friendship with and without electricity
True hearts,
I have three things to share with you: an essay, a compliment, and a book review.
I'm going to start with the happiest piece, which I shorthanded above as "a compliment". A while ago, Solaris authors put together a list of favorite reads of 2024, and one of Rebecca Fraimow's favorites was North Continent Ribbon! I love Fraimow's writing as well, and it's pleasing to know the admiration is mutual. I've talked about Lady Eve's Last Con here before, so let me link the very first story of hers I encountered, via our shared favorite, the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast.
The book review is about Waging a Good War: How the Civil Rights Movement Won its Battles. This is a practical overview of the civil rights movement by a military historian. I wrote the review to explain why that made sense to me as a project, and some of the lessons I took from it. At the beginning of the review, I talk about some of the reading that I did when I was first building the world of Nakharat. I honestly didn't expect, when I was first trying to imagine space opera revolutionaries, that all this political theory would become deeply relevant to my personal life, but imagination and reality intertwine in complicated ways.
The essay is hosted here at my newsletter, though because I knew I had other links to share with you, I didn't send an email alert. It is simultaneously the most political of my links for you today, the most professional, and the most personal. It's the story of my friendship with Adriana Salerno, who lost her job at the National Science Foundation last week, and why I think that matters.
Here's a far less dramatic, though dramatically lit, interaction. Cuddling here has been encouraged by the lure of the electric blanket.
Yours, as ever,
Ursula.