These statistics are interesting to me, but I can’t help but think of how many younger-than-me women were locked out of the Hugo Awards by malicious actors at a time when their work was winning other awards. Thinking especially of Alyssa Wong & Carmen Maria Machado. https://twitter.com/Hugo_Book_Club/status/1291126111267467264

These are just the women I know for a fact were on the Hugo Longlists in the Puppy years, & while their careers are stratospheric & their work is more exciting than ever & going from strength to strength, we could’ve had their names, their blazing brilliance in this lineage.

I say this because I’m being reminded a lot lately from all angles of narratives of history, where we place our Firsts & why we stop counting afterwards, who’s made to stand in for others, who’s obscured. I teach Alyssa & Carmen’s stories in my courses.

Among the stories of theirs that were locked out of the ballot were “The Husband Stitch” (2014) & “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” (2015). Stories about stories & lineage, about the horror & silence of women’s inheritances.

This is all to day, I deeply appreciate having more knowledge about Hugo history & where I fit in it, but I can’t let it pass without comment & appending my own knowledge of what’s missing, what’s in the shadows our monuments cast.

(Also worth noting: this was my first time hearing of Joan Vinge. Will the next youngest woman to win 2 Hugos for fiction have heard of me?)