I was (OK–I admit it; *toe scuff*) ego-surfing around the internet and came across a find: the Cascadia Subduction Zone. It’s a quarterly literary magazine that…well, I’ll let them tell you:
The Cascadia Subduction Zone aims to bring reviews, criticism, interviews, intelligent essays, and flashes of creative artwork (visual and written) to a readership hungry for discussion of work by not only men but also women.
I haven’t read their review of UP AGAINST IT yet (and of course I could end up in a quivering puddle of angst when I do *writer brain; sigh*), but regardless of what they think of my own work, I LOVE the fact that there are people out in the world who are casting their gaze onto works by women.
Speaking of which, I was delighted to see that CSZ reviews Andrea Hairston’s fine new fantasy novel, REDWOOD AND WILDFIRE (which by the way, you should definitely go out right now and buy). She’s a writer who deserves a broad readership. Check her out.
In CSZ’s words, here is their mission:
The relationship between readers and reviewers interests us. We want to bring attention to work critics largely ignore and offer a wider, less narrowly conceived view of the literary sphere. In short, we will review work that interests us, regardless of its genre or the gender of its author. We will blur the boundaries between critical analysis, review, poetry, fiction, and visual arts. And we will do our best to offer our readers a forum for discussion that takes the work of women as vital and central rather than marginal. What we see, what we talk about, and how we talk about it matters. Seeing, recognizing, and understanding is what makes the world we live in. And the world we live in is, itself, a sort of subduction zone writ large. Pretending that the literary world has not changed and is not changing is like telling oneself that Earth is a solid, eternally stable ball of rock.
Well said, and goddess-speed.
