This morning I woke up to a lovely surprise: I've been awarded the first Galactic Suburbia Award for activism and/or communication that advances the feminist conversation in the field of speculative fiction. This is in recognition of Taking the Russ Pledge and related posts.
The award was announced in the podcast. I haven't listened to it yet (I'm still sipping my first cup of tea of the day, and blinking). But here's the basic info:
The Galactic Suburbia Award
for activism and/or communication that advances the feminist conversation in the field of speculative fiction in 2011
Honours List
- Carrie Goldman and her daughter Katie, for sharing their story about how Katie was bullied at school for liking Star Wars, and opening up a massive worldwide conversation about gender binaries and gender-related bullying among very young children
- Cheryl Morgan for Female Invisibility Bingo, associated blogging and podcasting, and basically fighting the good fight
- Helen Merrick, for the Feminism article on the SF Encyclopedia (a rewrite)
- Jim C Hines for “Jane C Hines” and associated blogging, raising awareness of feminist issues in the SF/Fantasy publishing field.
- Julia Rios, Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond for episode 11 of the Outer Alliance podcast (The Writer and the Critic special episode)
- L. Timmel Duchamp - for continuing to raise issues of importance on the Ambling Down the Aqueduct blog and various Aqueduct Press projects
- Michelle Lee for the blog post “A 7-year-old girl responds to DC Comics’ sexed-up reboot of Starfire”
Winner
- Nicola Griffith - for the Russ Pledge, and associated blogging
This is a great list of names doing great work to keep the issues of equality front and centre in the ongoing conversation. I am honoured (and delighted) to be part of it and think perhaps we should find a way to share custody of the prize: a Deepings Doll, a hand-painted figurine of a suffragette with a Galactic Suburbia placard.
The fabulous women who run Galactic Suburbia, Alisa, Alex, and Tansy, are asking for ideas about the Galactic Suburbia Honours list for 2012. Send deserving names to galacticsuburbia@gmail.com or tweet @galacticsuburbs. Personally, I think they deserve an award, too.