Where’s Cheryl?

New Tour Dates, Including London

~ Cheryl

I have a few new speaking engagements for LGBT History Month to announce. And yes, I am thinking of this as like being on tour.

First up, if you are in or near London, please come and see me at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. I will be talking about Amazons, and the fabulous Caz Paige will be talking about her life as a trans pilot in the RAF. It is a little ironic that I’m covering cavalry and she’s covering aircraft when the museum really demands a talk about ships, but maybe the Amazons had a navy. If they lived on Paradise Island they would need one, right? Anyway, this will be on the evening of Friday, February 9th. I look forward to seeing some of you there.

On the 15th I am going to be at Manchester University Students’ Union. I don’t know if that is open to the public yet. I will let you know if it is.

And on the 27th I will be at Stoke Gifford just north of Bristol for an event that Berkeley is organizing in collaboration with the Alphabets Youth Group. On the bill with me will be the very wonderful Edson Burton, and Anna Bianchi who has written a lovely book on raising trans kids.

I’ll be doing the short version of my “If Your Past Isn’t Queer it is Not Realistic” talk. The long version will happen at Bath Spa Uni on the 28th and will have a whole lot of extra stuff for the creative writing students. We are still waiting for a room allocation for that one so there’s no booking info just yet.

Forthcoming Appearances

~ Cheryl

The LGBT History Month tour schedule is starting to firm up. Two more talks were announced yesterday. They are:

“Trans People in Sumer and Assyria” at Cambridge University on February 2nd

and, “If Your Past Isn’t Queer It’s Not Realistic” at Bath Spa University on February 28th.

You can’t book for the Bath Spa event yet because they don’t have a room allocated, but I’ll let you know as soon as you can.

Stay tuned for more talk announcements.

Innovative Student Media Projects

~ Cheryl

My colleague, Berkeley, and I spent today down at Bournemouth University, but this time we were not the ones giving the presentations. The University’s media studies course had come up with a great idea for their final year projects. Rather than make up some sort of media campaign as an exercise, the students had to go out, find a charity, and work with them to develop materials to suit that charity’s particular needs.

The projects we saw were very varied. Some of them were straight-up feel-good social media campaigns for people like Woofability. Others were more geared at helping charities recruit volunteers. In some cases the students could get great results simply from teaching a small charity to use WordPress and Hootsuite. In others there was a need for more sophisticated technical skills. I loved the fact that the two students working with Hengistbury Head had hired a drone so they could do state-of-the-art nature documentary work.

The two lads who had been working with Berkeley for Diversity Trust had done a great job, but again their requirements were very different. No way were we going to encourage them to do a Twitter campaign about trans health. They would very quickly have got on the radar of the TERF hate squad and the University’s Vice Chancellor would have received several hundred identikit protest emails demanding that the course be scrapped and the lecturers responsible sacked. What they did for us was make material we can use on our YouTube channel, and as a useful by-product give their classmates, lecturers and friends an amazing grounding in trans issues. It isn’t hard to understand why food banks are a good thing, but those two lads had an incredible learning curve to climb and did a great job. Thanks guys!

Finally I’d like to give a plug for one of the other featured charities. Ododow is, as an elevator pitch, Google Maps for charities. As their founder explained, it is easier to find a coffee shop or pharmacy on the Internet than a local service that can help if you’ve just been diagnosed with a rare disease, or your kid has come out as gay. So if there is anyone out there who runs a charity and wants to get on the map, just hop over to their website and sign up. Brilliant idea, and well done the two young student women of color who are working to help promote the site.

February Schedule Firms Up

~ Cheryl

The various events at which I am doing LGBT History talks in February are starting to go public with their schedules. A while back I mentioned the Women in Classics event at the University of Reading. I can now add the Historical Fictions Network conference which is February 24/25 at Stoke-on-Trent. I will be giving a talk titled, “If Your Past isn’t Queer it is not Realistic”. The full program is available here, and booking details here.

Bristol TDOR & Trans Pride

~ Cheryl


Bristol is having its Trans Day of Remembrance event tonight. That’s because it allows us to combine it with Trans Pride South West which is happening throughout the weekend.

