{"id":26071,"date":"2019-08-02T08:59:35","date_gmt":"2019-08-02T12:59:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=26071"},"modified":"2019-08-02T09:04:19","modified_gmt":"2019-08-02T13:04:19","slug":"rachel-swirsky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2019\/08\/02\/rachel-swirsky\/","title":{"rendered":"Nibble New York cheesecake in L.A. with Nebula Award-winning writer Rachel Swirsky in Episode 101 of Eating the Fantastic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eating the Fantastic’s second century begins with the last of three meals you\u2019re getting to eavesdrop on from this\u00a0year’s Nebula Awards weekend in Los Angeles, following two comic book legends — Gerry Conway<\/a> in Episode 99 and Mark Evanier<\/a> in Episode 100.<\/p>\n

This episode\u2019s guest is Rachel Swirsky<\/a>, who\u2019s won some Nebula Awards of her own — for her novella “The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen\u2019s Window” in 2010 and her short story “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love\u201d in 2013. She\u2019s also been a Hugo Award, World Fantasy Award, and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award nominee. She was the founding editor of the\u00a0PodCastle\u00a0podcast, co-edited the anthology People of the Book: A Decade of Jewish Science Fiction & Fantasy<\/em>, \u00a0and served as vice president of the\u00a0Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America\u00a0in 2013.<\/p>\n

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We got together for brunch the Saturday morning of the Nebula Awards weekend at Lovi’s Delicatessan<\/a> in Calabasas, California where we chatted over brisket, latke, and of course, cheesecake.<\/p>\n

We discussed what it was like to be critiqued by Octavia Butler at the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop, how she learned there’s no inherent goodness in being concise in one’s writing, the generational shift in mainstream literature’s acceptance of science fiction, why she’s an anarchist (though she’s really not), what she learned about writing as a reporter covering pinball professionally, how the things most people say are impossible actually aren’t, why you shouldn’t base your self-worth on your accomplishments, how to deal with writers block and impostor syndrome (and the way they’re sometimes connected), the proper way to depict mental illness in fiction, why whenever she writes erotica it turns out to be depressing, how she survived the controversy over “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love,” and much more.<\/p>\n

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Here\u2019s how you can join us at the table at Lovi\u2019s Delicatessan —<\/p>\n

1) Subscribe at the iTunes store<\/a> — where I hope you’ll be tempted to download some of the 100 (yes, 100!) previous episodes.<\/p>\n

2) Listen using the RSS feed of http:\/\/eatingthefantastic.libsyn.com\/rss<\/a> on the device of your choice.<\/p>\n

3) Or check it out via the embed below.<\/p>\n