"You are here to be swallowed up"

Here's the promotional blurb from the oh-so-soon to be released The Intersection of Fantasy and Native America, From H.P. Lovecraft to Leslie Marmon Silko, which I co-edited, and which includes my former Mythcon Scholar Guest of Honor keynote speech (with its call for further cross-disciplinary study) as the opening chapter:

A number of contemporary Native American authors incorporate elements of fantasy into their fiction, while a number of non-Native fantasy authors incorporate elements of Native America into their storytelling. New insights can be gained by comparing fantasy texts by Native and non-Native authors. Nevertheless, few experts on fantasy study American Indian texts, and few experts on Native American studies consider the subject of fantasy. Editors David D. Oberhelman and Amy H. Sturgis have assembled an international, multi-ethnic, and cross-disciplinary group of scholars to consider the meaningful and extraordinary ways in which fantasy and Native America intersect. These scholars examine classic texts by American Indian authors such as Louise Erdrich, Gerald Vizenor, and Leslie Marmon Silko, as well as non-Native fantasists such as H.P. Lovecraft, J.R.R. Tolkien, and J.K. Rowling, among others. In so doing, these essayists pioneer new ways of thinking about fantasy and Native America, and challenge other academics, writers, and lovers of literature to do the same.

I'm incredibly pleased with the excellent essays we received, and I can't wait to share them with readers when this volume is published. It won't be long now! It's a matter of mere weeks.


* In other news, I've updated two of my lists on young adult dystopias. Again! Here they are, FYI:

( --A Working List of Young Adult Dystopian Fiction, With Links )

( --Sources About YA Dystopias )

* And speaking of young adult dystopias, the blog of Gillian Philip, the author of one of my favorite recent YA dystopias, Bad Faith (2008), is now available via LJ here: gillianphilip.


"Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could."
— Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum: A Novel