I will be hosting the ceremony of remembrance again. It will be in the Ansom Rooms at the University of Bristol Students’ Union from 18:00 tonight. The main public part of Trans Pride South West is at The Station in Silver Street from 12:00 to 16:00 tomorrow. I will be on the OutStories Bristol stall. Further details here.

At least 325 trans people were murdered in hate crimes in the past 12 months, up from 295 last year. Almost all of them were women of color. More than half of the murders were in Brazil. Further details are available here.

[Thanks to Spencer for the header image.]

Unexpected TV

~ Cheryl


After the radio show yesterday I was having lunch in a cafe with a friend (plotting feminist revolution, as one does) when I got a message from the lovely people at ShoutOut Radio. Apparently the BBC were looking for someone to come onto Points West, the regional news program for the South West, and talk about trans issues.

So I got in touch with them to see what they wanted. As it turned out, they were running a feature on pioneering Bristol trans woman, Rosalind Mitchell. They wanted someone to comment on how things have changed for trans folk since she transitioned back in the 1990s.

That was an easy one for me except for the timing. I was due in Bath for a Women’s Equality Party meeting at 6:00pm. The show was due to air at 10:30pm, and I’d need to get a train home. Thankfully we were able to pre-record an interview and get me back to Temple Meads for the 10:22pm train. My thanks to everyone at WEP Bath and the BBC who helped make this happen.

Of course I wasn’t otherwise prepared. I’d managed to forget to pack a lipstick and didn’t find out about the mistake until I was at the WEP meeting and it was too late to go and buy one. My hair needed washing and I was wearing very much the wrong thing for hot studio lights. But I got it done.

If you have access to iPlayer you can watch the broadcast here up until 10:45pm today. Sabet Choudhury was great to work with, and I was pretty pleased with my responses. Sadly I still need a lot of practice on controlling my facial expressions while on TV. I frown way too much, mainly because I’m being serious. But every opportunity to practice is good.

Thank You, LaDIYfest

~ Cheryl

Despite the determined efforts of GWR to prevent me from getting to Bristol I had a great time at LaDIYfest on Saturday. I’m sorry to have missed the intersectionality workshop, and equally sorry that I was unable to risk hanging around for the bands, but it was a day well worth attending. Here’s to next year.

For those of you who were at my talk, I have checked the recording and it looks like it only missed about 5 minutes. That won’t be hard to recreate. The main problem is finding the time.

LaDIYfest is Coming

~ Cheryl

Bristol people, and those near enough to pop in for the day: there will be a festival of feminist goodness going on at the Southbank Club in Bedminster on Saturday. LaDIYfest is an annual celebration of sisters doing it for themselves. From 1:00pm to 6:00pm there will be various talks and workshops, and from 6:00pm until midnight there will be live music from a variety of bands.

Of course I am telling you this in part because I am part of the entertainment. Here’s the blurb:

A Short History of Gender – Gender is a social construct, but that means that different societies construct it in different ways. Cheryl Morgan takes a tour through several thousand years of history, looking at the different ways in which people were understood to be female, male, or something else.

It will be cool. There will be Sumerians and Greeks and Romans and Amazons and Native Americans and the Man Who Invented Heterosexuality. I’m on from 3:00pm to 4:00pm, but do drop in for longer because there’s lots of other great stuff going on.

Italy Part 5 – In Search of Galli

~ Cheryl

As I reported last night, I spent most of Saturday looking around Roman ruins and museums. Part of this was just me geeking out over the history. I couldn’t quite get to stand on the Rostra, the platform in the Forum where Roman orators made their speeches. It is a bit old and rickety now, and anyway if they let any old visitor stand on it there would soon be nothing left. But I did get very close to it. I also got to see how gargantuan the imperial palaces are, even after 2000 years of wear, being sacked, and being robbed for their stone. And I got to see magnificently over-the-top things like the Hall of Emperors and the Hall of Philosophers in the Capitoline Museum. Rome has so much ancient statuary that they don’t know what to do with it. Some of the rooms in the Capitoline have the air of an antique shop.

