Event

Upcoming readings, talks, parties, etc!

Come see me at the NYPL: “Confronting Climate Anxiety in Fiction”

This is awesome – I’m returning to the New York Public Library, whose literary events are legend.

Confronting Climate Anxiety in Fiction with Akil Kumarasamy, Sam J. Miller, Nathaniel Rich, and Jeff VanderMeer

Writers whose novels and stories have crossed the intersection of climate change and mental health ask whether fiction can have a meaningful impact on how we handle the climate crisis.

Thu. Sep 21, 2023 7:00pm – 8:00pm EDT
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Celeste Bartos Forum
476 5th Ave / New York,, NY 10018

Click here for (free) tickets!

I’m more than a little intimidated by this lineup, and the topic – something I think a ton about but haven’t necessarily arrived at any pithy helpful soundbite-friendly insights lol

Last time I was there was in 2019, discussing the anthology “A People’s Future of the United States” with luminaries Victor LaValle, Maria Dahvana Headley, N.K. Jemisin, and Alice Sola Kim  – you can see the full video of that event here. 

Announcing tour dates for BOYS, BEASTS & MEN.

It’s official: I’m heading our on tour to promote my new short story collection BOYS, BEASTS & MEN !

In June and July I’ll be doing readings to in New York City, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego.

Here are the details, some of which are still coming together. Watch this space for updates.

And if you’re in one of those places, mark your calendars now!!

New York City
KGB Fantastic Fiction
Wednesday, June 15, 2022 7:00 PM EDT
KGB Bar (2nd floor): 85 East 4th Street, New York NY 10003
Seattle
In Conversation with Ted Chiang  
Wednesday, June 22, 2022 6:00 PM PDT
University Book Store: 4326 University Way Northeast Seattle, WA 98105
Portland
In Conversation with Fonda Lee
Monday, June 27 @ 7:00 PM PDT
Powell’s Books: 3415 SW Cedar Hills Boulevard / Beaverton, OR 97005
San Francisco
In Conversation with Kimberly Unger
Thursday, June 30th @ 6:30PM PDT
American Bookbinders Museum: 355 Clementina St, San Francisco, CA 94103
Riverside
Cellar Door Talk & Signing
Friday, July 8th at 6PM PDT.
5225 Canyon Crest Dr. #30A, RiversideCA 92507

Los Angeles
Dark Delicacies Bookstore Signing
Saturday, July 9th at 3PM PDT
822 N. Hollywood Way / Burbank, CA  91505
San Diego
Clarion Presents
Wednesday, July 13th at 7PM PDT
Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore / 3555 Rosecrans St #107 San Diego, CA 92110

Hope to see you there!!

 

 

Talking THE BLADE BETWEEN in Hudson, 3/28.

I wrote THE BLADE BETWEEN to help process all my messy, complex feelings about the transformation of my home town of Hudson, NY. And I was excited (and scared) to engage in dialogue with other folks who call it home – the ones who go back generations as well as the new arrivals.

But because the book dropped in December of 2020, pandemic restrictions meant public events were impossible.

So I am super happy to share details on an AN ACTUAL IRL reading and Q&A I’m giving on Monday, 3/28, to celebrate the book’s paperback release. If you’re in or around Hudson, come through! If not – you can still tune in! It’s a hybrid event; you can attend on Zoom.

Would love to see you there – in person or on a screen.

Talking climate change science fiction in Italy, while Venice drowns

In November, I traveled to Italy for the release of Blackfish City in Italian translation, published by the fabulous Zona42 as La città dell’orca !!

We stayed in my beloved Venice, and our visit happened to coincide with the worst flooding that city has experienced in sixty years. It was sobering and intense to be promoting a book about rising sea levels at the same time as one of my favorite places on the planet is facing an existential threat from record-breaking flooding.

