Commentary: If You Want to Avoid Reading White, Straight, Cis Male Authors for a Year...

... have I got a list for you!


Sarah A. Hoyt, for example, is a first generation Portuguese immigrant who grew up in an impoverished village (at least by our standards). She is also a winner of the Libertarian Futurist Society's Prometheus Award, which honors outstanding fiction with pro-liberty themes.







Larry Correia is also a "writer of color" who grew up in disadvantaged circumstances. As he relates in a recent post, "I grew up with all that fancy Portuguese Dairy Farmer Privilege, where I got to have an alcoholic mother and a functionally illiterate father... where I got to spend my formative years knee deep in cow shit at 3:00 AM, so that I could later work my way through Utah State." Despite starting life on the bottom rung, however, Larry persevered and is now a multiple-award-winning urban fantasy author.





Jason Cordova is yet another "writer of color" and a survivor of sexual abuse who was bounced from group home to group home in his formative years. After a childhood fighting the oppression of "the system," he went on to write some pretty fun kaiju novels. The one at left is especially noteworthy.







And let's not forget James Young, an up-and-coming African American writer who has dipped his toes in both military science fiction and alternate history. An Unproven Concept is an excellent place to start sampling his work.






Then there are the womyn. For example:


Cedar Sanderson, whose fantasy is much beloved by the members of my household.










Amanda S. Green, who also writes under the pen names Sam Schall and, IIRC, Ellie Ferguson. Amanda plays the field, tackling urban fantasy, space opera, and romance, but no matter the genre, she always writes a ripping good yarn.









Karina Fabian, whose humorous fantasy is a genuine delight.










Daniella Bova, whose near-future dystopic science fiction features protagonists who are striking in their relatability.








And lastly, Karen Myers, who's been writing a solid parallel-universe fantasy series set in my home state.








All of the authors listed above are authors I have personally read and recommended to others over the past few years. None of them are white, straight cis males.

*****

Now what has prompted this ritual listing of names?  That would be the bloviations of one K. Tempest Bradford, social justice warrior extraordinaire and special snowflake of the highest order:

Waving your finger at me like I'm five years old is a good way to guarantee seeing two of MINE.

While I busted my butt to earn a hard science degree at an extremely competitive Virginia university (getting near perfect marks, I might add), Bradford studied basically whatever she damn well pleased like your typical privileged dilettante, bouncing from - get this - "performance" to writing to the history of mythology to "interstitial art" to the collective unconscious. Right around the time my rheumatoid arthritis was ramping up in severity and I was taking a series of crappy part time jobs to earn my keep, Bradford was flitting about the country living parasitically off her affluent friends. Honestly, when I read her proud admission that she got by on "confidence and charm," I immediately think "sociopath" -- but I'm not a professional therapist, so I don't really have the credentials to draw any firm conclusions.

At any rate, the miseducated Bradford has put out a clarion call for science fiction and fantasy fans to toss out books written by white, straight, cis male authors and stick to books written by gays, womyn, and "writers of color." My first response, of course, was to say a bad word -- but then I realized it would actually be fun to play by this creature's rules. After all, as I demonstrated above, I know plenty of authors who would qualify for the challenge -- but would also make Bradford's empty little head explode in a fireball of rage. Pull up a chair and pass the marshmallows.