MF GALAXY

"Shawna Lemay is the author of the recently released novel, Rumi and the Red Handbag which made Harper's Bazaar's #THELIST (must-reads for Fall 2015), the "Most Anticipated" list on the popular Canadian book website, 49th Shelf, and was selected for Maria Shriver's fall reading club. Nathalie Atkinson chose Rumi and the Red Handbag for Fall's Must-Read Fashion Books in the Globe and Mail.

"She has also written six books of poetry, a book of essays, and an experimental novel titled, Hive, which is about the possibility of the existence of a woman art forger. All the God-Sized Fruit, her first book, won the Stephan G. Stephansson Award and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Calm Things: Essays was shortlisted for the Wilfred Eggleston Award for Non-Fiction. She has an M.A. in English from the University of Alberta. She writes a weekly blog titled, Calm Things. 

"Rumi and the Red Handbag follows the lives of Shaya and Ingrid-Simone, working together one winter at a second- hand clothing shop. Theodora's Fine Consignment Clothing shop becomes a small world where Shaya, an academic who abandoned studying the secrets of women writers, finds in Ingrid-Simone a reason to begin writing again, on scraps of paper and post-its. Fresh, unique and intelligent, Rumi and The Red Handbag is a journey to the Museum of Bags and Purses in Amsterdam, a journey to find Rumi, the soul, and the secret hidden in a red handbag."

Lemay joined me live onstage at Authorpalooza 2 at Cha Island Tea Company in Edmonton's Old Strathcona district on December 2, 2014. She talked about:

• How to make poetry accessible
• Where creative writing classes go wrong
• The critical importance of condensing
• Editors—when they hurt, and when they help
• And how she made up to $1000 per year at poetry

But we began by discussing poetry as a daily practice and why she is compelled to create verse. And now on MF GALAXY, my conversation with Shawna Lemay.

http://www.shawnalemay.net

http://transactionswithbeauty.com

https://soundcloud.com/shawna-lemay

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SF can attempt to predict the future, but since Jonathan Swift invented SF with Gulliver's Travels, an adult political satire that I'd call the original Star Trek, SF has delivered its most enduring and provocative works by analysing the ethical content of the present. But Star Trek became so dominant on US TV through reruns and then resurrection as Star Trek: The Next Generation that it became a force stifling creativity.

The boldest, most innovative, and most influential counter to Star Trek dominance was Babylon 5, the 1993 to 1998 series that introduced the longform story arc with a predetermined beginning, middle, and end to US television. Set in the twenty-third century, the story was of the fifth and final Babylon station, a galactic UN created to end the cataclysmic wars and colonisations in which the cerebral and spiritual Minbari had nearly annihilated Humans, the humanoid Centauri whose empire was in advanced decline, and the reptilian and vengeful Narn who had thrown off Centauri subjugation.

Also involved were two mysterious races: the Vorlons, so alien they could barely be understood, and a shadowy race whose existence was unknown to most species, even while their power soon would be. Mixed into the five-year story arc were queer characters, old and new human religions, a Jewish funeral, a species change, political assassinations, allegories for racism, and the rise of fascism on Earth.

Babylon 5 offered stakes that Star Trek never had, and better yet, played them out for five seasons to results that television had never attempted. It was a long-overdue revival of science fiction TV.

From 1987 to 1994, Star Trek: The Next Generation had presented a 24th Century humanity that, by means unexplained, had stripped itself of its most enduringly toxic social and individual problems. In the Next Generation world, humans didn't wage war against other humans, did not practice labour, racial, or sexual oppression or exploitation, or destroy ecosystems. The Next Generation presented a future in which "we"—the assumed Euro-American audience for whom the show was created—could do no wrong as a society; only aberrant individuals could cause suffering.

So the major sources of misery, degradation, and tyranny were alien societies. Given that Star Trek's major social allegory was that the Federation, or at least humanity, was the United States, and that the Klingon Empire was the Soviet Union, the view that it's always the aliens' fault is an inherently xenophobic, jingoistic, and racist vision of the real world.

But Babylon 5 didn't accept such simplistic and ugly ideas, and the space epic shows that followed B5's lead, especially Farscape and Battlestar Galactica, seem to have taken its lessons, including by having more female main characters who actually drove the plot and had significant backstories that also drove the story's direction.