As part of the massive literary festival Book City Milano, we had a release event at the awesome Covo della Ladra bookstore in Milan, where I was in conversation with my editor Giorgio Raffaelli and my translator Chiara Reali. The crowd was huge and attentive, and talking to these two brilliant folks was a real pleasure and privilege.

Click here to watch the full video from the event! 

Photo by Juancy Rodriguez

There’s a great write-up of the event over at Zona42’s website – it’s in Italian, but if Google Translate is to be believed, they say nice things about me! 

We already knew that  Sam J. Miller  was a great author, but we were really pleased to discover a prepared, helpful, very kind person, who made himself available to Zone 42 for a whole afternoon. First the interview with Angela Bernardoni that preceded the presentation (you can read it on Stay Nerd ). Then the meeting at  Covo della Ladra , which began with the parallel reading of English / Italian of a chapter of the novel (and we owe it an infinite thanks to Chiara Reali , as usual , that if it didn’t exist we would have to invent it!), Continued with the discussion on the many themes and suggestions that enrich the  city of orca and culminated in an exchange of questions and answers with the public. Sam J. Miller was as precise, as enlightening, politically explicit and fun.

Launch Event for DESTROY ALL MONSTERS!

Save the date!

At 6PM on Friday, July 12th, at the incredible BOOKS OF WONDER, at 18 West 18th Street in Manhattan (between 5th and 6th Avenues), we’ll be launching my second YA novel DESTROY ALL MONSTERS!!

For more details, or to RSVP, check out the Facebook event here.

Can’t make it? The book is available for pre-order now, digitally and in hardcover, from the bookstore of your choice!! The incredible Kass Morgan, New York Times bestselling author of The 100, said of DESTROY ALL MONSTERS: “Sam J. Miller has cemented his status as one of the most visionary fiction writers of his generation. A staggering, stunning novel.”

Event at the Museum of the City of New York – Dwelling in the Future

I’m super honored to be speaking on an incredible panel at one of my favorite places for thought-provoking events and discussions, the Museum of the City of New York!!

Dwelling in the Future: Imagining Tomorrow’s City

When: Wednesday, June 19, 6:30pm – 8:30pm
Price: $20 & up | $15 for Museum Members
Where: Museum of the City of New York / 1220 Fifth Avenue (at 103rd Street) / New York, NY

Here’s what they have to say about it over on the museum’s website:

For the final program in the Museum’s Housing Tomorrow’s City series, we ask a group of visionary urban thinkers, architects, and artists how New Yorkers might inhabit and experience the city several generations from now.

With design researcher Alix Gerber, Designing Radical Futures, Mitchell Joachim, co-founder of architecture and consulting group Terreform ONE, author and community organizer Sam Miller, and artist and interactive designer Ayodamola Tanimowo Okunseinde. Journalist Tanvi Misra of The Atlantic’s CityLab moderates. Expect a lively — and mind-expanding — evening of presentation and discussion.

About the Speakers:

Alix Gerber is a design researcher who works with people to visualize and enact the futures we imagine, striving to provoke discussion around how our society could be more equitable and meaningful. Most recently, Gerber has been developing and teaching courses at Washington University in St. Louis, such as Radical Design, where students imagine alternatives to civic experiences like policing, capitalism or voting. Gerber has also worked with residents of Harlem, New York and Ferguson, Missouri to explore alternatives to our current policing and court systems by making artifacts from divergent futures.

Mitchell Joachim, PhD, Assoc. AIA, is the co-founder of the architecture, urban design research, and consulting group Terreform ONE and an associate professor at NYU. He has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and fellowships with TED, Moshe Safdie, and Martin Society for Sustainability at MIT. Joachim is the winner of many awards including the AIA New York Urban Design Merit Award and the History Channel Infiniti Award for City of the Future. He is the co-author of three books, including XXL-XS: New Directions in Ecological Design (2016).

