How This Year’s Hugo Awards Turned Into a Battle Over Race, Gender, and the Soul of Fandom

By Alison Herman August 24, 2015 Flavorwire

This weekend marked the 73rd annual World Science Fiction Convention, better known as WorldCon, and with it, the ceremony for the 2015 Hugo Awards, the prize that has recognized excellence in science fiction and fantasy since 1953. This year’s proceedings, however, were far more than a simple celebration of excellence in a genre. For those who haven’t been following the months-long controversy, headlines like “Diversity wins as the Sad Puppies lose” (or, on the opposing side, “SJWs Burn Down the Hugo Awards”) might seem incomprehensible. So we’ve put together a guide to what went down in Spokane, Washington, what it means for fandom as a whole, and what the hell sad puppies have to do with it.
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22 Essential Women Writers to Read in Translation

By Jonathon Sturgeon and Sarah Seltzer August 24, 2015 Flavorwire

2015 has seen Can Xue’s The Last Lover honored with the Best Translated Book Award and the publication of the great Clarice Lispector’s Complete Stories, so one could be forgiven for thinking that translated literature by women writers is a mainstay of the American publishing scene — it isn’t.
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