hello, friends new and old! 👋
time has flown by since last i wrote you. so much so that my wedding paperwork day has come and gone already!
my partner and i got ourselves hitched in a small, cosy ceremony at islington town hall in london, with our siblings as witnesses and my best pal amy helping with maid of honour type things (like embroidering my gorgeous custom wedding converse shoes!! 😍) it was a lovely and sweet day, made all the sweeter by happening on the 4th anniversary of our first date. how time flies, eh?
we’re still planning our actual wedding in greece this september, so this was just us getting our paperwork sorted—but not without some flowers and cute photos! you can see more on my instagram here, and if you’d like to say congrats with a smol gift, you can drop a tip in my ko-fi jar.
also, eastercon was fantastic! i had a blast speaking at all my panels, dancing at the glasgow 2024 ceilidh, and finally doing barcon—i even read out some decade-old teen wolf fanfic at glasgow fanfic’s open mic night! it was delightful to connect with friends and acquaintances from cons past, make new friends, and celebrate sff over three days of interesting conversations. if you’re here because we met at the con, a super warm welcome to you!
my favourite panel to date was on the monday: pictured above, “writing music for your setting”, featuring writers who also write music, and (for some reason) me! we nerded out about picking out music for particular settings or moods, how that can affect the story, and in the case of those who write music too, how to create the desired effect in music that can accompany your work. allen stroud, our moderator and BSFA chair, even brought a little synth keyboard, so we played around with some music and instrumentation before taking questions from the audience, which for a 10am panel was pretty well attended!
(i did plug my upcoming podcast on just this topic, the write song, and even got a couple of guests signing up to come chat about their playlists and works. a reminder that you can still do that if you’re keen by emailing writesongpodcast at gmail dot com, or by replying to this here email.)
as much as it was a super fun gathering, one key point of contention was the covid outbreak that followed the con; i luckily didn’t catch it, but know of so many people who did, despite masking. the calls for a more robust covid/h&s policy are wholly justified imo, and we need to band together as a community in order to protect each other. given that they managed to make the hybrid features work splendidly, it’s clear there’s consideration of people’s health and circumstances on the concom; it would be good to see this reflected in the wider community too in cons to come.
i’m already in the process of singing up for next year’s con at telford, and the year after that at belfast, and of course worldcon in glasgow next summer. cons give me life, not gonna lie—it’s where i can remind myself that my bubble is bigger than it may seem during my day-to-day life, and where i can find people on my wavelength to talk about my favourite things in the world.
links of speculative interest
the strange horizons kickstarter fund drive for the next year is now live! pledge some cash and get awesome perks like art, patches, book bundles, and your name in poetry and review credits.
- ’s latest deep dive into AI and writing in is a scorching look at the state of our community right now; i’m particularly disappointed to learn that people i know and respect have signed up to feed (and possibly to advertise) fiction-writing LLMs, aka unregulated algorithmic plagiarism feeding on people’s hard work and churning out meaningless garbage.
related: the omegaverse strikes again, this time exposing the exploitation of fanfiction as training data for AI tools such as chatGPT and sudowrite. love to see trashfire fanfic tropes actually doing some good in the world!
the bigolas dickolas moment was my favourite thing about the internet in the last month: viral fan marketing! a deserving book going multi-platinum! love and excitement all around! proof that we can (sometimes) have nice things :)
friend of the blog brandon o’brien is running a survey on SFF fandom, worldcon, and the hugo awards. if you read/watch/enjoy SFF in any capacity, please fill our this quick google form.
it’s all greek to me
at the end of april, tor.com announced an anthology of short stories retelling greek myths. not a single greek writer was on the TOC, despite many submitting. the kicker? the anthology is billed as “inclusive”, no doubt meaning the writers within are of marginalised identities—which is commendable of course, to be clear—yet it got some of us thinking about whether or not the greek identity itself is ever considered when retelling greek stories.
one look at the bookstore shelves paints a pretty clear picture: not really.
at the risk of sounding pedantic, a brief history lesson: the reason greek mythology is so ingrained in anglo culture goes back to the italian renaissance, a time of enlightenment following a dark and brutal period of disease, war, and cultural stagnation, during which the classics were rediscovered and studied anew. from the tragedies of aeschylus and euripides to the history books of herodotus, they were seen as the pinnacle of culture, something aspirational and pure. through the ensuing centuries the love of classical language, culture, and philosophy spread throughout western europe, and is evident in architecture, literature, and art from the 1300s onwards.
that’s all really nice on paper… except while the classics were taking western europe by storm, greece was under ottoman rule. our language was forbidden, as was our faith. acts of genocide were taking place on the regular, as recently as the 1920s. (my own greek side of the family hails entirely from istanbul and izmir, so i know how widespread and deep that generational trauma runs.)
