I have the great fortune to rub virtual elbows with any number of exceptional writers in Codex Writers’ Group, which I founded back in 2004 by creating an online forum and inviting fellow writers from Orson Scott Card’s Literary Boot Camp and the Writers of the Future workshop. This week the four original categories (Best Novel, Best Novelette, Best Novella, and Best Short Stories) of the Nebula Award, one of the most important awards in science fiction, were all won by members of Codex. (Two additional categories added more recently were not won by Codexians–this time!)

Ann Leckie is the first Codexian ever to win the Nebula for best novel, for her Ancillary Justice.

Vylar Kaftan won the novella category with “The Weight of the Sunrise.”

The Best Novelette award went to Aliette de Bodard for “The Waiting Stars.”

Best Short Story went to Rachel Swirsky for “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love”

Ann, Vy, Aliette, Rachel: way to kick some genre!

Congratulations too to Nalo Hopkinson, who won the Andre Norton YA award, and the writers of Gravity, who won the Bradbury for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation. (Neither Ms. Hopkinson nor the Gravity folks are associated with Codex in any way.)

A variety of other Codexians were nominated for the Nebula this year, including Kenneth Schneyer, Alethea Kontis (now a two-time nominee for the Andre Norton award), Ken Liu (the only person ever to have won the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award for a single work), Sylvia Spruck Wrigley, Sarah Pinsker, Henry Lien, and Lawrence M. Schoen.

Last week I began posting a series of interviews about inclusivity and exclusivity in fiction–that is, what groups of people are conspicuously underrepresented in fiction based on their race, sexual orientation, gender or gender identity, age, ethnicity, disability, or other factors; and why; and what can we do about it?

I started with this interview of Leah Bobet and followed up with a short post about the lack of female villains. Today’s post is an interview with Vylar Kaftan, who has described herself as a “queer white writer” and who has made inclusivity a particular mission in her work.

LUC: A few years ago, I gather you spent about 5 hours putting together statistics on the characters in your fiction in terms of gender, race, sexual orientation, age, and class (readers: you can see Vylar’s results for all her characters and for her protagonists. Aliette de Bodard and Marshall Payne followed Vylar’s lead and reported their own results). I think it’s safe to say that in most categories, your numbers were much more diverse than the general run of English language fiction in North America and Europe. Were you satisfied with where you landed? Did anything change after you saw your results?

VYLAR: I thought the results were fascinating, and I’m sure glad I did it.  I was generally satisfied with where I landed.  What I found most interesting was that despite conscious efforts to diversify my characters, I still suffered from a touch of “me-ism” where my characters reflected my own experiences as a queer white woman.  After looking at my numbers, I made an extra effort to increase characters of color, both from my own culture and others around the world.  The results were very rewarding.  I have sold many of the new stories I wrote, and I feel like I learned more about the world as a result of the research I’ve done.  In fact, both the stories I’ve sold to Asimov’s stemmed in part from my desire to include more characters of color.  “Lion Dance,” which will be out in August 2012, has mainly Chinese-American characters; my forthcoming novella “The Weight of the Sunrise” is an alternate history with mostly Incan characters.  My diversity analysis directly contributed to my development of both stories.

LUC: What’s the difference for you, if any, between writing a character from a culture that no one living has experienced and writing a character from a contemporary culture or group that isn’t yours? Do you worry about “getting it wrong”?

VYLAR: The biggest difference is ease of research.  If there are living people in the culture, it’s my responsibility to be a good listener and learn everything I can.  If it’s historical research, I’m forced to rely more heavily on books–but it’s still crucial to read accounts from people who lived in and wrote about their own culture. This question is actually more about primary sources than about diversity; you need to find sources written by people in whatever culture you’re working with, whether that’s the Roman Empire, the New Orleansjazz scene in the 20s, or modern teenagers in Nagasaki.  It’s easier when there are living people to email, because they essentially write some primary sources for you.

Of course I worry about getting it wrong.  If I didn’t worry, I shouldn’t be writing it.  I’m sure I’ll get something wrong, or maybe I already have.  All I can do is try my best. If someone points out a mistake, I need to listen and learn gracefully (instead of getting defensive).

