Anthology call for submissions:
She’s Such a GeekAn Anthology by and for Women Obsessed with Computers, Science, Comic Books, Gaming, Spaceships, and Revolution Slated for Fall 2006
Geeks are taking over the world. They make the most popular movies and games, pioneer new ways to communicate using technology, and create new ideas that will change the future. But the stereotype is that only men can be geeks. So when are we going to hear from the triumphant female nerds whose stories of outer space battles will inspire generations, and whose inventions will change the future? Right now. Female geeks are busting out of the labs and into the spotlight. They have the skills and knowledge that can inspire social progress, scientific breakthroughs, and change the world for the better, and they’re making their voices heard, some for the first time, in Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders’ book
She’s Such a Geek. This anthology will celebrate women who have flourished in the male-dominated realms of technical and cultural arcana. We’re looking for a wide range of personal essays about the meaning of female nerdhood by women who are in love with genomics, obsessed with blogging, learned about sex from
Dungeons and Dragons, and aren’t afraid to match wits with men or computers. The essays in
She’s Such a Geek will explain what it means to be passionately engaged with technical or obscure topics—and how to deal with it when people tell you that your interests are weird, especially for a girl. This book aims to bust stereotypes of what it means to be a geek, as well as what it means to be female. More than anything,
She’s Such a Geek is a celebration and call to arms: it’s a hopeful book which looks forward to a day when women will pilot spaceships, invent molecular motors, design the next ultra-tiny supercomputer, write epics, and run the government. We want introspective essays that explain what being a geek has meant to you. Describe how you’ve fought stereotypes to be accepted among nerds. Explore why you are obsessed with topics and ideas that are supposed to be “for boys only.” Tell us how you felt the day you realized that you would be devoting the rest of your life to discovering algorithms or collecting comic books. We want strong, personal writing that is also smart and critical. We don’t mind if you use the word “fuck,” and we don’t mind if you use the word “telomerase.” Be celebratory, polemical, wistful, angry, and just plain dorky. Possible topics include:
* what turned you into a geek
* your career in science, technology, or engineering
* growing up geeky
* being a geek in high school today
* battling geek stereotypes (i.e racial stereotypes and geekdom, cultural analysis of geek chic and the truth about nerds, the idea that women have to choose between being sexually desirable and smart, stereotypes about geek professions such as computer programmers)
* sex and dating among geeks
* science fiction fandom
* role-playing game or comic-book subcultures
* the joys of math
* blogging or videogames
* female geek bonding
* geek role models for women
* feminist commentary on geek culture
* women’s involvement in DIY science and technology groups
* stories from women involved in geek pop and underground cultures. These might include comic book writers, science fiction writers, electronic music musicians, and women interested in the gaming world.
* women’s web networks and web zine grrrl culture
* issues of sexism in any or all of the above themes
Editors: Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders are geeky women writers. Annalee is a contributing editor at
Wired magazine and writes the syndicated column Techsploitation. Charlie is the author of
Choir Boy (Soft Skull Press) and publisher of
other magazine.
Publisher: Seal Press, an imprint of Avalon Publishing Group, publishes groundbreaking books by and for women in a variety of topics.
Deadline: January 15, 2006
Length: 3,000-6,000 words
Format: Essays must be typed, double-spaced, and paginated. Please include your address, phone number, email address, and a short bio on the last page. Essays will not be returned.
Submitting: Send essay electronically as a Document or Rich Text Format file to Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders at
sheissuchageek@gmail.com.
Payment: $100 plus two books
Reply: Please allow until February 15 for a response. If you haven’t received a response by then, please assume your essay has not been selected. It is not possible to reply to every submission.
shirt: charcoal polo sport
loc: comCtr
temp: -3 C
sound: Great Big Sea,
play
Surprise episode of Wedding happening across the street right now, 3 pm start. Liz thinks that the cabbie who drove her back from the StuporStore is singing at the reception. The party will be big! The party will outlive the marriage. Every year rain or shine they will remember their wedding.
Hit's gettin' bedder tha more ah spek it.
We walked back out to Hawkeye Island along one of the beaches where I used to play as a kid. A beach often busy with little shorebirds running in the surf line. This ship’s hull has been in the bank there for many years. Never visible until a few years ago, it is slowly revealing itself. I wish I had a large building lobby, or sunken floor area in a living room, vast enough to hold and display this wooden, pegged-together hull. A space with high open-raftered wood ceiling, skylights, a field stone wall with fireplace and a square of comfy chairs with end tables in the corners. But that’s the stuff of dreams . . .
