She Moves! She Speaks!

         Today’s post is to share a number of recent videos featuring yours truly, star of words and pictures, and now moving pictures, too.  In truth, it’s always a little horrifying to see myself on video - the voice that sounds so strange, the hair that’s poking up all wrong - but I stand by my message, so I’m going to share.

        First up, the recording of my recent on-line author reading is now available on Strong Women-Strange Worlds’s YouTube channel.  The past three events are now available there, both in their entirety and each individual author’s reading as a separate snippet.  Here’s my snippet, in which I read three (very slightly abridged) creatures from On the Virtues of Beasts of the Realms of Imagination.  I hope you enjoy them!  And then by all means go enjoy some of the other readings.  (New videos will be added, both going forward and getting through our earlier events, so subscribe to the SWSW YouTube channel to be notified when new content is available.)

        Secondly, here’s a short video made last month by a group of local high school seniors for a school project highlighting a community organization.  They interviewed me about Needham Open Studios, as well as filming some scenes at our recent NOS Inside-Out art sale.

        While I’m at it, I’ll share some slightly less brand-new videos that are also available.  Here is the entirety of my talk about “The Fantastic Bestiary” as presented at Balticon 55 in May.  Unlike the other videos I’m sharing, it’s not a mere snippet, but it’s chock-full of fabulous medieval art - plus it also includes a reading of another creature from my bestiary at the 43:25 mark.  (Be sure to turn off the closed-captioning unless you actually need it, because it’s auto-generated and has some pretty bad inaccuracies!  Plus, it covers up some of the pictures.)

        Finally, I’ll include a video I may have linked before, made for the Medfield Holiday Art Show last December.  In it I talk mostly about making art, with just a little about writing.  (I’m hoping to take part in the Medfield Holiday Stroll in person this year, but we shall see what December brings…)

        And as a non-video bonus, an interview from the Boston Book Festival in June, in which I and fellow member of Broad Universe E.C. Ambrose discuss why speculative fiction by underrepresented voices is especially important (and fun).  You can read that here.

        Yeah, in all these interviews I’m hitting the same themes over and over: how art can remind us to appreciate and share the beauty all around us, how imagination can help us make the world a better place, how enjoying art and writing together can connect us…  But I think it’s worth repeating, and I hope you enjoy seeing at least some of these varied versions of the message!  (And please try to be tolerant of any bad hair you may witness.)

[Strong Women-Strange Worlds First Friday QuickReads, October 1, 2021;

Video made by K. Harris, N. Kelleher, and S. Cai for the Greater Boston Project, September 2021;

Balticon 55 presentation “The Fantastic Bestiary,” Baltimore Science Fiction Society, May 2021;

Medfield Holiday Stroll and Tree Lighting broadcast, December 2020.]