Mf Galaxy

When I grow up, I want to be Milton Davis. Let me tell you why. He's an Atlanta-based chemist, the entrepreneur heading the pioneering Afritopian publishing house MVmedia, a key figure in the development of Sword & Soul and Steamfunk, the co-editor of four anthologies including Griots and Griot: Sisters of the Spear with Charles R. Saunders, the author of numerous adult and YA novels including The Woman of the Woods and Amber and the Hidden City, the co-producer of the new animated series From Here to Timbuktu, and the co-developer, with fellow Afritopian creator Balogun Ojetade, of the breakthrough role-playing game Ki Khanga! Ki Khanga is innovative for numerous reasons, as you're about to hear, but especially because it's the first standalone Afritopian RPG ever made. I spoke with Milton Davis by web video on December 19, 2018; in full disclosure, I tried to get co-creator Balogun Ojetade in the same call, but the gremlins who destroy online conversations made sure that couldn't happen. But Balogun joi

Nalo Hopkinson is one of the most acclaimed science fiction and fantasy writers of our time. The Routledge Companion to Literature and Science calls her a luminary in the science fiction community. Her Afritopian career began with the late 20th Century breakout novel Brown Girl in the Ring, a dystopian science fiction adventure set in near-future Toronto featuring an African-Canadian heroine and the gods of Nigeria, Benin, and the Caribbean. Hopkinson's career has ascended through books such as Skin Folk, Sister Mine, The New Moon's Arms, and many more. She's also a professor of Creative Writing at the University of California Riverside in the only dedicated SF writing programme anywhere in the English-speaking world. Recently Hopkinson added another accomplishment to her dazzling career, as a comic book writer in Neil Gaiman's DC-Vertigo Sandman universe on the series House of Whispers with artist Dominike Stanton. I knew that writing comics, with their extreme economy of words, was a special challenge for n

For many Africans, comics were an excellent entertainment of our childhoods, but we still had to face that most comics creators pretended that we didn't exist at all. The comics universes were places we could dream of visiting, but the on-page demographics made it clear we couldn't become citizens. Yet over time, North American culture has increasingly embraced being universal, so that Marvel and DC have added or enhanced numerous African characters, as well as Indigenous, Latin American, and Asian characters. But even though the Big Two have featured more African characters and hired more African creators, there still aren't many of us on the inside and we don't answer to African editors or publishers, so we still don't control the fates of characters who look like us. But thanks to creators and indie publishers such as Kelvin Nyeusi Mawazo, that's changing. Mawazo is the creator of Black Sun, a science fiction-adventure series set in the futuristic world of Alkebulan, about an heroic group of people struggl

Daniel José Older probably saved lives working for a decade as a paramedic, but I'm sure he has elevated plenty of souls as a novelist. He wrote the YA historical fantasy series Dactyl Hill Squad, which made him a New York Times bestselling author. He's also penned the Bone Street Rumba urban fantasy series, Star Wars: Last Shot, and the award-winning YA series the Shadowshaper Cypher. That won him the International Latino Book Award and was shortlisted for the Kirkus Prize in Young Readers' Literature, the Andre Norton Award, the Locus, and the Mythopoeic Award. Esquire put it on their "80 Books Every Person Should Read" list. He's also a musician, and you can catch his music at danieljoseolder.net. Years ago I needed some career advice and even though we'd never met, I emailed Older, and he immediately made time to speak with me by phone. Since then it was clear to me he was a righteous cat. So it was a real pleasure to speak with him by web video on December 23,

Doug Drexler is an absolutely amazing artist in the magic of making movies and television. If you're like me and grew up watching US science fiction and fantasy movies and TV, then you've definitely seen the make-up work of Doug Drexler in films such as The Hunger, Starman, Dick Tracy, and Star Trek: The Next Generation—he was the artist responsible for creating the decades-older Jean-Luc Picard in the classic episode "The Inner Light." But even if you didn't watch science fiction and fantasy, you probably saw his work in Manhunter, Liberace, Fatal Attraction, Three Men and a Little Lady, or The Cotton Club. But unlike plenty of professionals who achieve expertise in their fields, Drexler chose to expand his range of excellence into other fields, thus ensuring his career longevity throughout changes in technology. He became a designer on shows including Deep Space Nine and Enterprise, and the movies Star Trek: Generations, First Contact, and Insurrection. Then he went to work in visual effects, helping to cre

