Steampunk POC: Beth Aileen Dillon (Anishinaabe)

It's the first Friday of the month! And I have another wonderful interview with a steampunk of colour to share this month after a couple of months of brain-gone-somewhere! 

This month, we head back to the Pacific Northwest to Portland, again, where resides Beth Aileen Dillon, Anishinaabe Mètis, who is currently a PhD student in the Interactive Arts and Technology program at Simon Fraser University, and a transmedia artist. She's been featured here before, when she released her short video The Path Without End, in which she uses everyday objects and materials to create an animated film that re-tells the story of a child that is the offspring between an Anishinaabe and Moon Person. Her latest work is The Nature of the Snake which premiered at the most recent imagiNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival. In it, she uses silhouettes and cosmic imagery to tell the story of a snake and a girl. Also, she has given me permission to feature her latest painting, "The River of Star Beings" (to the right!).

Beth Aileen's approach to steampunk is really unique compared to most of us out there; we talk about using everyday objects for creating beautiful things, and she takes it to the nth degree and uses them for storytelling. Steampunks can talk a good game about bringing back old stories of adventure, and she brings forward a storytelling tradition of her people. 

Now, onto questions!

Steampunk: Revolution is now out!

So if you haven't heard the news, which I'm sure you have, the third Steampunk anthology from Tachyon Publications, edited by Ann Vandermeer, titled and themed Revolution, came out December 1st!

There are some big names and small names and new names and old names in this anthology. I'm pleased to have a non-fiction essay sandwiched in between Amal El-Mohtar and Magpie Killjoy. You can find the full TOC here. To buy this illustrious book, check out Tachyon Publications' website. If you are an Amazon sucker, it's available there too, and even Barnes & Noble! Ay-Leen the Peacemaker wrote us a very nice review over at Tor, and I am given to understand that reviewer copies are still available if you are a book reviewer. 

I hope you enjoy my offering, entitled "From Airships of Imagination to Feet on the Ground." I'm also incredibly excited that Paolo Chikiamco's "On Wooden Wings" made it in as well! The Southeast Asian representation in this anthology is stronger than it was in Steam-Powered 2: More Lesbian Steampunk Stories, and that is just as well! 

Transgender Day of Remembrance 2012

Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance. Across the world there are ceremonies to remember the loss of trans* lives across the globe, recitations of their names so we don't forget who they were and how they died. 

Among our ranks in steampunk, we have several transgender individuals who find the fluidity of barriers in our little subculture very attractive, not to mention useful. Gender-bending is not new for us; it's a form of play for many of us. 

But let's not forget that for some of us, this isn't play, but the most straightforward expression of who are are. 

That for some of us, being honest means exposure to prejudice, discrimination and violence. And that people die for this honesty. 

On this day that our trans members of the steampunk community (if indeed we have a singular community) remember their dead, it behooves those of us who are cis to be more careful for and of our trans living, t make sure our spaces are safe, and if we are so inclined to be respectful of each other, then we mustn't only do it in steampunk spaces, but in all spaces beyond as well. 

I've always believed in the transformative power of steampunks to change the present by learning from the past, mostly in racial terms but I know it is also applicable other ways. It is especially so as many of the dead remembered today are Women of Colour. 

Today for Transgender Day of Remembrance, the names of the dead, who are gone through and because of violence and pain, will roll across tongues and into sound, the tolling bells of our failure to protect them and change the world into something less violent for them. We must do everything we can to make sure the ones who are our living do not join these lists. 

Otherwise we must admit that our play means nothing, and our claim to community is empty and worthless since we cannot recognize each other's humanity, nor our responsibilities to protect each other from harm.