Sam J. Miller is the Nebula-Award-winning author of The Art of Starving (an NPR best of the year) and Blackfish City (named best book of the year by VultureThe Washington Post, Barnes & Noble and one of the best “climate fiction” novels by O: The Oprah Winfrey Magazine). A recipient of the Shirley Jackson Award and a graduate of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, Miller’s short stories have been nominated for the World Fantasy, Theodore Sturgeon, and Locus Awards, and reprinted in dozens of anthologies. A community organizer by day, he lives in New York City.

Ayodamola Tanimowo Okunseinde (ayo) is a Nigerian-American artist designer, educator, and time-traveler living and working in New York. His works range from painting and speculative design to physically interactive works, wearable technology and explorations of “Reclamation”. He has exhibited and presented at the 11th Shanghai Biennale, Tribeca Storyscapes, EYEO Festival, Brooklyn Museum, M.I.T. Beyond the Cradle, and Afrotectopia among others. Okunseinde holds an MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons School of Design where he is currently an adjunct faculty member.

Tanvi Misra (moderator) is a staff writer for The Atlantic’s CityLab where she covers immigrant communities, housing, economic inequality, and culture. She also authors Navigator, a weekly newsletter for urban explorers and her work appears in The Atlantic, NPR, and BBC.


“Trouble Is Our Business” – Talking A PEOPLE’S FUTURE OF THE UNITED STATES at the New York Public Library

Last week, I was honored to participate in a powerful conversation at the New York Public Library with fellow contributors to the amazing new anthology A People’s History of the United States (Penguin/Random House/One World). Editor Victor LaValle moderated the discussion with N.K. Jemisin, Alice Sola Kim, Maria Dahvana Headley, and me! The event was sold out, the crowd was incredible – my fellow authors were MAGNIFICENT – and the signing line was around the corner!

But if you missed it, never fear.

Tor.com did a terrific write-up about the event, and they quote me: “he constantly swings between “ecstatic joy” and “profound despair” which leads to his fiction “trying to come to terms with how the world can be both so fucked up and so full of wonderful things how people can do such horrible things and participate, often unwittingly, in such horrible systems, but also do wonderful things as well. I don’t know why that became a story of a future where Prince is illegal and Big Brother Is Listening…but that’s what happened.”

You can also listen to the full event, which is episode 252 of the NYPL’s renowned podcast!!

And the library put up video of the full event:

My First New York Comic Con Panel.

I had an amazing time last weekend at New York Comic Con.

I have attended before as a fan, but never as part of the programming. I still got to be a fan, of course, exploring the floor and fighting my way through beautiful crowds and seeing some amazing cosplay, and running into awesome friends, and meeting heroes like Bob Camp, co-creator of Ren & Stimpy, who my husband and I got to thank personally for all the joy and trauma he brought into our lives.

But I was there to work. And they didn’t ease me into it, for my first panel – I was honored and terrified to be part of a panel with brilliant writers Marlon James, Julie Kagawa, Tochi Onyebuchi, Maura Milan, and moderator Ali T. Kokmen, discussing #OwnVoices: How Writers Build Authenticity Into Diverse Worlds. We were in a very big room, that was very very crowded.

Luckily, my terror was unnecessary. I had a great time, and it was an incredibly stimulating conversation. With a lot of laughter, and a lot of wisdom.

BUT YOU DON’T HAVE TO TAKE MY WORD FOR IT. Unbound Worlds included it in this awesome listing of “Best SFF Panels You Might Have Missed at New York Comic Con 2018,” and Tor.com did a fantastic write-up of the panel, which you can read here. They even mentioned me a couple times! Here’s my favorite part:

Asked what it was like to see their book covers come to life, the authors absolutely lit up. Maura, having already spoken about her desire to see herself on the cover of a book, talked about how excited her publisher was to work with her, and how they cast Maura’s friend Jessica in the role of the character. Seeing her friend at the photo shoot, dressed in the armor Maura described was an incredible experience. Tochi and Marlon both mentioned that there are standard fonts and images that are usually used for “African books” and how pleased they were that their publishers didn’t try to take that tack with them, but instead listened to the authors’ vision and brought that to life. Julie agreed, talking of how pleased she was with the silver fox mask and the authentic Japanese architecture on her book. And Sam? Well, Sam’s book cover glows in the dark. He also gave out temporary tattoos his publicist had made that matched the tattoo Sam himself got in honor of the book coming out.

