Tone

Literature & Fiction

Samatar, Sofia

Zambreno, Kate

History & Criticism

Columbia University Press

Tone is a collaborative study of literary tone, a notoriously challenging and slippery topic for criticism. Both granular and global, infusing a text with feeling, tone is so difficult to pin down that responses to it often take the vague form of "I know it when I see it." In Tone, a cooperative authorial voice under the name of the Committee to Investigate Atmosphere begins from the premise that tone is relational, belonging to shared experience rather than a single author, and should be approached through a communal practice. In partnership, the Committee explores the atmospheres emanating from texts by Nella Larsen, W. G. Sebald, Heike Geissler, Hiroko Oyamada, Mieko Kanai, Bhanu Kapil, Franz Kafka, Renee Gladman, and others, attending to the chafing of political irritation, the hunger of precarious and temporary work, and the lonely delights of urban and suburban walks. This study treats a variety of questions: How is tone filtered through translation? Can a text hold the feelings that pass between humans and animals? What can attention to literary tone reveal about shared spaces such as factories, universities, and streets and the clashes and connections that happen there? Searching and conversational, Tone seeks immersion in literary affect to convey the experience of reading--and living--together.

In 1514 Hungary, peasants who rose up against the nobility rise again – from the grave. In 1633 Al-Shouf, a mother keeps demons at bay with the combined power of grief and music. In 1775 Paris, as social tensions come to a boil, a courtesan tries to save the woman she loves. In 1838 Georgia, a pregnant woman's desperate escape from slavery comes with a terrible price. In 1900 Ilocos Norte, a forest spirit helps a young girl defend her land from American occupiers. These gripping stories have been passed down through the generations, hidden between the lines of journal entries and love letters. Now 27 of today's finest authors – including Tananarive Due, Sofia Samatar, Ken Liu, Victor LaValle, Nnedi Okorafor, and Sabrina Vourvoulias – reveal the people whose lives have been pushed to the margins of history. TABLE OF CONTENTS: Sofia Samatar - "Ogres of East Africa" Thoraiya Dyer - "The Oud" Tananarive Due - "Free Jim's Mine" S. Lynn - "Ffydd (Faith)" Sunny Moraine - "Across the Seam" Rion Amilcar Scott - "Numbers" Meg Jayanth - "Each Part Without Mercy" Claire Humphrey - "The Witch of Tarup" L.S. Johnson - "Marigolds" Robert William Iveniuk - "Diyu" Jamey Hatley - "Collected Likenesses" Michael Janairo - "Angela and the Scar" Benjamin Parzybok - "The Colts" Kima Jones - "Nine" Christina Lynch - "The Heart and the Feather" Troy L. Wiggins - "A Score of Roses" Nghi Vo - "Neither Witch Nor Fairy" David Fuller - "A Deeper Echo" Ken Liu - "Knotting Grass, Holding Ring" Kemba Banton - "Jooni" Sarah Pinsker - "There Will Be One Vacant Chair" Nnedi Okorafor - "It's War" Shanaé Brown - "Find Me Unafraid" Nicolette Barischoff - "A Wedding in Hungry Days" Lisa Bolekaja - "Medu" Victor LaValle - "Lone Women" Sabrina Vourvoulias - "The Dance of the White Demons"

Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History

Vo, Nghi

Dyer, Thoraiya

Due, Tananarive

Parzybok, Benjamin

Lynch, Christina

Vourvoulias, Sabrina

Scott, Rion Amilcar

Humphrey, Claire

Johnson, L.S.

Lynn, S

Moraine, Sunny

Jayanth, Meg

Iveniuk, Robert William

Hatley, Jamey

Janairo, Michael

Jones, Kima

Wiggins, Troy L

Bolekaja, Lisa

Short Stories & Anthologies

Crossed Genres Publications

Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain

United States

Tor.com

An incredibly unique comic book benefit project featuring comic shorts, pin-ups, short essays, and flash fiction, the proceeds of which will be going to the Innocence Project We’ve all seen the pictures: a six-year-old Ruby Bridges being escorted by U.S. marshals on her first day at an all-white, New Orleans school in 1960; a police dog attacking a demonstrator in Birmingham; fire hoses turned on protesters; Martin Luther King Jr. addressing a crowd on the National Mall. These pictures were printed in papers, flashed across television screens, and helped to change the laws of this nation, but not necessarily all of the attitudes. Similarly, we’ve seen the pictures of Michael Brown lying face down in a pool of his own blood for hours; protesters with their hands up, facing down militarized policemen. There are videos of Eric Garner choked to death, John Crawford III shot down in Walmart for carrying a toy gun, and 12-year-old Tamir Rice gunned down in broad daylight for the same reason. APB: Artists Against Police Brutality is a benefit comic book anthology that focuses on hot-button issues including police brutality, the justice system, and civil rights, with one primary goal: show pictures and tell stories that get people talking. The proceeds will go to the Innocence Project, an organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people.