Noam Chomsky is a pioneering linguist and political analyst who has been called the most important intellectual alive. He's spent decades documenting the crimes of US imperialism and corporate power, and how the US government and corporate media engage in propaganda that he compares with totalitarianism. He risked prison in the 1970s by working with Daniel Ellsberg to release the Pentagon Papers, a document trove exposing massive US crimes in Southeast Asia that at least three US presidents had lied about or covered up. He's the author of more than 150 books on linguistics and politics. His latest release is Optimism Over Despair: On Capitalism, Empire, and Social Change. I've been interviewing people a long time, but the first major interview I secured was through CJSR FM radio in Edmonton, and it was with Noam Chomsky back in 1993. To be completely honest I was extremely anxious. Like plenty of people in my circles I revered Chomsky for his accomplishments and his relentlessness. I was so nervous that when

Years ago I was working on a book about HBO's police drama and social realistic epic The Wire as created by David Simon and Ed Burns. Through a range of ways, including the help of a friend, I got electronically introduced to a number of people who made the series as creators, writers, directors, and actors. They were a remarkable group, and while for a range of reasons I had to put the book on hold, I have had the chance to share some of those interviews over the years; if you check the MF Galaxy archive, you can find my conversations with Sonja Sohn who played Kima Greggs, with Wendell Pierce who played Bunk Moreland, with director Ernest Dickerson, and with writer-director Joy Lusco-Kecken. There are still around a dozen more interviews that no one has heard but me. Yet of all the ones I did, I think the most fascinating for me was with actor Robert Wisdom who played Baltimore City Police Department Major Bunny Colvin in Season 3 and then the same character but as a school consultant in Season 4. Interesti

I first met Tate Young back around 2004 when we were both giving readings at a local indie book store. We both had pseudonyms, we both had shaved heads, and we both produced often shocking writing, so we hit it off immediately. Three years after that he was helming a literary game show called The 3-Day Novel Contest for which he invited me to be one the "celebrity" judges. The show was amazing. We even did a second season before he went to become a movie director and editor best known for the indie science fiction and fantasy features Haphead, Ghosts with Shit Jobs, and the recent short film Timebox, which he also wrote. And he did all this without going to film school. I wanted to ask Young to explain how to make great indie films while treating cast and crew with respect, so he spoke with me by web video from his home in Toronto on October 31, 2018. We discussed: Being self-taught and going DIY while working your way up the film-creation ranks How he entered television directing for a national network with

Lyda Morehouse is pretty terrific. We first met at NorWesCon in Seattle when we were both finalists for the Philip K. Dick Award. She was totally down-to-earth, fun, funny, and welcoming. She was also an extremely accomplished author who by now has written at least twelve books, including the cyberpunk Archangel Protocol series, and under her pen-name Tate Hallaway, the Vampire Princess of St. Paul series. Like most authors, Morehouse has had career lows and not just highs. But unlike most authors, she's always been open about those difficult journeys through the valley of print. That's the kind of generosity with vulnerability that makes it possible for other people to learn, and it makes me respect her all the more. Lyda Morehouse spoke with me by web video on October 23, 2018. We discussed:  Why a career crisis-point forced her to take a new name Whether a Philip K. Dick Award nomination or win is a career-killer Why she once filled a coffin with her own books How to rise to the challenge of writing

So you want to write mystery fiction, crime fiction, or detective fiction, but your characters don't crackle, your plots don't pop, and your mysteries don't sizzle. What should you do? How're you going make readers keep turning those pages? You need to listen to mystery writer S.G. Wong. Oh, there are other writers, right here in E-Town, who are admirable. We've got them in every form and genre, and they do amazing work. But there's only a handful of people I know who are a combo of outstanding craft, outstanding teaching, and outstanding organising for the writing community. And standing tall inside that select group is S.G. Wong, the creator of the Lola Starke mystery novels featuring a hard-boiled but beautiful detective, a carefully-constructed alternate Earth in which the Chinese colonised what we know as Los Angeles to build Crescent City, and a crackling mixture of magic and ghosts. Such imagination has gotten SG Wong shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Awards in the Best First Novel and Best Short Story

