about Oscar Wao (who is way realer than Carl Brandon)

Throughout high school he did the usual ghettonerd things: he collected comic books, he played role-playing games, he worked at a hardware store to save money for an outdated Apple IIe. He was an introvert who trembled with fear every time gym class rolled around. He watched nerd shows like “Doctor Who” and “Blake’s 7,” could tell you the difference between a Veritech fighter and a Zentraedi battle pod, and he used a lot of huge-sounding nerd words like “indefatigable” and “ubiquitous” when talking to niggers who would barely graduate from high school. He read Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman novels (his favorite character was, of course, Raistlin) and became an early devotee of the End of the World. He devoured every book he could find that dealt with the End Times, from John Christopher’s “Empty World” to Hal Lindsey’s “The Late Great Planet Earth.”

From the short story The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao which became a novel that won the Pulitzer prize.

So, comfortably racist sf & f genre? Take your genre authenticity and shove it. When we do us, when fangirls and fanboys write our chromatic realities, when we verb noire, we rise above you and garner awards that you couldn't dream of in your sf & f ghetto. You don't even need to recognize. Because those that have made you outcasts on account of your fidelity to genre? You've elided yourself. When Mike Chabon is given geek cred and folk like PAD are laughed at by other white writers who are publishing in the New Yorker and any Norton Anthology of choice? You've erased yourself from the conversation. When other scions of other racist institutions see us writing/creating/speaking our truths to power? And when we rock hard at it, they prefer to call us 'magical realists' or 'psychic storytellers' or award winning geniuses or whatever, and our books have ghosts, and tech, and monsters (that aren't based on us, though they are sometimes based on the likes of you). White people that don't consider you colleagues award us with Litcrit honors and this after those of us who write like such outsell you. When it comes down to is that amongst the fanboy and fangirl hordes, there are those who become writers within the genre, but outside of 'dom: what is often said of genre names that do come up in conversation is something not unlike, "Will who?"

ETA: A nerd. Not necessarily from the ghetto.

Verb Noire Fundraiser!

Keep helping, y'all!

What is verb_noire? In the words of thewayoftheid it's:

To celebrate the works of talented, underrepresented authors and deliver them to a readership that demands more.

What does that mean? That if you're a talented writer with an awesome, original story about a POC girl/guy/transgendered character, there is a place for you. And that if you're a sci-fi/fantasy fan who has grown tired of the constant whitewashing of these genres, there is a place for you, too.

Now that isn't to say that we will accept ANY ol' manuscript as long as it features a POC protagonist, because we will NOT. What we're looking for is quality, soul and PASSION, something that will resonate with readers for years to come.
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I can tell you out front that this money will solely be spent on the startup costs and not (despite my partner's obsessions) on hookers and blow. We'll pay our web designer, handle the licensing fees (so we can be a real business ya'll) and set up our equipment so that no one's work is lost.