APB: Artists against Police Brutality

Comics & Graphic Novels

Clark, P. Djèlí

Duffy, Damian

Graphic Novels

Rosarium Publishing

LIGHTSPEED is an online science fiction and fantasy magazine. In its pages, you will find science fiction: from near-future, sociological soft SF, to far-future, star-spanning hard SF—and fantasy: from epic fantasy, sword-and-sorcery, and contemporary urban tales, to magical realism, science-fantasy, and folktales. Funded as a stretch goal of LIGHTSPEED’s Women Destroy Science Fiction! Kickstarter campaign, this month we’re presenting a special one-off issue of our otherwise discontinued sister-magazine, FANTASY, called Women Destroy Fantasy!: an all-fantasy extravaganza entirely written—and edited!—by women. Here’s what we’ve got lined up for you in this special issue: Original fantasy—edited by long-time FANTASY editor Cat Rambo—by Kate Hall, H.E. Roulo, T. Kingfisher, and Julia August. Reprints—selected by legendary editor Terri Windling—by Delia Sherman, Emma Bull, Carol Emshwiller, and Nalo Hopkinson. Nonfiction articles—edited by LIGHTSPEED managing editor Wendy N. Wagner—by Kameron Hurley, Galen Dara, Sandra Wickham, Shanna Germain, Sofia Samatar, Kat Howard, and Wendy N. Wagner. Plus an original cover illustration by Elizabeth Leggett.

Fantasy Magazine, October 2014 (Women Destroy Fantasy! special issue)

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Hurley, Kameron

Connolly, Tina

Howard, Kat

Windling, Terri

Rambo, Cat

Germain, Shanna

August, Julia

Wagner, Wendy N.

Dara, Galen

Fantasy

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Opacities: On Writing and the Writing Life

Essays & Correspondence

Soft Skull

"Samatar's sensual descriptions create a rich, strange landscape, allowing a lavish adventure to unfold that is haunting and unforgettable."—Library Journal *starred review*"Thoroughly engaging and thoroughly original. A story of ghosts and books, treachery and mystery, ingeniously conceived and beautifully written. One of the best fantasy novels I've read in recent years."—Jeffrey Ford"Mesmerizing—a sustained and dreamy enchantment. A Stranger in Olondria reminds both Samatar's characters and her readers of the way stories make us long for faraway, even imaginary, places and how they also bring us home again."—Karen Joy Fowler"Gorgeous writing, beautiful and sensual and so precise—a Proustian ghost story."—Paul Witcover"Imagine an inlaid cabinet, its drawers within drawers filled with spices, roses, amulets, bright cities, bones, and shadows. Sofia Samatar is a merchant of wonders, and her A Stranger in Olondria is a bookshop of dreams."—Greer GilmanIn this hypnotic debut Jevik the pepper merchant's son dreams of far Olondria. Raised by his tutors on the written dreams of the distant city, when he gets the opportunity to travel there, his life is thrown off track when he is haunted by the ghost of a girl whom he must face down before he can go free. Reading has never been so seductive, so dangerous.Sofia Samatar is an American of Somali and Swiss German Mennonite background. Her writing has appeared in Clarkesworld, Stone Telling, Apex, and Strange Horizons. She wrote A Stranger in Olondria in Yambio, South Sudan, where she worked as an English teacher. She has worked in Egypt and now lives in the USA with her family.

A Stranger in Olondria: a novel

Literary

Small Beer Press

Four women a soldier, a scholar, a poet, and a socialite are caught up on opposing sides of a violent rebellion. As war erupts and their loyalties and agendas and ideologies come into conflict, the four fear their lives may pass unrecorded. Using the sword and the pen, the body and the voice, they struggle not just to survive, but to make history. Here is the much-anticipated companion novel to Sofia Samatar’s World Fantasy Award-winning debut, A Stranger in Olondria. The Winged Histories is the saga of an empire and a family: their friendships, their enduring love, their arcane and deadly secrets. Samatar asks who makes history, who endures it, and how the turbulence of historical change sweeps over every aspect of a life and over everyone, no matter whether or not they choose to seek it out. Sofia Samatar is the author of the Crawford, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy award-winning novel A Stranger in Olondria. She also received the John W. Campbell Award. She has written for the Guardian, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, and many other publications. She is working on a collection of stories. Her website is sofiasamatar.com.

The Winged Histories: a novel

World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Locus award finalist
Divided into “Tender Bodies” and “Tender Landscapes,” the stories collected here in this first collection of short fiction from a rising star travel from the commonplace to the edges of reality. Some of Samatar’s weird and compassionate fabulations spring from her life and literary studies; some spring from the world, some from the void. Tender explores the fragility of bodies, emotions, and landscapes, in settings that range from medieval Egypt to colonial Kenya to the stars, and the voices of those who question: children, students, servants, researchers, writers.
Tender includes two new stories, “An Account of the Land of Witches” and the Nommo Award shortlisted “Fallow.”

Tender: Stories

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