2018 feels like both the longest year ever and like time passed within the blink of an eye. I didn’t get as much writing done as I would’ve liked, but on the other hand, 2018 was filled with several big projects, and let’s be real: the energy to be creative has been in extraordinarily short supply thanks to the general state of things.
I am, however, very proud of the things that I managed to accomplish in 2018, several of which are eligible for awards consideration. I continue to love being Managing Editor for Uncanny Magazine, and look forward to starting off 2019 by adding the title of Nonfiction Editor to my position at the magazine. I’m pleased to share that Uncanny is once again eligible for Best Semiprozine Hugo Award. Uncanny had a fantastic Year Four, and I’m particularly proud of the nonfiction we published in 2018, and the pieces I worked on in Issues 20-23, and 25 (Issue 24 was our special Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction issue, with phenomenal essays overseen by Elsa Sjunneson-Henry as Guest Co-Editor-in-Chief & Nonfiction Editor, and Nicolette Barischoff as Guest Personal Essays Editor).
While I didn’t publish as many nonfiction pieces as I would’ve liked, the one massive project that I am still a bit agog over actually doing was writing the exhibit text for “Worlds Beyond Here: The Expanding Universe of APA Science Fiction” at the Wing Luke Museum in Seattle, WA. The exhibit was profiled in Locus Magazine and the Seattle Times, and got a mention in File 770. “Worlds Beyond Here” is eligible for the Best Related Work Hugo Award. I wrote a piece for Uncanny‘s blog about what writing the exhibit text meant to me, and how meaningful it was to see Asian Pacific American Science Fiction highlighted this way. If you’ll be in Seattle before September 15, 2019, you can see the exhibit for yourself (which includes my historic first Hugo Award, for which I became the first Filipina to win a Hugo).
In addition to my Uncanny blog post about writing “Worlds Beyond Here,” I also had a few essays co-written with one of my favorite partners in crime, Matt Peters, in support of Uncanny‘s Year 5 Kickstarter that were published in 2018:
- “My Favorite Bit: Michi Trota and Matt Peters talk about UNCANNY MAGAZINE Year 5”
- “Eight Nerdy Chicago People and Organizations We Love (Uncanny Magazine Kickstarter Shout Out)”
These pieces, as well as the contents of my Twitter feed (where I often write threads of varying lengths about SF/F-related issues, particularly related to representation, editing, and writing), make me eligible for consideration for the Best Fan Writer Hugo Award.
Thanks again so much for your consideration for these awards.
(Matt and I managed to get out one episode of our Podcasters for Hire series on The Learned Fangirl this year as well. I don’t believe this counts toward my eligibility for anything but I’m still really pleased with the episode and look forward to doing more with Matt (we have the pilot episode for Uncanny TV to dive into next year!), because he’s an absolutely fabulous collaborator!
I also had the opportunity this year to copy edit Silk Threads, a collection of three novellas by Midori, Laura Antoniou, and Cecilia Tan. They’re gorgeous erotic speculative fiction stories and I’m glad the authors trusted me with the copy edits for their work.)