poetry, prizes, and Palestine
Fairest of readers,
I have good news to share about award nominations (or fractions thereof) and sad things to say about war--together, because they are tangled up together.
First, my poem Persephone Takes Up the Garnets has been nominated for the Science Fiction Poetry Association's Dwarf Stars Award for very short poems. There will be a Dwarf Stars anthology at some point--I'll let you know when it comes out! One of last year's winners (also published in The Deadlands) was Believe the Graves, by the queer Palestinian and American poet Rasha Abdulhadi.
I'm also a tiny fraction of a finalist for one of the Lambda Literary Awards. Specifically, my math-and-Wisconsin-protest poem "Circle Packing" is in the anthology on gender and science Rosalind's Siblings, which is one of five nominees for the Lammy anthology award. The speaker of that poem is holding a sign outside the Wisconsin capitol building on a cold day:
Her house drew parcels
toward it, once. She thought she'd gather knowledge
in the same way, while someone else was expert
in the art of patterning people. Turns out it's just her...
When I was asked if I would sign a letter calling for greater efforts to oppose genocide in Palestine in the specific context of the Lambda Awards, I did. (Turns out it's me, today, I guess.) Tangibly (inasmuch as electronic funds are tangible), I've donated to the Municipality of Gaza's rebuilding fund and to one of the many GoFundMe campaigns from Palestinians trying to bring friends and family to safety.
The Lambda Literary Awards ceremony is this evening. I won't be attending, but I did dress up in my moth dress for the Nebulas last weekend:
I chatted about colleges and pandemic strangeness over delicious Vietnamese food with Naomi Kritzer, whose Minnesota organizing story won the Nebula award for best novelette, traded editions of Cherryh's Heavy Time with Yoon Ha Lee, and met poets and podcasters.
Kosmas the cat is glad to have me home again:
Yours very sincerely,
Ursula.