Sunday, August 15, 2010

Sunday Morning Coffee: Sybil's Garage; Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet; Greer Gilman (Readercon20)







Lobster & Canary happily subscribe to Sybil's Garage (from Senses Five Press) and to Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet (from Small Beer Press). We encourage you to do the same.

The latest Sybil's (no. 7, arrived last week) is the biggest ever at nearly 200 pages, and is as well produced as always. We're still reading our way through, but so far we are impressed. For instance, check out "The Unbeing of Once-Leela" by Swapna Kishore, and "An Orange Tree Framed Your Body," by Alex Dally MacFarlane. Also, poems by Sonya Taaffe, and Amal El-Mohtar.

The current LCRW (no. 25, published in May) is the usual omnium gatherum of delightful things. Jeannine Hall Gailey's poems about The Fox-Wife stood out for us, likewise Daniel Braum's "Music of the Spheres" and "Elephants of the Platte" by Thomas Israel Hopkins. Above all: "Exuviation" by Haihong Zhao, which strikes just the right balance between the utterly alien and the entirely plausible.

Thinking of Small Beer Press reminded us of one of their authors, Greer Gilman, whom we heard read from her then just-published Cloud & Ashes at Readercon 20 in July, 2009. (And Sonya Taaffe sang as part of that recital...lovely.) We heard Greer read "Down the Wall" the year before at KGB.

In the Readercon 20 souvenir book, Greer -- one of the guests of honor-- said: "I pretty much wrote the book backward and inside out. ... It's maze-making. Once you get the torch to light--and it can take years to get the torch alight--that makes the maze. The rooms unfold only if you are already in the light. If you're in the dark, you can't find the way."

If you are keen to find your way, we urge you to buy and read Greer's work.

No comments: