Furry Writers' Guild Forum

Recommended Reading

The Library
#81

I also reserved D’Arc by Robert Repino, the third book in his War With No Name series. It won’t be published until May 9, but the LAPL is accepting reservations for it. The Amazon summary is:

“In the aftermath of the War With No Name, the Colony [ants] has been defeated, its queen lies dead, and the world left behind will never be the same. In her madness, the queen used a strange technology to uplift the surface animals, turning dogs and cats, bats and bears, pigs and wolves into intelligent, highly evolved creatures who rise up and kill their oppressors. And now, after years of bloodshed, these sentient beasts must learn to live alongside their sworn enemies—humans.”

It sounds like a definite Cóyotl Award contender, and if your public library gets it, you won’t have to buy it.

#82

The LAPL has delivered The Blue Fox by Sjón. It is not anthropomorphic. It is a poetic, mystical account of a contest of wills between a human hunter, Reverend Baldur, and his blue vixen quarry across the frozen Icelandic wastes during a wintery January 1883. At one point the man and the vixen do talk briefly to each other, but this could be the man’s imagination (is he entirely sane?), or the author’s poetic license, or a revelation that the blue vixen is really a were-fox, or that the man is turning into a fox. The novella is ethereally written, drifting out of and back into reality, and it could be called a fantasy rather than poetic imagery; but it is not anthropomorphic.

#83

PediPress in Germany has created a Furry Fandom book of about 355 pages, selling for $21.65. The preview shows lots of photographs and other illustrations.

https://pediapress.com/books/show/furry-fandom-by-wikipedians/

PediaPress operates in cooperation with Wikipedia. If I understand correctly, Furry Fandom contains information that is already available free on Wikipedia, collected and edited by “Wikipedians” and presented as a book.

https://pediapress.com/

This sounds like something else handy to show people who ask what furry fandom is all about. I haven’t seen it yet, so I don’t know how complete it is; but I haven’t seen any complaints recently about inaccurate information about furry fandom on Wikipedia, so I assume that this is basically accurate.

#84

Last month, Howard L. Anderson self-published his The Famous Captain Walcott on Amazon as a Kindle original. He says on Goodreads that he couldn’t sell it to any publisher.

It’s his sequel to Albert of Adelaide, which is on my list of the Top Thirty-five furry novels. Walcott is a raccoon. Albert is a duck-billed platypus. They’re both gunslingers in Australia’s Outback.

I can’t read Kindle, but based on Albert of Adelaide, I am recommending The Famous Captain Walcott very highly. If you can read Kindle, please do so.

#85

Even though it’s not furry persay, Fable Haven series by Brandon Mull is an excellent fantasy series that really captures magic.

I acquired the newest book just released a 6th book to the series that was released a bit ago. I now have to keep an eye out for the rest ><.

#86

This isn’t something new to discuss; it’s a request to help get my book, Furry Fandom Conventions, 1989-2015, into your college and public libraries.

Higgs Raccoon reports that it is in the New York Public Library now.

http://catalog.nypl.org/record=b21208167~S1

http://www.mcfarlandbooks.com/book-2.php?id=978-1-4766-6381-4

Libraries do pay attention to requests. If you are going to college or live in a city with a public library, please request that library to get it. Here is the McFarland & Co. catalogue listing with the details. Libraries get McFarland books where they ignore the furry specialty publishers, so this is a serious possibility.

If this works, please try it again when Joe Strike’s history of furry fandom is published in October.

#87

Anna Shapolsky Gallery presents Burt Hasen’s Allegories

Don’t see a hyperlink app here but the emails in the text will get you to his artwork.

Anita Shapolsky Gallery Presents Burt Hasen: Allegories
Burt Hasen’s (1921-2007) etchings are populated by figures in varying states of metamorphosis; transitioning from human to animal, singularities to pluralities, background to foreground, inanimate to animate.
Anita Shapolsky Gallery22 hours ago
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Throughout his career Burt Hasen (1921-2007), a fantastical surrealist extraordinaire, was primarily concerned with understanding the convergence of the internal and external space that occurs haphazardly in the human psyche. His works are packed with symbols, referential allusions and invented hieroglyphs. Despite the specificity of their visual and textual signifiers the resultant imagery lacks any literal identity.

The portraits of women are a precursor to the works of artists like Cindy Sherman and Lisa Yuskavage. His imagery alludes both to art history and the present. His women are distinctly fierce. Hasen paints them in strange indoor settings or dreamy outdoor environments. These works are surreal deviations on the archaic genre of the Lady-in-Waiting portraits. These paintings are about the sitters’ states of mind and psyche. Hasen uses the European Lady-in-Waiting motif with regard to the pictorial composition but his women are not passive objects of beauty.

Burt Hasen’s work teeters between magical realism and surrealism. Thematically there is a fantastical element throughout his work. This is more mysterious and alluring than dark and menacing.

His etchings are populated by figures in varying states of metamorphosis; transitioning from human to animal, singularities to pluralities, background to foreground, inanimate to animate. His ten original etchings illustrate Paul Oppenheimer’s book Beyond The Furies.

A poetry reading of Beyond The Furies will be held at the gallery on Sunday, January 21 between 3-5pm.

Hasen’s work is included in many major collections: The Smithsonian Institution, The Library of Congress, The National Academy of Design and The British Museum.

On view in Gallery 2 is Artistic Friendships (2nd Generation Abstract Expressionists), which includes work by Seymour Boardman, Lawrence Calgano, Herman Cherry, Michael Loew, Richards Ruben’s, Irving Petlin, and John Hultberg.

For more information, email anitashapolsky@gmail.com or call 212-452-1094.

Gallery hours: Tuesday–Friday, 11am–6pm, and by appointment.

Burt Hasen: Allegories continues at Anita Shapolsky Gallery (152 East 65th Street, Upper East Side, Manhattan) through February 3.