What I was mainly looking for, however, was material connected to trans Romans. That’s a much more challenging quest. I didn’t get to see the Temple of Cybele on the Palatine Hill because the Christians demolished it in 394 CE. All we have left are a few artist’s impressions from the time. But I did get fairly close to where it would have stood, and I must say it had a splendid view. It would have been nice if there had been more signage to tell you where various old buildings stood, but the site is huge and I can understand why they concentrate on places that are still (partially) standing.

There is a Temple of Cybele in much better repair out at Ostia, the port of Rome. However, it takes the best part of a day to get out there and see stuff, so I didn’t have time to make that trip.

One thing I did succeed in doing is finding the bust of Elagabalus in the Capitoline Museum (he’s in the Hall of Emperors along with all of the others). The Capitoline is also supposed to have two images of galli (trans women priestesses), but I couldn’t find either of them. They may have been moved out to other museums, or have been put in storage. I don’t have time to find out.

A word of warning if you are visiting Rome. Many of the attractions require you to buy a ticket in advance and some, such as the Villa Medici, will only let you in as part of a timed guided tour. That’s what happens when you have a city that is overrun by tourists. I will know better if I visit again. Also everything is closed on Monday.

Obviously I am a little bit disappointed not to have seen everything I wanted to see, but quite frankly the city is so overwhelming that I don’t care. I have way more than those reasons for wanting to come back.

Italy Part 4 – Veni, Vidi

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

It has been a very long day involving a lot of walking. The archaeological area devoted to ancient Rome, which includes the Forum, the Palatine Hill the Colosseum and the Circus Maximus, is vast. You need all day to see it properly. And that’s without starting on any of the museums. Rome, as the saying goes, cannot be seen in a day. I have done my best. There are pictures on Twitter, and there will be a whole lot more later. Right now, however, I am going to find the foot spray that I thoughtfully brought with me.

https://twitter.com/CherylMorgan/status/924206064626696192

Italy Part 2 – The Venue

~ Cheryl

I have been to a fair few conferences in nice venues around the world, but I am pretty sure this is the most spectacular.

On Wednesday I tweeted that the landscape in Italy is very like parts of California, but with more sheep and castles. Something else I should have noted is that Californians mostly build on the flat because that’s easier for cars, but Italians, more particularly old-time Italians, build on the top of hills because that’s easy to defend.

Sometime in the 10th century, maybe earlier, a warlord build a castle on top of a hill in Bertinoro, a small town between Bolonga and San Marino. It continued to have a military role up until the 15th century, and at one point in 1302 Dante Alighieri found refuge there. From 1581 it became the palace of the local bishop, and it remained as such until 1969. In 1994 it was purchased by the University of Bologna and converted to a conference center.

Quite aside from being in a fabulous medieval building, the views are spectacular. On a clear day, which yesterday was, you can see the Adriatic and the Croatian coastline in the distance. My phone camera doesn’t have a good enough zoom to show the coast clearly, but look!

https://twitter.com/CherylMorgan/status/923155739794866176

And here’s the room where I gave my paper today:

https://twitter.com/CherylMorgan/status/923160970918354944

The residential area is in a former seminary just down the hill from the Palace. I confess that I am well out of breath by the time I have walked up the hill in the morning, but I am sure that the exercise is good for me.

Italy Part 1 – Train Adventures

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Here I am in Italy. I am attending a conference called “Literature, Translation, and Mediation by and for children: Gender, Diversity, and Stereotype”. (That’s their title, don’t complain to me about the commas.) It is being put on by the University of Bologna at their country convention center in Bertinoro. More about the venue tomorrow, but first I need to talk about trains.

I suspect that a lot of Americans won’t believe this, but getting around Europe by train is really easy. I flew into Rome last night and stayed at an airport hotel. This morning I caught the Leonardo Express into Roma Termini. It is a half hour journey and costs €14.

Roma Termini is the main station in Rome where all of the inter-city trains stop. I caught a Frecciarossa service that runs from Napoli to Milano, calling at Roma and Bologna only. We even breezed through Firenze without stopping. It took just over 2 hours from Rome to Bologna, and cost under €30 for business class, including free cookies, water and espresso on board.