In the episode "By Any Means Necessary," Babylon 5 presented labour struggle on its station a decade before Battlestar Galactica dramatised the issue; similarly, B5 presented its military personnel wearing civilian clothes when they were off-shift, which virtually never happened in Trek, but later happened in Battlestar Galactica.

B5 presented not just a multiracial but a multireligious future for humans and aliens. Commander Sinclair studied under Jesuits; Lt. Commander Susan Ivanova was not religious but culturally was Jewish-Russian, and after her father's death, sat Shiva with her family rabbi in the episode "TKO."

In today's episode of MF GALAXY, you'll hear my conversations with two key figures behind B5: Joseph Michael Straczynski, and Mira Furlan. Joe Straczynski, or just plain JMS was a successful television writer on shows such as Murder, She Wrote before he launched B5. Before the days when creative producer/head writers were called show runners, JMS single-handedly wrote 92 of the series' 110 episodes, and drafted the overarching plot for the entire five-year epic before the first frame was shot. He later co-created Sense8 with the Wachowskis, and wrote the screen stories for World War Z and Thor among other works.

Mira Furlan is the celebrated Yugoslavian stage and screen actor who played the Minbari Ambassador Delenn, after Furlan left her war-torn homeland. She's best known in North America for playing Rousseau in Lost, and she's also appeared on NCIS and Law & Order: LA.

Twenty-two years ago in 1994, JMS spoke with me by telephone from his production office in Los Angeles, just before season 2 began airing, and we recorded the call at CJSR FM88 in Edmonton. Mira Furlan spoke with me at the Earth Station Convention in 1997 in south Edmonton just before she left for the airport.

You'll notice throughout today's discussion, that JMS and I both say variations on the phrase "in other SF shows" when the SHOW THAT MUST NOT BE NAMED was definitely Star Trek. That deliberate phrasing was just as common in the Making of Babylon 5 half-hour special that aired when B5 launched, so as to avoid stoking the Trek-Always-and-Only kneejerk reaction of some fans.

While today it might seem laughable, twenty years ago SF screen fandom was infected with tribalism. Many fans couldn't wrap their brains around the idea that you could publicly state that you liked two different story worlds at the same time. Maybe that began with Stan Lee hyping Marvel versus DC, as if liking DC was akin to pledging allegiance to a national enemy, or at least a group of stodgy idiots. But even now, of course, some of that lunacy remains. In fact, as Gamergate and the Hugo Wars demonstrated, it actually got worse. Some might say it metastasised into the US presidential election.

We began with JMS about why he wanted Babylon 5 to fall where it did on the predictive versus allegorical scale of science fiction.

To hear more than an hour of bonus content for this episode, including more discussion with JMS and Mira Furlan, and my feature-length conversation with Bob the Angry Flower cartoonist Stephen Notley—because he and I were both big fans of B5 when it came out--visit mfgalaxy.org to click on the Patreon link to become a sponsor for a dollar or more per week.

And hey, with Christmas coming, how about sharing some of that holiday generosity by becoming a sponsor of MF GALAXY? Just go to MF GALAXY.org and click on the Patreon link to become a sponsor for 99 cents or even 25 cents per show. You'll be supporting my weekly work to bring you outstanding interviews with amazing authors, academics, activists, actors, avengers, artists, and Africentrists! And for a buck a show, you'll get access to scores of extended editions of the show with tons of great advice for new and mid-career writers seeking to up their game. This holiday season, help a brother out!

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If you're not from Alberta, you may not know that the province has been, functionally, a one-party state for decades at a time. Thirty-six straight years of Social Credit rule collapsed to forty-four straight years of Progressive Conservative control.

2015 saw the unexpected election of the New Democratic Party under the leadership of Rachel Notley, leap-frogging over the right-wing splinter party Wild Rose led by former Conservative MP Brian Jean, and crushing the PC party led by former Conservative MP, the late Premier Jim Prentice.

But no one expects the NDP to continue the tradition of four decades of rule, whatever its ambitions. And if party turn-over remains a reality, then Alberta will at last have become a modern Western democracy.

