News & Things: It's a terrible life. You're a terrible life.

Kickstarter Indiegogo of the Week

Rachel Halpern wants your help launching Inscription Magazine, a free, online fiction magazine for teens. They want to publish high quality YA fiction with diverse characters, by diverse authors:

“It’s hard to be a teen. Young adult fiction helped a lot of us get through it. But not everyone is equally represented in the fiction that’s already out there. Awards for YA fiction disproportionately go to novels about male characters; fewer than two percent of published novels have LGBT main characters; and we need more stories featuring strong characters of color, characters with disabilities, and characters from diverse religious, socioeconomic, and cultural backgrounds.

We want to make sure every young reader can find themselves in their fiction, to see themselves as the heroes of their own lives — and we want them to enter worlds full of all the kinds of people they know, and all sorts of people they’ve never met. And we want to make it available for free, online, accessible to everyone.”

At $3,420 of their $5000 goal, and with 28 days to go, Inscription is well on its way to being fully funded. But what, in addition to some great, new fiction, are your potential rewards? $20 gets you stickers. $50 gets you three e-books. $100 gets you a full year’s subscription, along with a print anthology at the end of the year. Not too shabby!

News

The Library of Lost Books

Susan Kruse, and her crack team of artists, is turning old library books into art! When older books are replaced and phased out of circulation they’re eventually pulped. Susan Kruse thought, why not make them into sculptures?

Ms. Male Character – Tropes vs Women in Video Games

The latest episode of Tropes vs Women in Video Games looks at female versions of established male characters.

It’s a Wonderful Life Sequel in the Works

I hate this movie, so don’t expect wailing and gnashing of teeth from me. But do expect a hell of a lot of sturm und drang from Americans facing down the neverending canibalisation of their most precious national icons. So they’re making a sequel. It couldn’t possibly be worse. Oh wait.

In a weird and uncomfortable callback, “Karolyn Grimes, who played George Bailey’s daughter “Zuzu” in the original, will return for the “Wonderful Life” sequel as an angel who shows Bailey’s unlikeable grandson (also named George Bailey) how much better off the world would have been had he never been born.” VOM.

Doris Lessing: A Model for Every Writer Coming From the Back of Beyond

Margaret Atwood wrote a tribute to Lessing for the Guardian:

She was political in the most basic sense, recognising the manifestations of power in its many forms. She was spiritual as well, exploring the limits and pitfalls that came with being human, especially after she became an adherent of Sufism. As a writer she was inventive and brave, branching out into science fiction in her Canopus In Argos series at a time when it was a dodgy thing for a “mainline” novelist to do. She was also very down-to-earth, having famously remarked “Oh Christ!” when informed in 2007 that she had won the Nobel prize. She was only the eleventh woman to do so, and never expected it; a lack of expectation that was in itself a kind of artistic freedom, for if you don’t think of yourself as an august personage, you don’t have to behave yourself. You can still kick up your heels and push the limits, and that was what interested Doris Lessing, always. Her celebrated experiment with a pseudonym as a demonstration of the hurdles facing unknown writers being just one example. (Her “Jane Somers” novels were reviewed as pale imitations of Doris Lessing, which must have been a little daunting for her.)

Commentary

“New Adult” and Comics

In order to cope with the influx of sexier YA novels, the publishing industry coined the term “new adult.” As a genre, it occupies an in-between space: its books have a YA sensibility, but don’t fade to black. Gina Gagliano of First Second asks: could New Adult work for comics?

Terry Richardson: Fashion’s Shameful Secret

Uncle Terry, the fashion world’s favourite hipster-creep photographer, is, according to Hadley Freeman, kind of boring. She calls his photos overexposed and bland, and she points out that he’s been repeatedly accused of sexual harassment. So why, she asks, is he still a thing?

New Kate Or Die Comicstrip at Comics Alliance, Say Something

“It’s been quite a time for accusations of bad behaviour in the world of comics. You’ve probably read the articles and tweets in question, so I’ll just jump right in: sexism in comics is still a problem.”

I Am Not The Other Woman. I Am Another Voice.

Spurred by Tess Fowler’s tweets and subsequent post last week, Anne Scherbina wrote about her own harassment by Brian Wood, and about the big picture of sexism in comics:

“Women in comics are still in a boys club. A clubhouse with a sign on the door saying “no girls allowed”. To get into the clubhouse, you have to convince the boys in charge that you belong there. In talking with Tess and hearing about other women who have been in similar positions, the common theme seems to be that we all feel like if we’d just been able to keep up with the big boys, we wouldn’t have found ourselves in these situations. I think a lot of us have been shaming ourselves for a long time about our failure to “play the game” successfully.”

Nerds and Male Privilege: Tess Fowler and Comic Harassment

Geeky advice columnist Dr. Nerdlove talks about male privilege in comics, and issues a call to action for all men: it’s time for things to change.