It should have taken just under 2 hours, but we were a bit late leaving Rome and there was some slow running through Firenze so I missed the local connection from Bologna to Forli. I had booked my tickets online in advance, and though I was able to read the timetables and find an alternative train I wasn’t sure if my ticket was valid. There are fewer people who speak English at Bologna station than Rome, but I got on the train and the conductor elected not to charge me any more. The cab driver at Forli spoke English.

So here I am, having a great time already, and having consumed a fair amount of fine local wine. I have discovered that dunking almond biscotti into sweet wine is a thing. I approve.

Bristol Festival of Literature, 2017

~ Cheryl


We are only a few days away now. Those of you in or near Bristol can find a full list of events here.

I won’t be at BristolCon this year as I’ll be in Italy at an academic conference, but I do have an event on Friday: “Stories of Strong Women – Unconventional Heroines”. I will be sharing the stage with Becky Walsh, Lucienne Boyce, Virginia Bergin and Jean Burnett. I expect to be talking quite a bit about Amazons, both fictional and historical.

There’s also a possibility that some of us will be on Radio Bristol on Monday. I’ll give you more info about that nearer the date. You never know with live radio.

Well Done B&NES

~ Cheryl


Yesterday I represented The Diversity Trust at a small celebration at Bath Guildhall to celebrate the fact that Bath & North East Somerset Council is once again #1 on the Stonewall Education Index. Huge thanks to Chair of the Council, Cherry Beath, for organising this, and special thanks to Kate Murphy for piloting the whole effort.

Given the level of hysteria being whipped up against trans people, and trans kids in particular, at the moment by the mainstream media, it is really encouraging to see a local council put so much effort into safeguarding trans kids (as well as LGB kids). Here are a couple of examples as to why this is important.

Firstly here’s a study showing that pressure to conform to gender stereotypes is causing mental health problems in young people the world over. That, of course, doesn’t just apply to trans kids, but the fanatical insistence on biological determinism by anti-trans campaigners doesn’t help.

And secondly here’s an academic paper showing that treating trans kids with love and respect, rather than forcing them into cruel “conversion therapy”, significantly improves their mental health. You wouldn’t think that needed saying, but the number of news articles and social media posts we have had recently accusing loving parents of trans kids of “child abuse” for failing to try to “cure” them is just horrific.

So well done, B&NES, and thank you! You are making a significant difference to the lives of local trans kids.

Podcast Workshop in Bristol

~ Cheryl

On Thursday October 12th my Ujima colleague, Miranda Rae, and I will be running a Podcasting for Beginners workshop at the BBC offices. Here’s Miranda’s blurb:

Want to launch your own Podcast but not sure where to start? Or perhaps you have already started one but would like to improve it or develop it further? If either applies, this is the workshop for you! Podcaster, producers and broadcasters Miranda Rae (Radio 4, Radio 5, Sony Award Winner, Galaxy Radio, Ujima Radio) and Cheryl Morgan (Publisher, Critic, Hugo Award Winner) will guide you through a three hour crash course that will leave you with all the confidence and know how you need to get going with your very own podcast!

YOU WILL LEARN:
What makes a great podcasting story
How to conduct a good interview
How to get your Podcast out there
Branding your Podcast
Basic technical skills (Recording/Editing)
Recording a Skype Call
What equipment and software need to produce a Podcast

That’s 6:30pm to 9:30pm on Thursday, 12th October. A bargain at £30 per head. There’s a Facebook event with booking details here.

Missing in Blogdom

~ Cheryl

Yeah, I know it has been very quiet here of late. When I got back from Worldcon I basically had to do a whole month’s worth of day job in two weeks. I really shouldn’t have taken a couple of days off to go to Hove for the cricket, because things have been a bit crazy since then. Of course it was glorious, so I don’t regret it, but it made the past week even more frantic than it needed to be. I took yesterday off, but today it is back at work again and the coming week looks like being equally busy.