Publisher’s Weekly included this awesome photo of us, in their round-up of #NYCC2018 highlights.

Also, video of the full panel exists! And you can watch it! Right here:

 

Calling London: I’ll be Talking BLACKFISH CITY at MCM Comic Con in London

It’s up on their website, so I guess it’s cool to share that I’ll be traveling to London for MCM Comic Con to talk BLACKFISH CITY!!!! 

… along with a ton of other excellent writers… and artists… and movie stars… (OMG HICKS FROM ALIENS)

“Sam why are you hiding in the green room the entire con?”

“Shut up I’m hoping Hicks from Aliens needs a soda.”

MY FIRST INTERNATIONAL BOOK TRAVEL YALL

Programming details are still being finalized, but I am going to be on four fantastic-sounding panels – if you’re gonna be there, look me up in the program and COME THROOOOOOOOOUGH

 

 

My Schedule at the New York City Teen Author Festival

Hey Everybody!

I’m excited to be part of two fantastic panels at this year’s New York City Teen Author Festival, organized by the brilliant David Levithan, as well as a high school visit and a signing! I’ll be talking about THE ART OF STARVING, my writing process, and lots of other fun stuff… but more importantly, I’ll be surrounded by tons of other awesome writers with lots of great stuff to say! See below for my public schedule, including the fab folks I’ll be sharing a stage with – all events are free to the public, though book purchases are STRONGLY encouraged. Seating is first come, first served.

 

Monday, March 19

Mulberry Street NYPL (10 Jersey Street, Manhattan), 6PM-8PM:

Areas of Expertise: YA Writers on YA Writing

Jen Calonita
Holly Kowitt
Emmy Layborne
Sarah Darer Littman
E. Lockhart
Sam J. Miller
Jess Verdi
Katherine Webber
Ibi Zoboi

 

Friday March 23,

42nd Street NYPL, South Court (476 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan) 2PM-2:50PM

Queer Voices in YA — The 2018 Edition

Arvin Ahmadi
Kheryn Callender
Billy Merrell
Sam J. Miller
Sarah Moon
Mark Oshiro
Will Walton

Moderator: David Levithan

BLACKFISH CITY book launch 4/24, featuring N.K. Jemisin

On Tuesday, April 24th, we’ll celebrate the launch of BLACKFISH CITY at the phenomenal powerHouse bookstore in Brooklyn – and I’m over the moon to announce that I’ll be in conversation with my hero and friend N.K. Jemisin!! Winner of multiple Hugo Awards, including Best Novel for The Fifth Season, possibly my favorite fantasy novel of the past five years, N.K. Jemisin is a genius and I am so so excited to be chatting with her about my book.

DO NOT MISS THIS AWESOME EVENT. 

Tuesday Apr 24, 2018
7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

POWERHOUSE @ the Archway 
28 Adams Street (Corner of Adams & Water Street @ the Archway) 
Brooklyn , NY 11201

[Click here for the Facebook event]

California Events for ART OF STARVING

Oscar the Weiner poses with a copy of The Art of Starving. Photo by Kathy Rodriguez. Thank you, Kathy.

I’ll be doing readings from The Art of Starving in San Diego and San Francisco this month! If you’re in one of those places, stop by!
 

San Diego

Monday, October 9, 2017 – 7PM

Mysterious Galaxy

5943 Balboa Ave, Suite 100

San Diego, CA 92111

 

San Francisco Bay Area:

Tuesday, October 17, 7:30PM

Pegasus Books

2349 Shattuck Avenue

Berkeley CA

 

Wednesday, October 18 – 7:30PM

The End of the World Literary Cabaret

The Green Arcade Books

1680 Market Street

San Francisco CA

Photos & Video from the NYC Launch Party for THE ART OF STARVING

On July 18th, we launched THE ART OF STARVING with an incredible event at Parlor NYC!