If memory serves, I've known Craig DiLouie since 2008, and he immediately struck me as an artist with a gravitic commitment to the craft, business, and community of writers. I saw him giving a book trailer-making workshop at the World Fantasy Convention, held that year in Calgary, and right after that I checked his amazing videos, and later devoured his gripping, terrifying zombie novel The Infection. DiLouie is the author of a whopping eighteen novels including One of Us, the Crash Dive series, Suffer the Children, and The Great Planet Robbery. His books cross numerous genres including horror, apocalypse, zombie, science fiction, fantasy, historical, and military fiction; his work has been translated into multiple languages and been nominated for major awards including the Bram Stoker and the Audie. Because he's such a heavy-hitter, I always enjoying learn from him about artistic and career development. So on October 18, 2018, DiLouie spoke with me by web video from his home in Calgary. We discussed: 

John Jennings is an amazing cat. He's a designer, illustrator, writer, and lecturer at Eye Trauma Comix. He's the artist and co-adapter, with Damian Duffy, of the celebrated hit Kindred based on the novel by Octavia Butler. His other works include I Am Alfonso Jones, Black Kirby: In Search of the Motherboxx Connection, Blue Hand Mojo, The Blacker the Ink, and Artists Against Police Brutality. With Damian Duffy, he's the co-editor of the celebrated showcases Black Comix and Black Comix Returns. Jennings is also a professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California at Riverside, the same institution where Afritopian trailblazer Nalo Hopkinson teaches in the department of Creative Writing. And now, because of Jennings' mega-success with Kindred, he's starting a whole new career as the founding freelance editor for the Abrams graphic novel imprint Megascope. Megascope will feature works by creators of African, Indigenous, Latin American, Asian, and Oceanic backgrounds, with a special on focus

Alternative Radio is a concept, sure, but it's also the name of a long-running talk-radio show that in Edmonton airs on CJSR FM88 and also runs around the world. It's a weekly hour of speeches by and interviews with progressive organisers, thinkers, artists, and history-makers that corporate media almost entirely ignores. In these dangerous times, few hours on radio or the web will inform you as effectively as Alternative Radio about who's making the world worse—and how they're doing it. Alternative Radio show has been running for more than 32 years, and the man behind it is David Barsamian. He altered the independent media landscape with his radio show and with his books featuring his interviews with Noam Chomsky, Eqbal Ahmad, Howard Zinn, Tariq Ali, Arundhati Roy, and Edward Said. I spoke by telephone with David Barsmanian on February 25, 2012, just ahead of a speech he was to deliver at the Stanley Milner Library Theatre. As you're listening to Barsamian list a vast number of US atrocities and the hun

I'm a lifelong Albertan, and let me tell you, things are always crazy in my home province. We've usually had political dynasties that lasted decades each. The last one was the rule of the Progressive Conservatives, and it lasted more than 40 years. In 2015 we finally elected the New Democratic Party, the somewhat social-democratic, increasingly centrist party that has delivered on plenty of its social-democratic promises but enraged its environmentalist base and many but not all First Nations supporters by pushing for new pipelines and getting into protracted verbal battles with the NDP government in British Columbia and promising to exit the federal government's climate change plan. And while all that's happening, the two major right-wing parties in the province have transmogrified into a single, ultra-right-wing entity called the United Conservative Party or UCP, and to make things absolutely clear, many of its candidates are calling for the destruction of public medicare, and many members are connected

  Keynote speech excerpts from The Good Fight 2018 Counter-Fascism Training Conference in Edmonton. Speeches by... DARYLE LAMONT JENKINS Daryle Lamont Jenkins, one of the founders of the antifascist organisation One People's Project, is a former US Air Force man who's spent a lifetime fighting American neo-nazis, and was a pioneer of the early internet with innovative online tactics to fight Whitesupremacists. Today, in service of his cause he speaks across the United States. Liberal and conservative journalists try to smear him; Nazis try to fight him in the courts and lose. Why do they fear him? Because he exposes the Nazis who are hiding in plain sight by investigating them and revealing their nazi identity to the world. But he also helps those people who want to leave the nazi movement. He fearlessly steps up to fascists such as Richard Spencer and Matthew Heimbach and simply mocks them, and even got Spencer thrown out of CPAC, the Conservative Political Affairs Conference which was teeming with S