Anyway, I’ll have a little bloggery today, and tomorrow I must do the post for last week’s Ujima show. Other stuff may or may not happen. I will at least be on social media a bit.

Still in Finland

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

As I had some suspicion of just how exhausting Worldcon would be I planned to spend a couple of days after the convention hanging out with my dear friend, Irma Hirsjärvi. This involved taking a trip up to Central Finland where the internet connectivity is not as world-beating as it is in Helsinki, so I am offline much of the time.

I am, however, getting to write. There will be a con report in due course. Nor have I forgotten about the Emerald City Best Dressed at the Hugos Award. I will do that post once I have been able to catch up with Paula again and get the rest of her photos.

In the meantime I continue to be absolutely mortified about the number of times during the convention that I mistook someone for someone else. Whether this was just tiredness or the signs of impending senility, I am not sure, but I’d like to apologize profusely once again for my rudeness.

I’m signing off now as apparently I have to go for a cruise on a lake this evening. It is a tough life, and I will probably get eaten to death by mosquitoes, but I am willing to make that sacrifice for you.

Tomorrow I will be spending a few hours in Tampere, the proposed site of the 2032 Worldcon. The convention center we plan to use has not been built yet, but work on the city’s brand new tram network is underway, and of course the new Moomin museum opened earlier this year. Guess where I will be going. Hopefully there will be photos on Twtter.

We Are Officially Received

~ Cheryl


Worldcon isn’t due to start until tomorrow, but this evening a bunch of us were invited to attend a civic reception at City Hall here in Helsinki. Obviously the city couldn’t fit all 6,000+ attending members in, so the convention ran a lottery weighted by contributions to programming. Kevin and I were both lucky enough to get in. There were also fans from Finland, Sweden, Ireland, France, Croatia, Italy, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia, China and doubtless many other countries as well. It all looked very official (and incidentally gave some of us a great opportunity to check in with senior convention staff in a relaxed and informal fashion).

Of course it also made the forthcoming convention seem so much more welcome in the city. Comparisons were made with Winnipeg in 1994 as the last time a city had pushed the boat out for us in this sort of way.

The building now used as City Hall was originally built as an hotel in 1833. The style is Russian Imperial, Finland having been annexed by Alexander I in 1809.

After the reception a lot of people disappeared off to a karaoke bar. I got registered and went back to my hotel because I was very tired day looking around the city. My Fitbit says I did almost 25,000 steps today so I think I have earned a rest. What worries me is that the con hasn’t started yet. Ooops.

Em & Cheryl Do TV

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Today, and Thursday and Friday, I am at the Creative Histories conference in Bristol. I’m there primarily to talk about steampunk, though I do hope to come back with some photos of animatronic dinosaurs that they have on display. Selfie with my head in a T-Rex’s mouth? I’ll see what I can do.

However, I will be taking a short break on Thursday evening because the amazingly talented Emma Newman and myself will be on Made in Bristol TV that evening. We’ll be on The Crunch some time between 7:00pm and 9:00pm. We will be talking about the Clarke Award, After Atlas, the Hugos, Tea & Jeopardy, and doubtless Doctor Who as well.

Don’t worry if you miss it, or are outside of the catchment area. The Made in Bristol folks are normally very good about letting guests have an MP4 of their segment, and I’ll stick it online once I have it.

My Worldcon Schedule

~ Cheryl

As I noted yesterday, the Worldcon draft program is now available. I have four panels as follows:

Thursday 17:00 Publishing Translation
With Liz Gorinsky, Gili Bar-Hillel & Didi Chanoch. I’m moderating.

Friday 11:00 Juried versis Voted Awards
With John-Henri Holmberg, Neil Williamson & Haijun Yao

Saturday 11:00 Gender and “Realistic” History
With Thomas Ã…rnfelt, Gillan Polack, Jo Walton & Scott Lynch. I’m moderating.

Sunday 16:00 The Power of the Reviewer: Promoting and Hiding Diverse Voices
With Greg Hullender, Emma Humphries, Elizabeth Hand & Erin Roberts

Hopefully I will see some of you at one or more of those panels.

Now I need to look through the schedule in detail to see what else I want to attend.