Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy

We're delighted to be able to bring you this panel discussion from Bristol's Festival of Ideas, in collaboration with Bristol's Women's Literature Festival and Handheld Press, recorded live in Foyles in Bristol.

The Panel

Emma Geen is a Bristol based author and lecturer in Creative writing. Her first novel The Many Selves of Katherine North was published by Bloomsbury. Several of her short stories feature in Stories of the Stranger, published by Bene Factum Publishing, Her articles have appeared in The Guardian, Lit Hub and The New Statesman. She is an associate lecturer at Bath Spa University.

Liz Williams is a British science fiction writer. The Ghost Sister, her first novel, was published in 2001. Both this novel and her next, Empire of Bones (2002) were nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award. She is also the author of the Inspector Chen series. She is the daughter of a stage magician and a Gothic novelist. She holds a PhD in Philosophy of Science from Cambridge. She has had short stories published in Asimov’s, Interzone, The Third Alternative and Visionary Tongue.

Cheryl Morgan is a science fiction critic and publisher. She is the owner of Wizard’s Tower Press and the Wizard’s Tower Books ebook store. Previously she edited the Hugo Award winning magazine, Emerald City (Best Fanzine, 2004). She also won a Hugo for Best Fan Writer in 2009. She is a Co-Chair of Out Stories Bristol and lectures regularly on both trans history and science fiction and fantasy literature.

Kate Macdonald is a literary historian and has taught and researched science fiction and fantasy fiction for many years. She reviews sff for Foundation and other critical organs, and has recently had some of her own sff short stories published. She runs Handheld Press, an independent publishing company based outside Bath, which specialises in the recovery of forgotten fiction, and has republished classic fantasy fiction by Sylvia Townsend Warner, and science fiction by Rose Macaulay and Vonda N McIntyre.

Download, relax and listen. Then buy all the books.

show notes

The Cosmic Shed was named as one of the Guardian's Favourite podcasts and you can subscribe here
The panel were talking as part of Bristol's Festival of Ideas
The event was also put on by Bristol's Womens Literature Festival
You can hear our interview with William Gibson here