It's been a rough ride for the NDP, despite the enormous popularity of Premier Notley, herself the daughter of the former provincial NDP leader Grant Notley. After the election honeymoon was over, the reality of low oil prices, a high deficit, and the handling of Bill 6 have threatened the party's chances of re-election.

Bill 6 sought to protect farm workers by granting them Workers Compensation Bureau coverage and thus freeing farmers from liability, but the Bill 6 consultation and communications plan met widespread criticism spearheaded by the Wild Rose opposition. The defeat of the federal NDP, the former official opposition at one point seen as the next government, further dampened hopes for the provincial party.

But it's not only the NDP facing a difficult future. The Alberta Liberal Party was reduced to a single seat and the defeat of its former leader Raj Sherman, himself a former PC. The former PC leader Jim Prentice immediately resigned and then died in a plane crash in 2016. Wild Rose leader Brian Jean's attempts to discipline his own MLA Derek Fildebrandt seemed to have backfired and weakened his own position.

Worse still for Brian Jean is the former Conservative MP and Stephen Harper lieutenant Jason Kenney leaving federal politics to seek the leadership of the ailing provincial PCs to collapse it into the Wild Rose, topple Jean, and become the leader.

The only two women in the PC leadership race, Donna Kennedy-Glans and Sandra Jansen, both quit after being targets of what Jansen called "Trump-style politics" from Kenney supporters, whose harassment included calling Jansen a "baby-killer." Jansen said:

"My social media has been filled with filth, my domain name purchased to direct people to smear pieces on me and … the final straw… Insults were scrawled on my nomination forms. Volunteers from another campaign chased me up and down the hall, attacking me for protecting women's reproductive rights, and my team was jeered for supporting children's rights to a safe school environment."

The result of such intimidation? Jansen crossed the floor to join the NDP.

Joining me to analyse all the above is David Climenhaga.

From his official bio: "David J. Climenhaga is an award-winning journalist, author, post-secondary teacher, poet, and trade union communicator who has worked in senior writing and editing positions at the Toronto Globe and Mail and Calgary Herald. He holds a Masters Degree in Journalism from the Carleton University School of Journalism in Ottawa. His 1995 book, A Poke in the Public Eye, explores the relationships among Canadian journalists, public relations people and politicians." Climenhaga blogs at AlbertaPolitics.ca.

Climenhaga is also a 4th-degree black belt in Uechi-Ryu, a traditional style of karate from Okinawa, and during the course of our conversation he and I both make reference to the Eastern martial arts.

We spoke last week on November 25 at Climenhaga's office in downtown Edmonton to discuss the present for Sandra Jansen, the legality and morality of floor-crossings, what Climenhaga calls "sleazy" tactics of the Kenney campaign, and how in his opinion the NDP is failing to put its star player on the field in the Grey Cup of provincial politics, possibly at the cost of its own future.

Full disclosure: I have volunteered for the provincial and federal New Democratic Party, and have also provided paid public speaking training for some of its members.

albertapolitics.ca

Contact: [email protected]

Etymology of Tory: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Tory

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Called "Violent, poetic and compulsively readable" by Maclean's, science fiction author Tobias S. Buckell is a New York Times Bestselling writer born in the Caribbean. He grew up in Grenada and spent time in the British and US Virgin Islands, and the islands he lived on influence much of his work.

His Xenowealth series begins with Crystal Rain. Along with other stand-alone novels and his over 50 stories, his works have been translated into 18 different languages. He has been nominated for awards like the Hugo, Nebula, Prometheus, and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction Author. His latest novel is Hurricane Fever, a follow up to the successful Arctic Rising that NPR says will 'give you the shivers.'

He currently lives in Bluffton, Ohio with his wife, twin daughters, and a pair of dogs. He can be found online at www.TobiasBuckell.com

Buckwell spoke with me about:

• Growing up on a boat with TV but with a literal boatload of books
• The impact of Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov on his young imagination
• The significance of foundational adventure novelist African writer Alexandre Dumas
• Using a 23+Me genetic test to uncover stunning revelations about his family
• How he turned his reading disability into an authorial superpower
• How to supercharge a sleeping-pill plot into an electrifying page-turner
• How not to end a chapter
• Reasons for academic bias against discussing the craft of entertainment

tobiasbuckell.com

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Anthony Q. Farrell is an amazing cat. He's from Toronto, went to actual comedy school, and ended up writing for one of the most influential US comedy series ever, The Office on NBC, which is also one of my favourite shows.

