Episode 94b — An Interview w/ Stina Leicht (a.k.a. Mrs. Irish Cream)(The Interview)
And now for a real interview, in which we talk with Stina Leicht about And Blue Skies From Pain, the Irish, history, nationalism, and so much more. We hope you enjoy the episode! Note: If you have iTunes and like this show, please give us a review on our iTunes page, or feel free to email us with your thoughts about the show! Note 2: This is the second part of our interview with Stina Leicht. You can check out the first part here. Here’s the episode (show notes are below): Episode 94b — Download (MP3) Intro and Discussion (0:00 – 1:05:23) Stina Leicht’s Website Our new intro music is “Time Flux” by Revolution Void (CC BY 3.0). That’s all, folks! Thanks for listening. See you next week.
Guest Post: “Tackling Other Cultures in Fiction” by Stina Leicht
All fantasy authors write about foreign cultures and countries they’ve never visited. When an author makes up an imaginary place, that is what they’re doing. Elizabeth Moon told me that back when I first started writing Of Blood and Honey. She was right, of course, but that didn’t remove the anxiety I (rightfully) felt when tackling Northern Ireland as a setting. There were many reasons why. Shortly after the start of my research, I attended a literary discussion about fantasy and foreign myth appropriation. It was the first time I’d heard the word ‘colonialism’ associated with genre fiction. One of the panelists was an author who worked with an American Indian tribe. She said that everything else had been taken from Native Americans and that disrespectfully stealing their myths made everything worse. She said she felt that fantasy writers had a responsibility to the cultures they borrow from — a responsibility to do thorough, thoughtful research and to be careful and respectful with the borrowed myths. One audience member loudly disagreed. He said that everyone has been perfectly fine with doing whatever they wanted with Irish myth for decades. No one complained. However, that story-mine was now tapped. It was time fantasy writers moved on to other cultures, and they had
