2011 James Tiptree, Jr. Award winner Redwood and Wildfire, by Andrea Hairston, is about a hoodoo woman who migrates from backwoods Georgia north to modern Chicago at the turn of the 20th century.

A stunning speculative fiction debut -- and a refreshing change from spaceships and swords -- is Karen Lord's novel Redemption in Indigo.

Having finished Connie Willis' Nebula-winning time travel opus, Blackout and All Clear, it seems to me that All Clear corrects Blackout's foibles, and makes them both worth reading.

Theodore Sturgeon award, John Campbell award, obits, a Bob Mould autobio, Alison Bechdel a professor -- all sorts of random news on books.

The idea that authors' gender automatically renders their work inferior is rubbish. Literary sexism = rubbish. So much for V.S. Naipaul. And while we're on the subject, check out the SF Mistressworks list.