[This is Part 3 of my long, conversational interview with Brit Mandelo, editor of Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and sexually fluid speculative fiction (Lethe Press, April 2012). See earlier this week for Part 1 and Part 2.]
What do you think about
reviews? If you could pick anyone, alive or dead, to review this book, who
would it be? Why?
As a critic and reviewer, I'm obviously biased, but I love
reviews. I think they fill a really integral niche in the discourse about
stories, and when done well—not a book report, but a true investment of
thought, a sort of dialogue between the critic and the text—they're also an art
in and of themselves. I buy a lot of books based on reviews—sometimes because
what the reviewer hates about the book, I know I would love, and sometimes the
opposite. As for reviews of my own work, I'm always intrigued by seeing what
other people read in the text I made; there's always a gap between intention
and reception, and seeing how the books or stories are read is interesting for
me on a critical level. For anyone who's skeptical about book reviews, go and
read the collected reviews of Joanna Russ in The Country You Have Never Seen. That's what good criticism can do.
And on that note, is it sort of obvious that I would answer,
Joanna Russ? Because yes, if I could choose anyone, I would choose Russ.
She might have
thought Beyond Binary was an abysmal
failure, but she would have said why in a cogent, incisive, powerful way. That
sort of criticism matters. It's part of the fail,
fail better ethos, I think. Or, if she enjoyed it, the review would still,
I'm certain, be cogent, incisive, and powerful—but it would be saying different
things, equally useful and important things. And, really, I just would like to
know what she thought of this effort, as she wrote so many grand stories
herself that dealt with these issues of gender and sexuality.
Yeah, I would have picked Russ, too. Let's talk about
community now. I've seen a lot of public support for this project on the Outer Alliance list (and reviews on Autostraddle and io9). How helpful has what community been in the creation, and sale, and now marketing, of this book?
The speculative, queer, and queer/speculative communities
have been immensely, ridiculously, wonderfully helpful throughout the whole
process. The outpouring of support, advice, and interest was stunning, from the
moment I announced the call for submissions onward—and, in the
story-solicitation process, folks were for the most part enthusiastic about the
project and wanted to be part of it.
People gave me books, sent me story suggestions, and offered
literally hundreds of ideas about potentially useful avenues of research via
email, my blog, and Twitter. When I opened the call for submissions, I had a
huge influx of stories—and, what was really fascinating: many of the people who
were submitting also made suggestions
for other stories in their cover letters. So, they would be sending their own
work in hopes of making it into the book, but also telling me: "hey,
here's another story I loved, too." That was kind of beautiful, and
showed, I thought, how much support the community was offering the book. People
saw the call for submissions all over, too—some from Lambda Literary, some from
speculative communities, etc.
And, as I said before, the sale of the book was really a
matter of community also—Steve at Lethe knowing I wanted to embark on this
project, and taking a risk on giving me the opportunity to do so, though I had
no prior experience.
The marketing has been hugely community-driven, too, in a
way that I think every writer/editor hopes for. The authors in the book have
been great about spreading the word, publications from both communities have
given it a lot of attention, and I know there are some great reviews and other
things forthcoming about it from sources I never would have expected. Hell, my
university department decided to fund, host, and advertise a release party—and
that's the academic community.
I wanted to do Beyond
Binary because I thought we needed a book like it—and I'm indescribably
moved by the fact that the community at large has been so clearly, publically,
awesomely excited about it, too. It's really all I could have hoped for. I
mean, look at this artifact right here—this interview. Support in action!
Whose experience
and advice did you seek before/during/after bringing the book into being? What
would you do differently?