He wrote two of its most enduring  episodes: "Casual Friday," in which Dunder Miflin former district manager Michael Scott returns to his old job with also former-ex-employees Pam Beesley and Ryan Howard, and the emotional "Employee Transfer," in which Michael Scott breaks up with Holly Flax, the love of his life, during a road trip to her new home.

Farrell also served as the Canadian culture consultant on "Business Trip," in which Michael Scott, Andy Bernard, and Oscar Martinez go to Winnipeg.

In addition to having written for two years on The Office including the Office short films "Taste the Ice Cream" and "Money Trouble," Farrell wrote for The Thundermans, Originals, In Gayle We Trust, and was the series creator of Dwelling and The Secret Life of Boys. He also wrote and was executive story editor for the CBC sitcom hit Little Mosque on the Prairie.

Did I mention that Farrell is an African-Canadian? And given that there aren't many African-Canadian writers who've hit it big in Hollywood, as soon as I knew Farrell existed, I was determined to hear what he had to say.

In today's episode, Farrell speaks with me about his career in comedy television, including:

• The impact that Office showrunner and executive producer Greg Daniels had on him as a writer and later as a showrunner
• The artistic and collegial environment for writers and actors on the show and what made it so effective
• What is was like working with series stars such as Rainn Wilson who played Dwight Shrute and Mindy Kaling who played Kelly Kapoor, and what it was like to pitch a joke to Steve Carell
• What it feels like to write fat jokes about actors you'll be seeing every day at work, and why some actors stop getting comedic moments in their scripts
• And which Office actors were most like their characters.

Farrell spoke with me by Skype on June 10, 2016.

We begin with Farrell discussing how attending comedy school gave him the training and the contacts he needed to build an outstanding career.

Anthony Q. Farrell on IMDB

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Brandon Easton is a super-accomplished creator. In addition to having made the must-see documentary Brave New Souls about African-American writers and artists in science fiction and fantasy novels, comics, and movies, he's also a:

• Freelance Writer at Marvel Entertainment
• Writer of M.A.S.K. at IDW Publishing
• Freelance Writer at IDW Publishing
• Volunteer Solar System Ambassador at Jet Propulsion Laboratory
• Writer at Unified Pictures
• Writer at Lion Forge Comics
• Former Program Writer at Disney/ABC Television Group
• Former Staff Writer at Marvel Entertainment

Easton has received the 2015 Disney-ABC Writing Program, a 2014 nomination for the Eisner Comic Industry Award for Best Single Issue or One Shot, and four Glyph Awards. He was also a semi-finalist for the 2013 Hollywood Black Film Festival's Project Stargazer, which was a collaboration with NASA to find and develop science-fiction writers of color.

Easton spoke with me on June 27, 2016 by Skype, about:

• How the Disney ABC Writing Programme works
• Pro writing for the market with big money at stake
• The pressure of writers rooms and how they made him smarter
• How showrunners choose their writers
• How to break an episode
• The art and science of bottle shows
• The penalties for going over budget

While I mention that we'll be talking about writing for Marvel, that'll be coming in a future episode of MF GALAXY, so keep subscribing.

Buy Brandon Easton's Brave New Souls documentary on African-American science fiction and fantasy film makers, authors, and comic creators. It's a great doc and it's only 8 bucks. 

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Culture commentator Robert Monroe Jr. joins me to discuss the film, its historical and political content and context, the campaign against the film, and the controversy about its writer, director, and star Nate Parker.