I read from the book, had a great conversation with Asimov’s editor Sheila Williams, and answered some excellent questions from the audience. Then I signed a whole lot of books, sold by The Lit Bar, a magnificent pop-up shop currently raising funds to address the horrible injustice that the Bronx currently doesn’t have a single bookstore!!!

See below for just a few of the magnificent images. And my magnificent husband livestreamed the event, and you can watch it here!!!

Reading from THE ART OF STARVING….

I bask in the radiance of my editor Kristen Pettit (center) and my friend Maria Dahvana Headley (left), also part of Kristen’s astonishing literary brood!

In conversation with my good friend Sheila Williams, editor of Asimov’s Magazine.

Noëlle Santos, the mastermind behind The Lit Bar, handled book sales like a damn boss!

A lifelong dream comes true – my momma and my sister buying copies of my novel!!!

Just a few of my favoritest people on the planet.

Just a few more of my favoritest people on the planet.

My Schedule at OutWrite in D.C. this Weekend.

I’m excited to be traveling to Washington D.C. this weekend, for the OutWrite LGBTQ literary conference!

Held at the DC Center (2000 14th St NW, # 105, Washington D.C.), it’s a celebration of LGBT literature, authors, writers, and poets. On Saturday, August 5th, there will be a full day of readings, panels, book sales, and exhibitors. To finish the weekend, a number of writing workshops will be held on Sunday, August 6th.

On Saturday, at 2PM, I’ll be part of All the Feels: A Queer YA Reading, with M-E Girard, Jaye Robin Brown, Sam J. Miller, & Amanda Gernentz Hanson. Moderated by Rahul Kanakia.

And then at 5PM I will be on a panel called Dignified: On Writing Thoughtful Depictions of Disability & Mental Healthwith Sunny Moraine, Marlena Chertock, and Amanda Gernentz Hanson.

If you’re in the DC area, please come through to check it out – seems like it’ll be a fantastic couple of days.

Launch Events for THE ART OF STARVING

Two phenomenal launch events are coming up for THE ART OF STARVING – one in New York City, and one in my home town of Hudson, NY, where the novel is set. I’ll be reading from the book, and answering questions, and signing copies!! AND THERE WILL BE SNACKS. This event is free and open to the public and is wheelchair accessible. Copies of the books will be available for purchase, thanks to The Lit. Bar!!!

 Would love to see you at either one, if you can make it!

 

NEW YORK CITY LAUNCH EVENT

Parlor NYC – 286 Spring Street, NYC

Tuesday, July 18th, 7PM

[Click here for the Facebook event, and to RSVP]

 

HUDSON LAUNCH EVENT

Hudson Area Library – 51 North Fifth Street, Hudson NY 12534

Saturday, July 29th, 2PM

[Click here for the Facebook event]

 

Reading at KGB Fantastic Fiction

Me and my teacher/hero Holly Black at the January 2017 edition of KGB Fantastic Fiction [photo by Ellen Datlow]
In 2012, as a newly-hatched Clarion graduate, I saw my teacher Jeffrey Ford read at KGB Fantastic Fiction, and since then I’ve dreamed of one day being part of the series. Matt Kressel and Ellen Datlow have done such a phenomenal job of curating a monthly event where super huge stars and all-around goddamn geniuses and rising lights of the genre perform for a small, intimate, enthusiastic crowd.

And so it is a dream come true to announce that I will be reading at KGB on May 17th

…along with my friend and fellow Altered-Fluid-member/old-school-Nintendo-game-addict E.C. Meyers.

