gwynnega

I am home from Readercon. My Monday evening flight from Logan kept getting delayed. When it got pushed to 10 pm, I asked the airline if they could put me on an earlier flight. They put me on standby for a flight set to board in half an hour (at 5:30), and I got the last seat on the plane. It was a middle seat in the last row, but much better than having to wait around the airport! (The passengers on either side of me were young women, not burly guys, so I didn't feel boxed in.)

It was a lovely Readercon, inspiring and fun (and exhausting). I saw oracne, sovay, coffeeandink, nineweaving, Romie Stott, Mike and Anita Allen, mrissa, Andrea Hairston, Esker Park, Sam Wilket, Jessica Levai, Cecilia Tan, ckd, Ken Schneyer, Arley Sorg, and many others. I was on two panels ("Defining the Monstrous" and "The Artificial Woman in Science Fiction") and did a reading (plus I read a couple of poems at Romie's poetry open mic). All my programming was against other stuff I would have loved to see, but I did see a lot of amazing panels. It was so good to talk about books and writing and everything else. (I kept urging people to watch Your Monster--and not only during my panel on The Monstrous. On Sunday night before I packed, I watched the film on my hotel room's large TV screen, which was a treat.)

Now I am, predictably, very jetlagged. Again. But at least I got home at a reasonable hour yesterday.

Here is my Readercon schedule! Looking forward to seeing folks there.

Reading: Gwynne Garfinkle
Friday, July 10, 2026, 12 PM EDT

Defining the Monstrous (2)
Saturday, July 11, 2026, 6:00 PM EDT
Corey Farrenkopf, E. C. Ambrose (moderator), Gwynne Garfinkle, Sacha Lamb, T.J. Wooldridge
From Grendel to the cultured medieval werewolf tales of Marie de France to the contemporary novels of John Wiswell, defining and understanding the monstrous has always been a task we set ourselves, alongside defining humanity itself. Who gets to decide what a monster is? How have these definitions changed and shifted? And what does it mean when the boundary between human and monster disappears entirely?

The Artificial Woman in Science Fiction
Sunday, July 12, 2026, 10 AM EDT
Ann LeBlanc, Barbara Krasnoff, Gwynne Garfinkle, Laurence Raphael Brothers, Romie Stott (moderator)
In a Strange Horizons essay last May, William Shaw wrote, "The AI girlfriend, like womanhood itself, is an elusive, ever-changing thing. In marking the ways this fantasy has developed, we can better understand the impulse to recreate it in our own world." How have stories about artificial women evolved over time, and have real-world attempts at creating them really followed the same patterns?

This weekend I'll be participating in WisCon Online! I miss in-person WisCon, but I'm very much looking forward to this. Here is the programming I'm on:

Frankensteins and Their Monsters
Online Zoom Room 4 • Reading, Viewing, and Critiquing Science Fiction • Sat 7:00 PM–8:15 PM CDT
Prompted by Guillermo del Toro recent adaptation of Frankenstein let's talk about the adaptation history of the original text! How do the adaptations deal with the horrors of creation, revenge, and isolation? How do they feed each other, so that a Frankenstein adaptation adapts both the novel and the Universal monster? And what does it do to Frankenstein and the wretch to make them recurring characters on TV shows?
S.M. Hallow, Gwynne Garfinkle, Sophia Babai, Mod: Anika Dane

Embodiment, Planets, Health, Earth
Online Zoom Room 5 • Readings • Sat 8:30 PM–9:45 PM CDT
Speculative Poetry: on ecopoetics, disability, embodied ways of knowing.
Anonymous, Petra Kuppers, Gwynne Garfinkle

Never-Too-Late Futures
Online Zoom Room 2 • The Craft and Business of Writing • Sun 4:00 PM–5:15 PM CDT
Publishing discourse loves "30 under 30," but many speculative fiction authors publish their first novel in their 40s, 50s, 60s, or later. This panel invites older debuts and late-blooming writers to talk about craft, career realities, disability and energy, caretaking, and ageism in the field. What pressures and freedoms come with starting "late," and what does a sustainable, politically engaged writing life look like beyond the hustle?
Esker Park, Catherine Lundoff, Mod: Andrea Hairston, Gwynne Garfinkle, Sam Wilket

I'm delighted to announce that my poem "the jacarandas are unimpressed by your show of force," published by Strange Horizons, is a 2026 Rhysling Award finalist, amid a plethora of wonderful poems.

Last year, when I wrote the poem, the jacarandas had taken their time blooming, but this year they are already going to town.

I'm delighted to announce that my poem "the jacarandas are unimpressed by your show of force" is nominated for the 2026 Rhysling Award long list!

