So. As announced, we traveled to Kansas City, MO, for the SFWA Nebula Award weekend. We went (unplanned for the year) because we had to. We simply could not do otherwise.
Back in 1997, our friend, Nicola Griffith, was on the shortlist for a Nebula Award. She came from Seattle to St. Louis, stayed with us, and then rode with us to Kansas City, where that year’s Nebula Awards were being held.
She won.
For her novel, Slow River. We were at the table with her when Gene Wolfe announced the award and we heard her breath literally taken away. Peak moment.
And well-deserved. One may quibble about awards, but mostly the works that win are deserving. Slow River is a superb novel.
Fast-forward to the present. Nicola has in the roughly 28 years since then, published a number of novels that have continued to reward the reading. Most of them, however, have not been science fiction. The Aud Torvingen trilogy is noir thriller, with an out lesbian hero. Hild and Menewood are exquisitely realized historical novels. Spear is a fantasy. So Lucky is literary mainstream. She has published a memoir, edited a groundbreaking trio of genre anthologies, and I’m sure I’m forgetting a few things, but you get my drift. She has refused to write to category and will not be constrained by genre.
So when SFWA announced that she was to be the 41st Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master…well, I, at least, had a curious reaction. I thought “absolutely.” But I also thought “They noticed.”
The term is overused, but in her career, Nicola has become an Influencer. She has broken down barriers (in more than just fiction) and in an odd way sort of given permission for so much experiment and expansion. The Hild books are historical, certainly, but they can be read as fantasies. Aud would fit easily into any cyberpunk story. But both Ammonite and Slow River are first-rate science fiction. Her very presence in the field has encouraged breadth and the kind of depth we have always claimed to want, seldom get, occasionally squirm when we do, and going forward benefit from completely.
True to her nature, her acceptance speech ran counter to tradition. She took the opportunity to say something larger than just “I’d like to thank…”
For us, it kind of book-ended an era.
I met Nicola in 1988 at Clarion, the workshop. She was the first international student to attend and only later did we realize how incredible brave she was for being there. She was, however, impressive.
I also met her partner Kelley Eskridge. They fell in love at Clarion and, with an interlude while they worked out the whole You-live-in-Britain-I’m-here issue, have been together since. Kelley is a marvelous writer as well and one could apply the Power Couple title to them. Kelley had been unable to attend the 1997 event, but she was there this time, and it made it infinitely more meaningful.
It has been said of Clarion that while it’s main product is new writers, I must argue that equally important is it’s facilitation of new friendships. I count these two as among the best friends I’ve ever made. Nicola and Kelley have been there for me when self-doubt saturated my brain. I’ve always known I could rely on them. But the pleasure of sharing a drink and some of the best conversations I’ve ever had…that is priceless.
There are many more things I could say about them, about this crazy enterprise in which we are engaged, and about the meaning of friendship. For now, I’d like to close by saying “Nicola, well-earned! I’m proud of you. And very honored to know you. Both of you. Till the next award, then.”