for centuries we had no say in what ways our culture would be used, or indeed appropriated, while we were fighting to hold on to whatever it meant to be greek, hellenic, or roman. in the run-up to the greek revolution in the 1820s this worked out in our favour, as rich foreign investors with a love for classical greece (including lord byron, the bisexual lothario we all know and love) raised money and troops to fight the ottomans in the name of restoring the greeks to their former glory. but it also created this, ahem, myth—that because the greeks were under ottoman rule and our stories and culture had been preserved by the west, therefore it belonged to them too.
and then, there’s publishing.
traditional publishers insist that there’s only so much room within the roster any given year for something as specific as a greek mythology retelling, only so much room for any marginalised authors, any particular subgenre, any queer elements. once something’s done, and especially if it does well, it’s unlikely that anything similar will be picked up1. agents (like friend of the blog john baker) even say in their submission guidelines, “no myth retellings”—it’s a tired thing, you see! there’s just so much of it! we all know those stories already; bring us something fresh, they say, it’ll be fun, they say!
so then, when our mythology seems to be having a moment in the books, but every single greek retelling book recently published is written by a non-greek author… you’d pardon us lowly europeans for thinking there just isn’t enough room for us to tell our stories. the barriers to entry in publishing are high to start with; some of us (myself included) learnt english to native fluency, moved countries, uprooted our lives so we can be part of this world—and it still feels like we don’t belong. some, like friends of the blog eugenia triantafyllou and avra margariti, still live in greece, but have to constantly fight the system to even get paid for their work. the constant question is, with every submission: how greek are we allowed to get? what stories haven’t been told yet, that we may play with them and get published? what might pass the gilded gates of the keepers of publishing mysticism?
listen, i don’t doubt that most of those books are great! song of achilles is a classic in its own right at this point; i can’t wait to read claire north’s take on penelope in ithaca, and i’m stockpiling natalie haynes’ books because i know she knows what she’s talking about. in the words of a fellow greek writer, in the aftermath of the anthology announcement:
Greeks aren't telling you not to engage with Greek mythology
Greeks aren't telling you you can't write about Greek mythology
Greeks are just tired of seeing Anglo writers hog all the oxygen in the room
—@churchofwolves
jelena dunato wrote a poignant blog post on sfwa’s website about this very thing from a slavic perspective: the notion of “slavic fantasy” as a genre, and what even constitutes it, and who gets to write it, and is there room for Actual Slavic People in that space when anglophone writers routinely mine slavic folklore and history as inspiration2? as a part-slav myself, i sympathise, and with both my serbian and greek hats on i find myself getting desperately angry sometimes if i dwell on the absolute monopoly english-language publishing has on the genres that i love, and the hoops us non-anglophone writers have to jump through to even bask in its aura.
last september at chicon8, i recall angry-crying about this at the bar while chatting to some (mostly new to me) friends, during an otherwise innocuous conversation about ‘the hill we would (each) die on’. for me it was this: greek writers feel like there’s no space for us to tell greek stories. our culture is bandied about like a toy at the playground, and i’m pretty sure that no one ever spares a thought for non-diaspora greeks in conversations about greekness of any kind. i don’t think people are even aware of the various periods of greek culture—the early christian days, the byzantium, the ottoman times, the balkan wars, the civil war, the junta—or how the ancient stuff pervades modern greek culture to this day. we’re worse than an afterthought; we’re not even a thought at all.
every time i see another greek mythology retelling by a non-greek at the bookstore, a chip falls off the proverbial parthenon within me. i’m sure it’s great—i just wish there was a greek name on that cover to go with it. because crucially, greek writers exist. not only that, but we’re getting nominated3 for and winning4 awards, despite having to overcome mountains to even be here. we have been chronically trained to anglicise our settings and worldbuilding, to write sanitised hollywoody bullshit because that’s all the sff we are exposed to growing up, and it’s taking conscious effort to work on stories that actively connect to our heritage. the least publishing can do is consider us when putting together an entire anthology based on our culture. i don’t think that’s a lot to ask.
that’s all from me this time! i’m hoping to have more regular content for you soon, and plan on some format shake-ups around here (author interviews?? mini-podcasts?? what would you like to see? let me know by hitting reply, or tweeting/tooting at me.)
until next time, i hope you’re staying well and creative!
xK
seems silly, doesn’t it? you’d think they’d want to make more money, and yet…
*coughs in leigh bardugo*
read the nebula-nominated ‘my country is a ghost’ by eugenia triantafyllou
read the world fantasy award-winning ‘the birding’ by natalia theodoridou (set in my hometown!! 😍)