Essays

Taser Buzz Kill - April 2008
A screed I wrote for The Huffington Post

There's been a lot of buzz in the press about women's Taser parties. (They're like Tupperware parties, but sell C2 Tasers instead of plastic tubs.)...

Process Porn, Part I - July 2007
more of an interview, really, for the Aqueduct blog

It appalls me, if I stop to think about it...

Process Porn, Part II - July 2007
the interview go so long we had to cut it in two

It makes sense only if 'inspiration' means vision...

As We Mean To Go On - June 2005
written by Kelley Eskridge & Nicola Griffith

I don't know how to begin this damn thing, I say. She grins and answers, Honey, don't faff about. Just tell the story.

Author Readings: A Guide - May 2005
An author reading is an informal, free event. (As in *free*. Costs you nothing. At all. Sometimes--rare, but not unheard of--there's even free food.) You can plan in advance or just show up on a whim, wearing what you like, and sit anywhere. Bring a date, bring your family, bring your fine self....

Doing it For Pleasure - written for Central Booking
Reading isn't everything--it's not meat and drink, it's not sex or a warm hearth--but it's a lot. I need it. I do it often. I do it for pleasure....

Doing the Work - written for Bold Type, April 2002
Even though I can list in my sleep the questions I'll get when this book comes out, I'll still be struck dumb when they're asked because the answers are all connected and about as easy to explain as why being alive is a good thing...

Brilliance and beauty and risk- Guest of Honour speech given at Liverpool University
A couple of times in the last few months I've seen myself described in print as a British writer. Each time, it startles me. I don't know why, exactly, because I don't think of myself as American--I'm English, born and bred, still a citizen, still with at least the remnants of a Yorkshire accent--but it does...

Writing from the Body - first published in SF Eye
In this essay I want to talk about Art, particularly literature, and the Body--about the ways in which we do and do not connect the two. It's a personal essay about how I feel about my body, my writing, and the various changes both have undergone over the years...

"Satan's Super Spawn?" - from Nature, December 1999
Initial research indicates the practice of egg donation is spurring in some regions a statistically significant alteration in both the new and controversial Raswani Social Intelligence scale and the more traditional Stanford-Binet IQ test...

Living Fiction and Storybook Lives - from Altair #2
There isn't a culture on this earth without some kind of storytelling tradition... As individuals and societies we are shaped by story: our culture and sense of self literally cannot exist without it because we only know who and what we are when we can tell a story about ourselves...

Writing Slow River: Gender and Genre - a conversation
It's a novel I have been waiting to write since I was twenty years old but didn't have the skill. To be honest, I'm not sure if I will ever have the skill to do the themes and characters justice. But two years ago I reached the point where I had to write it down, ready or not.

A Few Words About Nicola Griffith - by Kelley Eskridge
When Nicola Griffith was nine years old, she wondered how bows and arrows worked. She had probably read a book about them; she has always read books about history and people and how they shape each other. So she made a bow out of a tree branch and string. She found a stick of bamboo and whittled it to a point with a pencil sharpener...

Visitor from an Edge - by Mark W. Tiedemann
Key images that come to mind when I hear the name "Nicola Griffith": Limes squeezed dry down the neck of a Dos Equis bottle-- An impromptu tango danced to bad Muzak with Kelley while waiting (interminably) for a hotel elevator in Boston, 1989-- Sitting crosslegged on a chair before an enormous IBM Selectric in a sweltering summer heat, composing a love story (which promptly went over everybody else's head during the workshop)...

The New Aliens of Science Fiction - from Nebula Awards 30
Science fiction has always been concerned with exploring the Alien, the Not Self, the Other. Let me take you on a tour of the history of that alien, show you the broad trends, and then come back to what SF considers The Alien today.

Alien in our own Tongue - from Terra Incognita
Imagine being six years old and reading an anthropology primer about Stone Age Man: "After a hard day's search for food on the veldt, stone age man was probably glad to get back to the warm cave. No doubt he was comforted by the same everyday activities we are today..."

Layered Cities - from Paradoxa
Fiction generally embodies that which a culture knows to be true...What do we know to be true today? That civilization--art, education, democracy, law--springs from and is of the city. That, paradoxically, "inner city" has become a euphemism for poverty, despair, and injustice. We also know that there are two parts to any city--the physical infrastructure, and the people and their institutions--and that both are changing...

