The Coode Street Podcast

Episode 508: Ten Minutes with Terri Windling

Ten minutes with... is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they're reading right now and what's getting them through these difficult times.

Multiple World Fantasy Award winner Terri Windling joins Gary to discuss life in a rural English village, her current reading on the connections between oral storytelling and literature, old favourites like Patricia A. McKillip, Robin McKinley, Ursula Le Guin, and Graham Joyce, a new Center for the Study of Fantasy and the Fantastic at the University of Glasgow, and the Modern Fairies Project supported by the Universities of Oxford and Sheffield.

Some of Terri's work can be found at her Patreon.

Books mentioned include:

• The Wood Wife by Terri Windling
• The Moon Wife by Terri Windling (forthcoming)
• The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative by Thomas King
• Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country: Traveling Through the Land of My Ancestors by Louise Erdrich
• The Way of Imagination by Scott Russell Sanders
• Comet Weather by Liz Williams
• The Gift by Ursula K. Le Guin
• The Limits of Enchantment by Graham Joyce
• Flyaway by Kathleen Jennings

Episode 507: Ten Minutes with Sheree Renée Thomas

Ten minutes with... is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they're reading right now and what's getting them through these difficult times.

World Fantasy Award winner Sheree Renée Thomas talks with Gary about old horror movies like Burnt Offerings and Trilogy of Terror as comfort viewing, the 20th anniversary of her groundbreaking Dark Matter anthology and how the SFF landscape has changed since then, the influence of Octavia E. Butler, and different kinds of music.

Books mentioned include:

• Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora by Sheree Renée Thomas ed.
• Dark Matter: Reading the Bones by Sheree Renée Thomas ed.
• Nine Bar Blues: Stories from an Ancient Future by Sheree Renée Thomas
• Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement by Monica M. White
• The Lark Ascending: The Music of the British Landscape by Richard King
• Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh
• The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste
• The Deep by Rivers Solomon
• The Blues Line: Blues Lyrics from Leadbelly to Muddy Waters by Eric Sackheim & Jonathan Shahn
• The Big Book of Modern Fantasy by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer eds.

Episode 506: Ten Minutes with CSE Cooney

Ten minutes with... is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they're reading right now and what's getting them through these difficult times.

World Fantasy Award winner C.S.E. Cooney joins Gary to talk about the joys of rediscovering reading during these strange times; reading Don Quixote aloud; enjoying Ellen Kushner’s forthcoming novel along with work by Sarah Monette / Katherine Addison, Martha Wells, and Sherry Thomas; finishing her first full-length novel; and collaborating with her husband on a screenplay.

Books mentioned include:

• Desdemona and the Deep by C.S.E. Cooney
• Don Quixote by Cervantes (trans. Edith Grossman)
• Doctrine of Labyrinths Series by Sarah Monette
• The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
• The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison
• The Lady Sherlock Series by Sherry Thomas
• The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells
• Imperial Radch Series by Ann Leckie

Episode 505: Ten Minutes with Mimi Mondal

Ten minutes with... is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they're reading right now and what's getting them through these difficult times.

Locus Award winner and Hugo and Nebula nominee Mimi Mondal and Gary K. Wolfe chat about gardening and cooking Indian food during the lockdown, researching the ancient history of India and Bangladesh (including the origins of Tibetan Buddhism), cultural references in the Avatar franchise, and, of course, what she’s been reading.

Books mentioned include:

• The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu
• Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang
• Six Months, Three Days, Five Others by Charlie Jane Anders
• Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories by Vandana Singh
• A People’s Future of the United States by Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams, eds.

Episode 504: Ten Minutes with Veronica Schanoes

Ten minutes with... is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they're reading right now and what's getting them through these difficult times.

Shirley Jackson Award-winning writer and scholar Veronica Schanoes joins Gary to talk about what lockdown is like with a 5-year-old in virtual pre-K, the appeal of classic detective stories in depicting a world in which rational solutions work, the portrayal of Jews in the English fairy tale tradition, the influence of Jane Yolen, and her forthcoming short story collection.

Books mentioned include:

• Burning Girls and Other Stories by Veronica Schanoes
• All-of-a-Kind Family series by Sydney Taylor
• The Inquisitor’s Apprentice by Chris Moriarty
• The Shortest Way to Hades and Hilary Tamar mysteries by Sarah Caudwell
• The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang

Episode 503: Ten Minutes with Suzy McKee Charnas

Ten minutes with... is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they're reading right now and what's getting them through these difficult times.

Gary talks with Hugo and Nebula Award winner Suzy McKee Charnas about the delights of a public library during lockdown, her own pioneering work in feminist SF and vampire fiction, a new novel about Bram Stoker, returning to the reliable work of Poul Anderson, Ursula K. Le Guin, Thomas A. Disch, and Joanna Russ, and her own forthcoming titles from Aqueduct Press.

Books mentioned include:

• The Holdfast Chronicles by Suzy McKee Charnas
• The Vampire Tapestry by Suzy McKee Charnas
• Shadowplay by Joseph O’Connor
• Reluctant Voyagers by Elisabeth Vonarburg
• Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
• Comet's Tale: How the Dog I Rescued Saved My Life by Steven D. Wolf
• Into Oblivion: An Icelandic Thriller by Arnaldur Indridason
• Paper Sun by S.J. Rozan
• Night of the Jaguar by Michael Gruber

Episode 502: Ten Minutes with Tim Pratt

Ten minutes with... is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they're reading right now and what's getting them through these difficult times.

Hugo award-winning writer and longtime Locus editor Tim Pratt talks with Gary about serving on juries for two different awards in the same year (the LA Times Ray Bradbury Prize and the Philip K. Dick Award), worrying about the fires that everyone in California worries about at this time of year, the appeal of mystery and crime fiction, and of fantasy novels that only imply a larger world rather than spelling it out in detail, and his own forthcoming alternate universe novel, Doors of Sleep.

Books mentioned include:

• Doors of Sleep by Tim Pratt
• The Marla Mason Series by Tim Pratt
• The Axiom Series by Tim Pratt
• The Four Profound Weaves by R.B. Lemberg
• Road Out of Winter by Alison Stine
• The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware
• Big Sky by Kate Atkinson

Episode 501: Ten Minutes with Chen Qiufan

Ten minutes with... is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they're reading right now and what's getting them through these difficult times.

One of China’s most widely-honoured SF writers, Chen Qiufan (or Stanley Chan, for English speakers and as a tribute to Stanley Kubrick) joins Gary for a fascinating discussion of apocalyptic literature seen from a perspective of a culture that views the future as repeating itself rather than ending, the importance shifting patterns of growth to stress employment and sustainability, neuroscience as it might relate to meditation or Buddhism, and the uses of AI (including the language model GPT-2) in fiction as it develops its capacity for natural language.

Books mentioned include:

• Waste Tide by Chen Qiufan
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy
• The Wastelands by Stephen King
• Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy by Evan Thompson
• AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order by Kai-Fu Lee