Brief announcements

Threadable readings (science fiction, immigration, class) + land ownership resources

Just a short post here to gather together a few loose ends:

• I put together a post, pinned to the top of this newsletter’s home page, that has links to all of the Threadable-related posts on Land Ownership, as well as the resources for learning about Land Back, which came up during one of those discussions. I didn’t email it out but it’s there if you want to share or refer to it. I’ll probably add to it as time goes on, as I do for walking resources on my website.

• The Threadable reading circle on The Commons & Belonging in Science Fiction & Fantasy has started, beginning with Hao Jingfang’s short story “Folding Beijing” and her companion essay “I Want to Write a History of Inequality.” Clicking this link should take you to the reading circle if you have the app installed (still for iOS only; you can download it here), though my history with that isn’t spectacular! But it should at least take you to the app, where you can find the reading circle. The second reading will be Rebecca Roanhorse’s “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience” followed by Octavia Butler’s story “Bloodchild” (print only) and Nnedi Okorafor’s “The Book of Phoenix.”
  
  I think this one’s going to be a lot of fun. I’m not planning on doing individual Substack posts for each reading as I did for land ownership because talking about fiction is very different from summarizing nonfiction research and I’m allergic to reading or writing literary criticism, but I will talk about these stories and make sure to tell you what we’re reading. They will, I think, integrate naturally into discussions of and writing about the commons and how we each envision sharing a world, and our own place in it. There are a lot of fantastic science fiction writers working right now whose stories I’m excited to talk about with people.

• There are also two other Threadable circles I’ve joined and am reading in: Immigration, run by Julie Schwietert Collazo; and The Viral Underclass, run by Dr. Elise Mitchell.
  Dr. Mitchell is an historian of health and healing in the Black Atlantic and her first reading, from Steven Thrasher’s book The Viral Underclass, was eye-opening for me. I love the way she (and Thrasher) are thinking about pandemics and public health.
  I think of Julie Schwietert Collazo as a comrade. We’ve known each other online for years, and she long ago became someone I looked up to for her talent, strength, and generosity, including to other writers like me. She’s written several books and also co-founded Immigrant Families Together. She’s just an incredible human and I love having her as a guide reading books like Undocumented Motherhood.

• The international science + literature Reclaiming the Commons conference in Portland, Oregon, July 9-12. If you are around and interested in this subject, the conference looks amazing. There are hundreds of sessions with speakers and presenters from all over the world, on subjects from fisheries commons to narrative (that’s my panel) to ecopoetics to fire

• This is unlikely to be a conference I can make it to, but I really hope one of you out there can: The Religious Origins of White Supremacy: Johnson v. M’Intosh and the Doctrine of Christian Discovery, hosted by the Indigenous Values Initiative and Syracuse University, December 8-10. They are currently calling for panel proposals and will soon be calling for art proposals, so please share with interested students, artists, and researchers.

Been getting outside a bit more without snow boots on! I wear those things day in and day out for about six months of the year. My feet feel much lighter now and I can venture to places where the bald eagles evidently hang out.