In Canada, the threat posed by fascist, Whitesupremacist, and similar extremist groups is real, and growing. The proudly Islamophobic Soldiers of Odin are active right here in Edmonton, and even the right-wing Daily Mail newspaper in England describes as them a neo-nazi group. The Proud Boys are also on the march, and the Southern Poverty Law Centre in the United States names them as a hate group. And then there are the Three Percenters, the Ku Klux Klan, and many others like them, supported by extremist Canadian media and aligned with one major federal party. Alarmed by the rise of fascism in our midst, especially after the election of US president Donald Trump and the Nazi march and terrorist murder in Charlottesville, a group of Edmontonians banded together to produce this weekend's training conference THE GOOD FIGHT. Unlike far too many rallies, marches, and speeches which lack a specific agenda and any clear and measurable goals, The Good Fight brings together top national and international trainers to i

Today, the day I'm recording this, is August 14, 2018. Spike Lee's movie Black Klansmen is new in theatres, released to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the neo-Nazi march on Charlottesville in which one Nazi terrorist used his car to kill anti-fascist activist Heather Heyer. The nazis who marched, the same people who accuse humans with compassion of being "snowflakes," brought their hateful temper tantrum to Charlottesville because they opposed the removal of monuments in honour of those who used violence to defend the racist colonial dictatorship that presided over a continent-wide rape gulag. Those nazis said they were simply honouring their culture, the culture of the American South. But if they truly wanted to honour southern heroes, they could easily have honoured Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Francis Ellen Watkins Harper, Maria W. Stewart, Charles Osborn, or any of the 106 anti-slavery societies in the US South. But these people don't honour history. They honour racial supremacy and genocid

If you're an artist, it's almost a guarantee you've experienced the difficulty of getting your work noticed. No matter how much you care, it seems too many other people just don't. Being ignored that way is always frustrating, but it's worse when it's in your hometown, and even more so when you've worked to promote the work of other artists around you and even get them work. That's been the experience of Matt Alden Dykes. He's an outstanding actor and improvisor, with decades on the job, and he's also an executive producer, writer, and actor on the sketch comedy show Caution: May Contain Nuts. And if that weren't enough, he's worked on the TV shows Tiny Plastic Men and Delmer & Marta, and is a long-time member of Edmonton's Rapid Fire Theatre, the live improvised soap opera Die-Nasty, and the comedy troupe Blacklisted. On May 1, 2018, we met at Simply Done Café in Edmonton's Gallery District and discussed: How difficult it's been to get local artists and journalists to support his TV productions despite

I taught junior high and high school English in Edmonton for a decade. I loved it; the job was demanding, but getting to know so many remarkable young people was a joy, and poring over stories, poems, and plays with them and exploring how to write about them and create their own was a blessing. That being said, I was trained in a specific mode that hasn't changed much in a long time. When I left public school teaching more than a decade ago, my distance from the classroom made me more capable of seeing my previous blindspots and the deficiencies of a traditional classroom. In my experience since then, the most electrifying development in education has been gamification. You can find plenty of internet articles telling you why it's a bad idea, claiming it amounts to bribing kids. Those people clearly don't know what gamification is or can be, especially in the context of fantasy role playing games. It's not simply handing out prizes for completion of tasks kids don't care about—many parents and teachers have b

So many people dream of being a children's author, yet few take the plunge. Of those who do, far fewer decide the way to go is writing about a Muslim Somali girl and her family. Of the remainder, how many get national newspaper and CBC radio coverage? To my knowledge, only one, and she's my guest today for the amazing success of her debut book, Muhiima's Quest. Rahma Rodaah came to Canada with her family from Somalia when she was eight years old. She's lived in Quebec and Ottawa, and she now lives in Edmonton. Her path to children's authorship was far from obvious: her degree is in international business, and she works for the Government of Alberta's Ministry of Community and Social Services in Social Work and Income Support. While she grew up loving Anne of Green Gables, after she became a mother she grew concerned that most images aimed at girls pushed European standards of beauty, and no stories she could find embraced either her Somali heritage or Islamic faith. And taking a page from her business educati