In late afternoon, while we were doing the gift unwrapping thing, Ruth & Mike’s black Labrador, Abbey, got into the pantry and attacked Mom’s cherry pound cake. It was on a low shelf. Dad thinks he accidentally left the pantry’s folding door open. That’s their normal position for the folding door even though it jams up the space in front of the microwave. I always close it or I’m forever banging into it and/or the pull-out shelf underneath the microwave.
This photo is of the tree though the living room window with the reflected Fishermen’s Reserve giving depth and colour. An interesting blend, not double exposed or a negative sandwich. Something my eye saw that the camera actually captured well. I like it!
Okay, I’ll start with one moving sunset tree photo taken from inside the bus as we approached the Halifax International Airport exit. 
Seaforth is located by road on Highway 207 on the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia. Eastern being east of Halifax, but the latest expansion of Halifax absorbed Seaforth and much more into the Halifax Regional Municipality (or HRM). My parents’ house is on the shore of Three Fathom Harbour. Beyond the string of low-tide connected islands there’s nothing until you hit Portugal. Beyond the other side of Three-Fathom Harbour we can see the mouth of Halifax Harbour.
Out the kitchen window one sees the garden plots where many vegetables are grown and far beyond them a cluster of shacks and sheds.
How long the Fishermen's Reserves has been here, I don’t know. Since whenever the Causeway Road was build to connect Hawkeye Island to the mainland. I’ve been coming out here all my life, since long before my parents bought a micro cottage and land here upon which to build this house. We came here to buy live lobster and fresh fish in season directly from the fishermen. [We still do.] We came here to dig clams and to enjoy the beaches.
The reserve holds a crazy mix of working fishing season shacks, equipment sheds, wharves, boats, nets, lobster traps, crab pots, summer and artist cottages, human-loon-built structures, and mangy feline-leukemia sick cats fed by do-gooder city crazies we’d all like to put the run to. Some to the buildings are abandoned, Every year or two one gets lost to fire. two years ago Hurrican Jaun claimed several buildings and wharves and scattered the contents far and wide. Beyond the reserve is a breakwater, walkable at low tide, that connects to Wedge Island and Rat Rock. Beyond them is the vast Atlantic Ocean.
The scattered young, city-planted maples near the boat ramp all supported small ice-structures hanging of their truynks and lower branches. They drew me closer to photograph the trees and ice.
Once I got close enough to really see the trees I was struck by the floodwater-forced weavings in the wefts of branches. From the downriver-backside the branches were clearly visible.
From the front, the upriver side, the weaving is truly great: a tightly pressed arrangement of grasses, corn stalks and cobs filling the fan of tree branches.
The deadline for the C$100,000 Griffin Poetry Prize is approaching. Books must be submitted postmarked no later than December 31, 2005 for books published between January 1 and December 31, 2005. Please remember to complete all necessary customs/duties paperwork when shipping your entries to ensure delays are avoided.
Haven't blogged in a week. Been too busy. Not surprisingly, I am still weird . . . 
Jelena, of RAD a.d., beside one of the many historic :-) site plaques in Fredericton.
The weather was all over the place. Last Sunday was a warm plus 6 C so we went out for a walk along the Saint John River. This photo is a view from Devon looking downriver.
Wednesday, this week, was -12 C with wind and a -19 sensation, but without the snowbomb happening in other parts of New Brunswick. I rented a car, a grey Neon, and we roadtripped to the shore> through Harvey to St. Stephen and Jelena's first view of the evil empire across the St Croix River (but without a visa to enter), a church of Tim Horton's pit stop (her first time there for coffee and donuts); then along the shore to St Andrews and fish & chips lunch, a dollar store visit; and out the twisty Glebe Road on the shore to and through Chamcook; and back to Fredericton with a stop at Pete's for a bag of live seabugs of the farewell feast (and, not surprisingly, Jelena's first lobster & fiddleheads. Liz made a great seafood chowder to start the meal (with Schooner lager in memory of her dad).
Last night, Jelena and I watched The Beatles' movie HELP. Spoof on themselves, espionage movies, comic skiing and more. Some really great laughs! Spontaneously borrowed it from the public library when looking for their copy of Robert Rodriguez's low budget, indie masterpiece, El Miriachi.
Postcard from the corkboard beside my computer. I've had it several years now, from one of my travels to or through Montreal. It's a real fav for the image.
