I'm participating in an event this September called A More Diverse Universe, hosted by Aarti at BookLust. The event is meant to help promote people of color in speculative fiction, and will run for one week starting September 23rd. There's still time to sign up, and I'm hoping all of you will! It's open to both bloggers and non-bloggers.
Because a person of color writing sci-fi or fantasy is less likely to be published than a white person writing about ethnic minorities, A More Diverse Universe is focusing on books written by people of color ONLY. Like who? I'm glad you asked. :) Here are some authors I'm considering:
Ocatavia E. Butler won both Hugo and Nebula awards (as well as the MacArthur Genius Grant) for her speculative fiction novels, which include stories about time travel, vampires, aliens, and our dystopian future. Since I do love the vampires, I'm thinking of trying Fledgling, which was Butler's last novel.
NK Jemison's debut novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, is the first volume in a sweeping epic fantasy trilogy and was nominated for Hugo and Nebula awards. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms received some really good reviews when it first came out, and I've been wanting to read it for a while. This blog event might give me the perfect excuse to dig into this chunkster.
In between writing tortuously complex academic articles and books, Gerald Vizenor also writes fiction. Bearheart takes place in a post-apocalyptic US and parodies The Canterbury Tales. Vizenor can kind of make my brain bleed sometimes, but maybe his fiction is less convoluted than his academic writing.
There are many other possibilities, which you can find links to on Aarti's blog. Remember you only need to read 1 book or short story to participate! For more details and to sign up, please see Aarti's very eloquent post at BookLust.
