is possible to fast forward through the broadcast if you are patient. Probably you have to wait for the whole thing to download. Or maybe it is browser-dependent. Anyway, if you can, start from around 2 hours 5 minutes then skip the Rubettes.]

On the other hand, I have listened to the whole thing, and Richard Lewis runs a tight show. Three hours in the studio is hard going, though it is a bit easier if you don’t have guests in all the time. I note that the show opens with Richard enthusing about the wonders of the theremin. He also has a very eclectic choice of music. Of the four songs he played just before I came on, two were favorites of mine. One was Mott the Hoople’s “Roll away the Stone” (though to be honest just about anything from Mott would have made me happy). The other was Albert Hammond’s “Free Electric Band”, which I’m guessing a lot of you won’t know. Here, through the magic of YouTube, is a little philosophy.

Of course the less said about Gerry Monroe’s “Sally” and The Rubettes’ “Sugar Baby Love” the better. But I guess the BBC has to make room for all aspects of British culture.

Anyway, my thanks to Richard, to his assistants Marcus and Sean, and to Cheryl the Producer. I hope I did OK, and that you’ll have me back again some day.