I'm happy to announce that my poem "spell" will appear in a future issue of Not One of Us. It was inspired by recent events in Minneapolis (and it has, unfortunately, become even more relevant this weekend). I am, as always, so glad to have my work in this wonderful magazine.

I'm starting 2026 with my first publication of the year! My poem about the death of David Bowie, "heroes," is in Not of One Us #85 (the outsider issue). (Coincidentally, this month is the 10th anniversary of Bowie's death.) The issue also includes work by Sonya Taaffe, Jennifer Crow, Devan Barlow, and more. The magazine somehow winged its way to me across the country in record time. I'm always so pleased to have my work in this wonderful publication.

Today I've been remembering Christmas songs we sang in my elementary school auditorium, long ago. "Nuttin' for Christmas" was a favorite, largely because the line "Climbed a tree and tore my pants" always made the kids laugh.

We did a full-on musical production of A Christmas Carol when I was maybe eight years old. I played a ragamuffin and learned a dance routine for it, but then got the flu and missed the evening performance. (I ended up giving my actress heroine Joanna Bergman this experience in Can't Find My Way Home.) I still remember some of the lyrics and melody for one of our Christmas Carol songs, but I can't find it anywhere online--and in the age of AI, it's even more difficult than the last time I looked. The lyric I remember is: "Bless the goose, poor bird, his day is done / Bless the cheery warmth of our old hearth (Oh Merry Christmas) / God bless us everyone." (We pronounced "hearth" to rhyme with "earth," and no one corrected us.) I did find a Christmas Carol song online called "God Bless Us Everyone," but it's not the song I remember.

(Via sovay and asakiyume.)

1. Lust, books I want to read for their cover.

I'm pretty sure I originally picked up Little Women (an abridged edition) when I was eight years old because of the cover. (It's this edition.) This sparked an Alcott obsession.

2. Pride, challenging books I finished.

Ulysses, maybe? (I read it via dailylit.com, in small email installments every day.)

3. Gluttony, books I've read more than once.

I don't do that as much these days as when I was younger, but sometimes I'll listen to an audiobook that I've previously read in print. I've done that recently with Rosemary's Baby (read by Mia Farrow) and Little Rabbit by Alyssa Songsiridej. Back in the day, I reread Marge Piercy's Vida and Braided Lives, and some of Marilyn Hacker's poetry books, among others. (ETA: I reread Dracula via Dracula Daily a couple of years back, long after my first read of the novel. I'm currently rereading Frankenstein. Also, it occurs to me that I've reread some novels for panel discussions. Joanna Russ's The Female Man springs to mind.)

4. Sloth, books that have been longest on my to-read list.

I don't have a to-read list, but I have owned quite a few books for decades without reading them. Sometimes I eventually get rid of them, but others I keep if I still think I'll want to read them. That category includes: The Madness of a Seduced Woman by Susan Fromberg Schaeffer (I hauled that book from Los Angeles to the UK and back again) and (more recently) The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers.

5. Greed, books I own multiple editions of.

Diane di Prima's Loba, Samuel R. Delany's The Motion of Light in Water, Judy Grahn's The Highest Apple, and Joanna Russ's On Strike Against God. (The editions differ in terms of what material they include.)

6. Wrath, books I despised.

An Education in Malice by S.T. Gibson. A dark-academia Carmilla set in the 1960s should have been a lot of fun. I know some people really liked this book, but I couldn't get past the raging anachronisms. I suspect the book was originally set in the '90s or '00s, but then the author added some miniskirts and no one bothered to check the references--for example, mentions of Anais Nin books that hadn't come out yet, and a reference to Sylvia Plath "first editions" (when her books were new). Also, it somehow never occurred to anyone involved that no one talking about a telephone before the age of cellphones would call it a landline.

7. Envy, books I want to live in.

I suppose when I was a kid, I would have liked to hang out with the March sisters or Sherlock Holmes? But the prospect of living in the 19th century stopped being appealing at some point.

The No Kings protest in Los Feliz was well-attended and joyous. For the first time at a protest this year, I actually saw people I knew (old friends I hadn't seen in years). There were many wonderful signs, and many motorists enthusiastically honking. People wore dinosaur suits, chicken suits, an American eagle suit, and a kitty suit. I saw one cop car, but only for about a minute.

I was going to wear my Patti Smith "People Have the Power" t-shirt, but the organizers wanted people to wear yellow, so I wore my Bride of Frankenstein shirt, the only item of apparel I own with any yellow on it. (Next time I'll wear the Patti shirt.)

I stayed for a couple of hours, mostly in the shade, until I got too tired of being on my feet. I'm more wiped out today than I was expecting, but I'm glad I went.