Kind readers,

I'm writing a story for What Elegant Stars! This is an anthology of space opera stories inspired by fashion and fantasy of manners. The Kickstarter is in progress (the stretch goals include extra paper dolls!)

It's weird to think of myself as a writer for a fashion book--even though I've published an entire collection thinking through the material-culture details of how people on a particular planet hide, or reveal, their hair. I actively and aggressively Did Not Care About Fashion as a teen, in a way that was very much about the ways that conventional femininity made me feel trapped. Also, I think, about the fact that my preferred aesthetic is aggressively understated--brown and charcoal gray all the day long!--which is definitely not how I understood Being A Queer Person Who Cares About Fashion as a '90s teen. In this sense I am very much the opposite of Arkady Martine, who is also (!) writing a What Elegant Stars story.

But I always liked textile craft--hand sewing, embroidery, those childhood stretchy-loop potholder weaving kits, knitting and netting and naalbinding when I grew older--in a way that was mixed in with caring about the physicality of history. That's good training for inventing other histories, and also a good way to make yourself yearn after all kinds of other textiles.

I did stage a photoshoot this week, though it didn't involve any wearable textiles. The Le Guin Foundation sent me a delightful award plaque decorated with Le Guin's cartoon of herself, writing, with a cat. The obvious thing to do was to set it up in a spot where cats would want to investigate:

I layered the alpaca blanket over an electric blanket, so this was also a good place to settle down:

Eventually Kosmas joined him.

Wishing you the most luxurious temperature control--

Ursula.