On the evening of Tuesday, 6 December 2011, at its current venue, the SoHo Gallery for Digital Art, the New York Review of Science Fiction Readings Series celebrated the December holidays season with its traditional (fourth) “Family Night.” Featured, for the third time (part of the tradition) was the family of Ellen Kushner (left in the picture) and Delia Sherman (on the right)—formally married since 2004, guest-hosted once more by Claire Wolf Smith, who had served as the NYRSF Reading Series’ third curator. (As such, last year she resolved the Series’ muddled chronology and settled the question of its 20th anniversary.)
Starting things off, the Series’ executive curator Jim Freund, host of WBAI-FM’s Hour of the Wolf radio program on sf and fantasy (which broadcasts and streams every Wednesday night/Thursday morning from 1:30 to 3:00AM), welcomed the crowd, and announced upcoming readings—January’s, spotlighting authors from the anthology Subversion (including Barbara Krasnoff), and February’s Coast Guard month (including a tale about the USCG engaged in a fantasy battle—a shame it’s not down at South Street Seaport)—before turning hosting duties over to Wolf Smith, who introduced the first of the couple reading, Delia Sherman.
As at last December’s “Family Night” (tradition!), Sherman read from her young adult novel The Freedom Maze. In it, an unhappy 13-year-old girl, after pouring out her wish to be somewhere and someone else to a magical creature (a hobgoblin?) whom she meets on the Louisiana bayou, is transported a century back in time from 1960 to her family’s antebellum plantation where, suntanned, barefoot and muddy, she is taken for a slave, a brother’s by-blow.
Following a short break, Wolf Smith opened the second half of the evening by presenting the “wonderful” Ellen Kushner, award-winning novelist, performer, klezmer devotee, public radio personality and (with Sherman) co-founder of the Interstitial Arts Foundation. Kushner called attention to the photos of them displayed around the room on the SGDA’s screens (particularly a recent set of portraits), along with covers of their books, as enabled by the Gallery’s screens-instead-of-canvases exhibition format; announced an online auction to benefit fantasist Terry Windling; and noted that books were for sale at the back of the room.
In contrast to Sherman’s offering, Kushner’s story, “Dulce Domum” (which originally appeared in Eclipse 3) with its dark fantasy turn, was decidedly adult (throughout, a couple is “having hot sex”). As the male protagonist recalls his childhood, though, passages are quoted from Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows; indeed, it takes its title (Latin for “Home Sweet Home”) from the episode in which Rat and Mole make a Yuletide visit to Mole’s old home. Sherman joined her at the podium to read those excerpts from Grahame’s beloved tale. Additionally of note, as the story is set at Christmastime, a few times Kushner—the creator of The Klezmer Nutcracker—sang snatches of carols.
The audience of just about 50 included K. Tempest Bradford, Chris Claremont, Beth Fleischer, Amy Goldschlager, Kim Kindya, Barbara Krasnoff, Josh Kronengold, Lissanne Lake, Gordon Linzner, Deborah Mills, Lisa Padol, Daniel J. Rabuzzi, Robert Rodriquez, and Genevieve Valentine. Afterward, following the ceremonial folding of chairs (it takes a knack), as customary, the guests and a number of audience members adjourned to a nearby pub, Milady’s, for dinner and conversation.
Happy holidays.