Nicola Griffith's The Blue Place - by L. Timmel Duchamp
On the face of it, Nicola Griffith's novel, The Blue Place, looks like a gripping thriller and tender love story that just happens to have one of the most believable and interesting characterizations to be found in any kind of fiction and a plot that serves beautifully to elaborate and exemplify it.



Audio (MP3)


Chapter One -- Part I (0.58 meg)
Chapter One -- Part II (0.3 meg)
Chapter One -- Part III (1.2 meg)
Chapter One -- Part IV (0.6 meg)
 
Chapter One -- Part I (0.39 meg)
Chapter One -- Part II (0.32 meg)
Chapter One -- Part III (0.30 meg)
Chapter One -- Part IV (0.33 meg)

 
Readings coming soon!
   



Readings coming soon!
   



First, some songs from long ago:

Bare Hands (1)
Vondel Park (1)
Reclaim the Night (1)
Night Drive (1)
Draw Me Down (2)
(1) with Janes Plane (words and music copyright Janes Plane)
(2) a capella, just me, words and music my copyright, this one's in .wav format



Second, a few radio thingies:

- KUOW interview, eighteen minutes of chat about Aud and self-defense for "The Beat," May 2007
- NPR interview, a fifteen-minute segment of "To the Best of Our Knowledge," January 2007
- Here's the whole show of the above, nearly an hour in Real Audio format (sorry)
- interview with Changesurfer radio from 1999
- "Spawn of Satan" read for Australian radio, this in Real Audio format (sorry again)

 


Links

Home Alive
A Self Defense Organization

The Heroic age
peer-reviewed journal on early medieval north european

Scitech Daily Review
teleportation? cold fusion? find out here

How Stuff Works
many questions answered

La Boheme
a place to buy real absinthe (tastes awful--you've been warned)

Future Quest
mine host

Butler's Irish Chocolates
delicious--but the shipping process is slow

Kelley's home page
beauty, brains, books, beer...

Kartoo.com
les cartes de recherche (visually-oriented French search engine)

Lisa Gold
freelance research services: an "Indiana Jones of the world of letters." (Neal Stephenson)

Alisha Art
a woman who paints, and designs (one of her pix hangs in our house--good stuff)

Kissingfingertips.com
because "a film can change your life." Excellent reviews of lesbian film & tv


Time-wasting Fun

Mr. Picasso Head
Have fun making your very own cubist portrait. Very easy to make embarrassingly lame pictures.

Snowglobe
Spend endless minutes watching children build a snowman (and hit each other, and get eaten). Then shake it all up and begin again.

Singing Horses
Horses sing a capella. If you click them one at a time. Extreme mindlessness.

Church Sign Generator
Make your very own church sign. Proclaim your love (or hate, or pet peeve) to the world.

Angry Alien
Jaws in 30 seconds. Alien in 30 seconds. Enacted by animated bunnies. (Oh, just trust me.)


Community Resources

Home Alive
A Self Defense Organization (and, yep, it's worth listing twice)

ACLU: Lesbian and Gay Rights
Self explanatory. I hope.

Stonewall Immigration Group
The place for information on LGBT UK immigration issues.

Portland Police Bureau: Women Strength
Providing free self-defense classes and personal safety workshops to people around the Portland area.

Center for Anti-Violence Education
A catalyst for change in the lives of women, transgender people 1, teen women, children, and other communities.

rainn.org
It's the rape, abuse and incest national network, a national hotline founded by Tori Amos (or call 1-800-656-HOPE).

IMPACT
Person-in-a-padded-suit full contact self-defence course that does women-only classes.

American Women's Self-Defense Assocation
Email these people for instructors in your area.

The Animal Rescue Site
feed animals free--a sort of animal Hunger Site

EMERGE
domestic abuser education programme--designed to change the behaviour of the abuser, not the abused

Feminist Karate Union
Women taught to black belt level by women who were themselves taught by women, and now teaching a fourth generation.

Bookshare.org
If you don't see so well but like to read, this is the place to visit.

Canary Fund
Early detection saves live. Click here if you vant to live...

 

Interviews

Free fiction download

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