everything that i’ve read suggests that carmen maria machado’s edit of carmilla is incredibly contentious. personally, i read the introduction and adored the tongue-in-cheek bastardisation of the original text. yes, it’s a fiction, a queering, an unthreading of the classic, but it’s also a reverse-censorship. while machado’s interjections are a fabrication, queer history—and its silencing—is not; the picture of dorian gray has only recently been released in its uncensored entirety. still, i think i’ll read the original book alongside machado’s edited version to understand the scope of her influence. curious to hear others’ thoughts on this version of the text?

Hello friends!!

I’m super excited because the long list for my favourite book prize is being released next week (It’s called the Stella book prize and focuses on fiction, nonfiction and poetry from women and non-binary Australian authors). It’s pretty diverse, will generally focus on books that have slipped under the radar and I always find some new favourites from the longlist. The Women’s Prize longlist has also just been announced and the list looks pretty interesting.

Which leads me to ask - do you have a favourite book prize that you follow?

HI omg!!! Welcome to our much-anticipated dystopian quest!!

In these wild unprecedented times we live in, but even since being a very disillusioned child, I loved to read dystopian literature. Sure, I do enjoy a good cozy read, too, but these books really make me think and feel seen. So this quest is really for everyone who has been told that they're overreacting to the news, because these authors clearly took a look at what was going on in the time they wrote their books and thought, "I'm going to take this ideology to the furthest logical conclusion, and I bet you it's not going to look so different from what we actually have going on around here."

Like many of you, I really hungered for a dystopian literature quest, and so when I became a TC, I started working on it right away. This was a labor of love for me, I considered 173 different books to get us down to this core initial set of 40 books. I have a long list of books that I am hoping to eventually add, but I also would love to get your recommendations, please feel free to add those to this thread.

In working on the quest, I learned a lot about the different types of dystopias we see represented in literature, and I will be making a post explaining those soon as well as which types each book presents (some are combos, which is fun!), once everyone gets to take a look around! I did make the conscious choice to avoid books that were purely post-apocalyptic, though those are often grouped with dystopian works. Instead, this quest will focus on books that present societies - some are crumbling, some are thriving, some are insular mini societies set against the outside world - but avoid those books that are comprised of a natural disaster, and the protagonists not knowing if they are the only people left alive and wandering around, if that makes sense!

Welcome, welcome, and if you'd like, go ahead and share what brings you to dystopian literature, if you have any favorites or recommendations, and anything else you'd like to share with the group! I'm excited to quest here by your side!!