I asked for a lot of advice over the course of creating the
anthology. For one thing, I asked the internet at large, all the communities of
which I was a part, for help finding stories. I knew that there was no way I
had read everything, or could find it all on my own. That was sort of the
impetus of Beyond Binary, anyway—that
these stories were out there, but dispersed and hard to find. I'm not magic; I
knew I needed help to find things. I'm sure I still missed a lot, even with the
help and advice I received. On a smaller scale, I sought advice on things like
how to ask for blurbs, and what a story solicitation letter should look like,
and whether I should send them to the authors or their agents—all of that
important technical stuff. After the book was put together, when it came to
marketing and party planning and all of those complicated things, the seasoned
pros that I know, and who are in the book, have been indispensable. Ellen
Kushner and Delia Sherman have been a great help through the process—advice,
guidance, and experience were all on offer. Without them, we probably wouldn't
be having a book release party at WisCon!
You don't realize exactly how much you don't know, until you run smack into it. There were a
lot of moments like that, and I keep having them even now that the book is in
distribution. In fact, I solicited some panicked advice about what to do at a
release party where I'm supposed to entertain a crowd for an hour, last night,
from the person who's running the event and does these kinds of things often.
And then I asked some other writer-friends, too, for good measure.
But, looking back, I think I would have liked to have spoken
to a few more experienced editors about things like how to organize the table
of contents, what their guiding philosophies were, and how they handled author
correspondence—those sound like almost very business-y sorts of things, but
they were where I felt my lack of experience the most. I was under the wire by the end of the
process, though, and didn't feel like I could impinge on folks' time to ask for
some advice.
Maybe if there had been a convention around that point I
would have done so, hah. I've had opportunities to ask for advice since then
from great sources like Ellen Datlow, in the context of my new job at Strange
Horizons, and some of the things that I've been told by more experienced people
since putting together Beyond Binary
would have been helpful at the time. Simple stuff, like I mentioned above, that
I was just fumbling my way through.
I'd ask you what
your secret goals were for this book--but then they wouldn't be secret anymore.
So tell me some of the pitfalls you think you've avoided (or not) in the
process.
I hope that I've included a diverse set of voices in the
book, and an even more diverse set of stories. This is at once a pitfall I've
avoided and tripped into, though—as I
said before, I know that the book isn't a complete picture, and that I'm
lacking in several sorts of stories. Yet, I feel like in what is there, there is diversity across and
off the spectrums of gender, sexuality, age, race, and culture—from a teen girl
living in poverty who is exploring her attraction to both men and women, to
stories like those we talked about above, that are dealing with complex
nontraditional relationships in secondary worlds, and fluid or alternative
gender identities in a contemporary setting with elderly protagonists. I hope
that I've avoided the pitfall of a single story, a single narrative about what "genderqueer
and sexually fluid" means, or can mean.
What is the
greatest joy or satisfaction you gained from the experience?
Seeing people's responses to the text has, by far, been the
greatest joy in a series of joys. I thought at first that it would just be the
chance to read so much great genderqueer and sexually fluid fiction. I loved
that, certainly! So much good reading. There was also the satisfaction of
contributing this book to the greater conversation, foregrounding these stories
and voices where they're so frequently invisible, absent, or ignored. But, in
the end, it's the reader response and the fact that this book seems to be doing
what I so wanted it to do: offering people a vital chance to see their own
stories spoken, and stories about people like themselves. And people are saying
that yes, they are happy to see this book on shelves, to have these voices
emphasized—that it means something to them. There's nothing more powerful than
that, for me.
What's next?
I have a couple of short stories forthcoming, in Apex Magazine and Tor.com, and I'm currently working on several other short pieces,
plus doing research for a potential novel project. Also, editorial work at Strange Horizons, which continues to be
great and really absorbing. Balancing writing, editing, criticism, and
everything else is a little crazy at the moment.
As for Beyond Binary,
there will be a book-party with several contributors reading from their
stories, plus tea and cookies, at WisCon 36 in Madison WI, May 25-28th!
That sounds like a party I'd enjoy. I'm just sorry I can't be there. Have a blast! Sell many copies of Beyond Binary!
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My blog now lives here:
http://nicolagriffith.com/blog/
