Sapphire, Precious and My New Book

Had the most wonderful week courtesy of the International Authors’ Stage at Kulturhuset in Stockholm, who had kindly asked me to interview Sapphire on stage in the week that marked the release of both the movie Precious and the Swedish translation of her novel Push, on which it was based. The translation is by Martin Gelin and the edition also includes the original English text – which is a great idea from publishers Noble Entertainment.

Sapphire is a treasure of a woman, so intelligent, charming, funny and comfortable to be around, without being a push-over even for a second. I was a fan of her writing before, now I am also a fan of the person, to the point where it would have been unethical for me to review the movie today. Luckily I reviewed it last week instead, although the clip only aired on Kulturnytt this Friday morning (link to the text in Swedish; I notice I’ve misspelled Gabourey Sidibe in my script – let’s hope I didn’t mispronounce it also).

I also have a new book out, in a very humble manner. My contribution to the Mitä Suomi on (What is Finland) blog was included in the printed anthology of the same name; both are edited by Antti Isokangas. The blog is a platform for societal conversation about how Finland is perceived by the Finnish and how we would like for our country to be communicated about abroad.

The theme of public discourse, debates and conversation also dominates P3 Kultur this Sunday. The show is our strongest so far this year, with the first hour focused on internet trolling culture and the second on talk shows. Unmissable, if I may say so myself. There’s even a short Sapphire interview by my producer Tommie Jönsson. (Swedish)

Next week I’ll be going to Gothenburg to host the Meeting Point Television seminar with Armando Ianucci headlining and other top pros giving talks, all very exciting! And on Tuesday, if you are in Finland, a new Japanese Language Programme is starting on the TV channel YLE Teema. I’m interviewed about Oblivion High in the first episode.

Radio, Radio, Radio, Victory

P3 Kultur today was about food and identity. Listen again here – read our blog here!

Talked Avatar and 3D on Godmorgon världen on P1 today. It’s in the first hour, find the show here.

Yesterday I talked about the benefits of heart-wrenching break-ups on high and popular culture on Morgonpasset on P3.

My team mate Marcus Birro and I astonishingly won another game of På Spåret on Friday; watch again on SVT Play – find it all here.

(All in Swedish)

Weird Science Nominated for Swedish Blog Awards

We already nabbed one blog award this year, but this is the big one: the culture and entertainment category of Aftonbladet’s Stora Bloggpris. And now we need your help. If you are a fan, do go in an vote here (you can vote as often as you please). And if you are not already a fan, give Weird Science a gander here! I am incredibly proud to be part of this collective, which produces quite probably the best film and TV criticism in Sweden today. I only wish I had time to blog more often.

Also – don’t forget to watch På Spåret this Friday! Marcus Birro and I are competing, and since we won our first game we are actually fighting for a spot in the semifinals! Preview entertainment can be found here.

P3 Kultur Premieres Today

The new season of P3 Kultur starts today at 2PM. We have a blog, which is here, and you can find the scrumptious music-free podcast through the web site, too. If you’re abroad, the show is streamed with the music, but with less talk.

I am so, so happy about this job. You have no idea! But if you listen to the show you’ll have some idea.

Radio Re-Booted + Playground Worlds

P3 Kultur is back for an astonishing 82 shows in 2010. Yup, this is what I do now – I get to play all day with Tommie Jönsson, Sara Lundin and Roger Wilson, and people tape us and then put it on the air. The manifesto and the mission statement are still the same as last summer:

1. we only cover culture we are genuinely interested in
2. we only invite guests we actually want to talk to
3. we have no studio interviews; we have studio conversations
4. we believe that passionate engagement trumps considerations of the status and even the quality of the artwork, since
5. culture is not about texts and objects, it’s about how we live, play and create meaning among text, objects, and languages
6. also, the show has to be honest
7. also, the show has to be funny
8. also, the show cannot help but be political
9. also, if doing something on the radio is “impossible” we have to consider doing it
10. also, we have the brightest audience, so it follows that public service is not a duty, it is a privilege

Also, we now have a podcast with PLENTY of extra material, a web site with all kind of things coming in over the next few weeks (including a blog) – check it out here!

The premiere show airs in our new slot on Sunday at 2pm. Its theme is reboot and the guests include Fredrik Strage, Teresa Axner, Margareta Garpe, Andreas Boonstra and Måns Mårlind.

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In other news, Studentradion in Uppsala are handing out awards for their shows today, and I had the honour of picking the best culture show. All three nominees were surprisingly good, and I ended up picking the one that sounded the most professional. The network webcasts and it’s well worth a listen.

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The best book published on larp and Nordic Role-Playing is probably Playground Worlds, edited by my great friends Markus Montola and Jaakko Stenros. I have a chapter in it – “The Dragon Was the Least of It: Dragonbane and Larp as Ephemera and Ruin” – (much-quoted, too, if I may say so myself) and the book is finally available as a free pdf download. Find it here!
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Thanks to Olivia Mariette Borg at SR for taking the beautiful picture.

The Non-Vacation Holidays

Christmas happened, and so much work exploded simultaneously that I simply haven’t had time to update the blog. Here is a brief roundup of some of the things I’ve been doing since my last post.

I spent a full day teaching cultural journalism in Piteå and loved it. The students and staff liked it too, although there was apparently some slight consternation on the part of the latter at the fact that my ideas were not exactly what they have on the curriculum…

The following day, I talked at a breakfast seminar at Riksteatern on the topic of live role-playing games and ludic society.