You know you want to come:

Wednesday, May 17th, at 7pm

KGB Bar (website): 

85 East 4th Street (just off 2nd Ave)

New York, NY 10003 (map)

Guerrilla Lit Reading, 5/25: Me, Ryan Britt, Lev Grossman

On May 25th, I’ll return to the fantastic Guerrilla Lit reading series, where I performed way back in March 2009, for a special science fiction night, alongside the brilliant Ryan Britt (you should go now and read everything he ever wrote at Tor.com) and NYT-best-selling-author Lev Grossman.

You should come!

WEDNESDAY, MAY 25 AT 7:30PM

DIXON PLACE: 161A Chrystie St., b/w Rivington & Delancey.

Nearby Subway Stops: F to 2nd Avenue; J, Z to Bowery; 6 to Spring; M to Essex; B/D to Grand

Free Admission

The Guerrilla Lit Reading Series has hosted regular readings of emerging and established authors in New York City since 2007. Because the pen is mightier than the Kalashnikov (we hope).

Curated by Lee Matthew Goldberg, Marco Rafalá, Nicole Audrey Spector, and Camellia Phillips

From the event website:

Lev Grossman is the author of five novels, including the #1 New York Times bestselling Magicians trilogy. The Magicians books are published in 25 countries and have been praised by, among others, George R.R. Martin, Audrey Niffenegger, John Green, Joe Hill & Erin Morgenstern. An hour-long drama series based on them is currently airing on Syfy. Grossman is also Time magazine’s book critic & lead technology writer, and he has written essays & criticism for Salon, Slate, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Wired, Lingua Franca, the Week, the Village Voice and the Believer, among others. His journalism has earned him a Deadline award, and the New York Times has called him ‘‘one of this country’s smartest and most reliable critics.’’ He has made frequent appearances on NPR and at festivals, conferences & universities all over the world. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife & three children.

Sam J. Miller is a writer & a community organizer. His fiction is in Lightspeed, Asimov’s, Clarkesworld & The Minnesota Review, among others. He is a nominee for the Nebula and Theodore Sturgeon Awards, a winner of the Shirley Jackson Award, and a graduate of the Clarion Writer’s Workshop. His debut novel The Art of Starving is forthcoming from HarperCollins. He lives in New York City.

Ryan Britt is the author of Luke Skywalker Can’t Read. He has written for The New York Times, Electric Literature, The Awl, VICE Motherboard, Clarkesworld Magazine, and is a consulting editor for Story Magazine. He was the staff writer for the Hugo-Award winning web magazine Tor.com, where he remains a contributor. He lives in New York City.

I’m Reading With Samuel R. Delany… ::dies::

In a bit of news so surreal and exciting I can’t quite convince myself it’s real, I’ll be sharing a bill with one of my all-time science fiction heroes, Samuel R. Delany!!
The Commons
388 Atlantic Avenue (ground floor)
Brooklyn NY
Doors at 6:30PM, show starts at 7PM – but this one is gonna be packed, so, plan on getting there early.

Clear your calendars! Book passage to New York City! The chance to see Samuel Delany read is worth it. Don’t come because of me. I’m not even icing on the cake. I’m the cupcake wrapper – more annoying than anything else. I will, however, do my best to be an awesome cupcake wrapper. To that end I’ll be reading a special slimmed-down tweaked and maybe-even-slightly-edgier edit of my Nebula-nominated novelette “We Are the Cloud.”

I could write a million-word blog post about how much I love Delany’s work, and how much it meant to me as a young queer SF junky to find such bold brilliant queer speculative fiction. I could write massive essays about how much hope and inspiration I drew from Times Square Red, Times Square Blue – one of my all-time favorite books – in my attempts to reconcile life as an activist and life as a writer. But I won’t. All I’ll say is:
YOU DO NOT WANT TO MISS THIS.
TUESDAY, APRIL 21ST, NYRSF PRESENTS:
SAMUEL R DELANY & SAM J MILLER
The Commons
388 Atlantic Avenue (ground floor)
Brooklyn NY
Doors at 6:30PM

New York Review of Science Fiction Reading Series STARRING ME

On Tuesday, January 7th, I’ll be sharing a bill with the marvelous Jennifer Marie Brissett at the New York Review of Science Fiction Reading Series. Participating in this venerable, 23-year-old series is a huge honor for me, and I know it’ll make for a hell of a night.