The Birth of a Nation – HD Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i18z1EQCoyg

The Birth Of A Nation Cast Discuss The Film | BUILD Series

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6ciC2tFA28

Gabrielle Union & Birth Cast Defend Nate Parker's Powerful Film

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG5TWJfz4YQ

Gabrielle Union Turns Her Back On The Birth Of A Nation Film & Nate Parker

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzLw1_1Pi-Q

Anderson Cooper vs Nate Parker

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hty2mqIaA0I

Nate Parker's Alleged Sins Won't Keep Me from Seeing 'The Birth of a Nation'

For decades, black people have been fed a Disney-fication of our struggle. So, even as a sexual-assault survivor, I am going to see Parker's film.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/26/nate-parker-s-alleged-sins-won-t-keep-me-from-seeing-the-birth-of-a-nation.html

Nat Turner by Kyle Baker

http://www.qualityjollity.com/Nat_Turner.html

Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust – Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PEcVK6gbM

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Sylvia Feketekuty has written for Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age: Inquisition, two of the most successful video games in history. Craig DiLouie is an author of popular thriller, apocalyptic/horror, and sci-fi/fantasy fiction, and the acclaimed novelist of numerous zombie novels. Each spoke at Authorpalooza in Edmonton.

Feketekuty discussed:

• The craft of writing for VGs including plotting, dialogue, and world-building
• Game design
• Ergodic writing vs linear writing
• The enormous costs of triple-A games that writers must understand to to avoid "blowing up a level"
• Writing in a team
• How to break into a major studio as a writer
• The tools available for indie game writers
• Toxic vs. progressive VG workplaces for women

Free video game writing tool: https://twinery.org

DiLouie discussed:

• How horrific is too horrific
• How horror holds up a fractured mirror to the human soul

For the rest of DiLouie's conversation, download the extended edition from the MF GALAXY Patreon page, where DiLouie discusses:

• Getting started as a tech writer + specialising young
• The joys of a home office
• Learned a work ethic from nonfiction writing
• Attempting the Great American Novel
• The dangers of swallowing advice from an agent
• The art and science of book trailers
• Why to evoke feelings instead of facts

Craig DiLouie book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdYgy8vYayU

craigdilouie.com

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Sweet Christmas! Luke Cage, the Marvel Comics Blaxploitation D-grade hero from the 1970s is now a massive on Netflix—so anticipated the Netflix crashed in Europe. Series creator Cheo Hodari Coker has spoken revealingly about his own life as an African-American fanboy and his commitment to presenting excellent African-American women characters.

Authors Sheree R. Thomas and Zig Zag Claybourne join me to talk about the show that has gotten me more excited than almost any show in recent memory.

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Andrea Hairston is amazing. She’s a novelist, essayist, playwright, and the Artistic Director of Chrysalis Theatre. Any science fiction plays in the bunch? Let’s see—how about Soul Repairs, Lonely Stardust, Hummingbird Flying Backward, Dispatches, and Archangels of Funk.

But who’s produced her plays? Oh, only Yale Rep, Rites and Reason, the Kennedy Center, StageWest, and US public radio and public television. Can she translate German plays into English? Yup.

Any awards? Just a few… for playwriting and directing awards: a National Endowment for the Arts Grant to Playwrights, a Rockefeller/NEA Grant for New Works, an NEA grant to work as dramaturge/director with playwright Pearl Cleage, a Ford Foundation Grant to collaborate with Senegalese Master Drummer Massamba Diop, a Shubert Fellowship for Playwriting, and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship for 2003.

What about books? Well, there are Redwood and Wildfire, winner of the 2011 Tiptree Award and the Carl Brandon Kindred Award, and Mindscape, shortlisted for the Phillip K Dick and Tiptree Awards, and winner of the Carl Brandon Parallax Award. Plus the collection Lonely Stardust, and her play Thunderbird was published in the SFF drama anthology Geek Theater.

Okay, we get it. Except there’s also teaching and literary criticism: she’s the Louise Wolff Kahn 1931 Professor of Theatre and Afro-American Studies at Smith College, and she won the International Association of the Fantastic in the Arts Distinguished Scholarship Award for outstanding contributions to the criticism of the fantastic.

So what’d we talk about by Skype on September 12, 2016?

• Why SFF novelists and playwrights appreciate plot in a way that literary writers and academics almost never do
• What a Drama department offers students, teachers, and writers that they can’t get anywhere else
• Why there’s liberation in understanding that talent is a myth
• How any writer can improve dialogue by using the standard toolbox of playwrights

Check her website here.

And if you want to hear all the amazing stuff she told me about how her favourite teachers changed her life, and how, then just sign up on Patreon for a buck or more per show.

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