I wrote a column about the Noughties for Dagens Nyheter.

I participated in a super exciting symposium on Childhood and Post Colonialism at the University of Växjö. My talk was entitled “Saving the World From Southern California: Global Girl Power in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Canon”. I was also invited to chair a session on the arctic and sub-arctic in Nordic children’s lit, which was totally eye-opening (I blogged about it in Finnish here). Friday that week, I talked about vampires and fashion on P1 Stil.

I wrote about Avatar on Weird Science and its technological advances in Fokus. I also spoke about James Cameron on P1 Morgon last Friday.

Television, Lectures, Politics

Went to New York on vacation but ended up writing about Brody Condon’s Case in my Finnish book blog (do check it out, I post about once a week).

Wrote about lømmelpakken and the importance of speaking to aktivists and anarchists in Fokus, here. I didn’t set the headline.

Next week is a big bag of everything:

On Monday, I appear on Vaken on Radio X3M at 8.40 (Swedish; in Finland).

On Wednesday morning, in Piteå in Sweden, I give a talk to students in culture journalism at the New Media institute (which is part of Luleå University of Technology).

On Wednesday evening, I’m co-hosting the week’s episode of the culture show Pixel on FST5. (Swedish; in Finland).

On Friday, Marcus Birro and I compete for the first time in the Swedish game show På spåret. Read about my experience as a contestant on Weird Science! Marcus is great, and we have a great deal of fun – you should all watch it. (Swedish)

I Am Geek Woman, Hear Me Quote Buffy!

A very, very, very full week of meetings, events, conference, networking is at its end. In brief, I had the full SIME experience and made new friends both personally and professionally.

I participated in the founding of Geek Women Unite! (Sweden), a network for people like me which is now gaining traction like crazy. Look us up on Facebook and join – or, if that feels inappropriate, join our sibling group I Support Geek Women instead.

Was on Kino i P1 discussing Glee; listen again here (in Swedish). I wrote about Glee in ETC magazine, also in Swedish. Then I reflected on Meg Cabot’s defense of romance literature in her YA novel The Princess Diaries – Ten Out Of Ten, which stars a geek girl, here (in Finnish).

Otherwise all prep work – for the Carolus Rex documentary, for my chapters in the Nordic Larp book, for my Buffy the Vampire Slayer paper at this conference in December. The busy continues. I’ll keep you posted!

Live In Stockholm. And Books.

Gotta keep this brief because I’m on my way to Stockholm for an intense week of meetings and work on the Nordic Larp Book, a possible new documentary, and to participate in a panel at SIME Stockholm. I read on the page that I’m a “thought leader”. I guess it’s true in the context in which it’s used, but it makes me a bit giggly nevertheless. Thought leader! Hihi. See you there. Not because of me, but because I’m in truly humbling, inspirational company.

I’m writing about new sequels to old children’s books here (in Swedish) and here (in Finnish). The Finnish blog is also updated with some Stieg Larsson stuff. And we have a publication date for Oblivion High 3 – it’ll be out in September, 2010. The title is Laulu.

Book Blog, LARP Talk and the Inside Track

Oh my, what an exciting weekend taping På spåret in Gothburg! I obviously can’t say anything about the result, but I will say this: in the first programme I’m in, the host mentions that I’m a role-player, and I totally own it (NERD PRIDE!) – and then go on to fail the one question that every fantasy larper in Sweden knows the answer to… Whoops.

I really can’t say whether Marcus Birro and I are satisfyingly televisual together, it’s too weirdly intense to sit inside that box. We had great  fun though (and a big part of that is that the hosts and all the other contestants were such hilarious people). But what I can say is that the new host and judge work really, really well both together and with the concept of the show, and that the new house band Augustifamiljen is brilliant. If there was a CD on sale with the musical questions, I would totally buy it. The På spåret season starts on December 4th, my episodes are on December 11th and January 22nd.

Meanwhile, in Finland, in Finnish, I have premiered a new blog under the auspices of City-lehti. I will be writing about books and book-related phenomena once or twice a week. Check it out!

Now, the most exciting event of last week was easily my visit to the Role-Playing Camp organised by Camelot, the Arthurian/RPG youth club of the Swedish Church. The camps are organized twice each year and one of the highlights is a short larp, this year an H.P. Lovecraft-themed one called Skuggor över Finnåker (Shadows over Finnåker). The Swedish Church is obviously pretty liberal; I would not expect to see an ordained minister of, say, the Anglican church participating in a fictional occult ritual. Skuggor was a pretty tight little game. I had the pleasure of playing it twice and immediately lobbied for it to be produced again in conjunction with the big conventions next year – here’s hopin’.

Now, the reason I made the trek to Arboga to begin with was that I had been invited to give a talk to the camp. I called it 12 Mind-Blowing LARP Experiences, and it was a short introduction to key games, ideas and methods in the Nordic Larp tradition (it was in English, since one of the campers was Hungarian). The talk can be viewed as a sort of very, very, distant first draft of the Nordic Larp book (edited by the brilliant Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola) that I have been asked to write the introduction of, and some super exciting  things are happening in this field next year. Watch this space!

(In the above picture I wait for the Lovecraft game to begin together with larpwright Teresa Axner, who also happens to be one of my Weird Science colleagues. We are already in costume as the misses Linder and Lampa, and would spend the next several hours being really scared of cultists in the forest. I had not planned on staying, so my costume is symbolic – the Hilfiger logo on my sweater is obscured by my ordinary winter coat. In the background, younger participants. Photo by Anna-Karin Linder).