Jenn and I appeared on the radio program Hour of the Wolf last year, promoting our respective readings, and we had a blast. Jenn posted a link to the full audio on her blog, if you wanna get a sample of how much fun you’ll have if you come to the NYRSF event on January 7th.

Huge thanks to host Jim Freund, for having us on.

I’m quivering with excitement. Hope you can make it.

Reading will take place at the SoHo Gallery for Digital Art
138 Sullivan Street
Doors open at 6:30 PM
Program begins at 7:00
Admission Free
$7 donation suggested

Here’s Jenn reading, on WBAI with me last year. Note the 7 words you can’t say, on the radio station wall behind her.

EPIC WIN: Last Night’s LGBTQ Science Fiction & Fantasy Reading!!

Last night, I had the honor of curating and co-MC’ing an incredible lineup of LGBT science fiction & fantasy writers. Carmen Maria Machado (who wrote this excellent writeup on the event), Val Howlett, myself, Richard Bowes, Ellen Kushner,  and Delia Sherman read a fascinating and diverse range of work; I had been worried about having such an ambitious list of readers, but everyone presented tight, terse, strong work and we kept it moving and the whole shebang of six readers was done in just about an hour!!

[CLICK PICTURE TO SEE US FULL-SIZE]

But the real star of the evening was the crowd. SO MANY PEOPLE CAME!!! So humbling to see so many people I know and love – including people who came from California and the UK for this – as well as so many awesome new friends who are fans of queerness or SFFness or both.

Do you know that episode of I Love Lucy where Ricky is tired of hearing Lucy complain about how much work it is to be a homemaker, and says he can do better, and he tries to cook dinner, and he’s making rice, and he puts in four pounds of rice, so of course it overflows and fills the whole kitchen? That’s kind of how last night was. The community organizer in me has been so anxious about there being any empty seats in the house that I did maybe a little bit TOO MUCH turnout work… and the crowd was incredible. Every seat packed; so many people standing up that no one else could even come in the door…people were standing on the January sidewalk with their noses pressed to the glass because they couldn’t get in!

Here’s a glimpse. This was taken at 6:55PM, FIVE MINUTES BEFORE THE EVENT WAS EVEN SCHEDULED TO START; by 7:30 forgetaboutit.

This event was a great reminder of what a privilege it is to be part of two incredibly warm, tight-knit, supportive communities – the queer community, and the speculative fiction community. And when they overlap, like they did last night, it’s a beautiful thing. I had originally hoped to shout out all the incredible people who I know, but there were so many folks there who I adore and it all became such a blur that I am paralyzed by the fear of snubbing someone. I’ll just say that the audience had writers I adore, editors of magazines and of books that I love, and millions of my devoted readers like me.

Also, it was a terrific advertisement for the Clarion Writer’s Workshop. None of this would have happened without Clarion. That’s where I met Carmen, my classmate, and Delia, my teacher – the nucleus of the reading. That’s where my SFF writing chops got sharpened to the point where I could write a pretty solid story like the one I read last night. And that’s where I realized how easy and meaningful it is to be a part of this incredible community.

So. If you’re thinking about applying to Clarion 2013, which has an INCREDIBLE roster of writer-instructors, you should consider this a strong nudge from me. And if the time and the money just aren’t there (as they weren’t, for me, for years), you should join me in making a donation to the Clarion Foundation. Because, karma. And because wonderful things like this don’t turn a profit – the tuition students pay doesn’t begin to cover the actual cash value of the food and lodging and UCSD facilities access, let ALONE the priceless counsel and guidance of your teachers and classmates.

DO IT.