LUC: In addition to races and ethnicities, you identified and measured how many of your characters fell into some other often-disregarded groups, such as seniors, people with disabilities, and people in working class families. Does the issue of racial diversity in characters have a different kind of status or different challenges than some of these others? Do these other groups pose special challenges for writers?

VYLAR: Every kind of diversity has its own challenges.  Some are easier to show in text than in others, just by their nature.  I think many writers are more afraid of writing characters from different racial backgrounds than some of the other “isms,” and I’m not entirely sure why that barrier seems harder than other ones.  I do think that the book “Writing the Other” by Nisi Shawl is a great way to learn how to explore these boundaries and diversify the characters in your fiction.  Sorry to have an incomplete answer here, but I think other writers have covered this topic far more eloquently than I.  The Carl Brandon Society is dedicated to increasing racial and ethnic diversity in the speculative fiction community, and their set of resources will be very useful for a writer looking to learn about this topic.

LUC: How included do you yourself feel in the novels and stories you read? Is it a different experience from when you were young? Is inclusiveness in your writing ever a response to what you’re reading?

VYLAR:I generally prefer writers who make an effort to have diverse characters in their fiction, so this hasn’t been a huge problem for me.  Sometimes I find story ideas by asking myself, “Who’s not being written about?”  And the answer to that stems from what I’ve been reading and seeing in current sf/f stories and novels.

Over at Shimmer, Elise Catherine Tobler has started a series of posts in which she asks five authors (me included) five questions about writing for the benefit of aspiring fiction writers. Questions so far have been “How do you begin a story?” and “How do you go about choosing a title for the story?” The answers get at the issue from a variety of points of view in a very short space.

The other four authors in the series are:

Krista Hoeppner Leahy (Writers of the Future XXV, Shimmer, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet)

Don Mead (Writers of the Future XXV, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Strange Horizons)

Justin Howe (Crossed Genres, Brain Harvest, Beneath Ceaseless Skies)

Vylar Kaftan (Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Abyss & Apex, ChiZine)

About 7 years ago, I started an online writing group called Codex by bringing together friends who were graduates of Orson Scott Card’s first Literary Boot Camp with other friends who were fellow Writers of the Future winners. Since then, we’ve grown to nearly 200 active members, each of whom has sold fiction professionally and/or completed major, by-audition-only workshops.

When the Nebula award nominations were recently announced, I found many friends on it. (For those not familiar with it, the Nebula is one of the two top awards in science fictiondom.) This year, Codexians have garnered no fewer than eight Nebula nominations (15% of the total). The list follows, with Codex members in bold. Thanks to Vylar Kaftan (nominated for her short story “I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno,” which has a title I greatly envy) for the bolded list. Winners will be announced at the Nebula Awards Banquet in May.

Short Story
“Arvies”, Adam-Troy Castro (Lightspeed Magazine 8/10)
“How Interesting: A Tiny Man”, Harlan Ellison (Realms of Fantasy 2/10)
“Ponies”, Kij Johnson (Tor.com 1/17/10)
“I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno”, Vylar Kaftan (Lightspeed Magazine 6/10)
“The Green Book”, Amal El-Mohtar (Apex Magazine 11/1/10)
“Ghosts of New York”, Jennifer Pelland (Dark Faith)
“Conditional Love”, Felicity Shoulders (Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine1/10)

Novelette
“Map of Seventeen”, Christopher Barzak (The Beastly Bride)
“The Jaguar House, in Shadow”, Aliette de Bodard (Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine 7/10)
“The Fortuitous Meeting of Gerard van Oost and Oludara”, Christopher Kastensmidt (Realms of Fantasy 4/10)
“Plus or Minus”, James Patrick Kelly (Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine 12/10)
“Pishaach”, Shweta Narayan (The Beastly Bride)
“That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made”, Eric James Stone (Analog Science Fiction and Fact 9/10)
“Stone Wall Truth”, Caroline M. Yoachim (Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine 2/10)

Novella
The Alchemist, Paolo Bacigalupi (Audible; Subterranean)
“Iron Shoes”, J. Kathleen Cheney (Alembical 2)
The Lifecycle of Software Objects, Ted Chiang (Subterranean)
“The Sultan of the Clouds”, Geoffrey A. Landis (Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine 9/10)
“Ghosts Doing the Orange Dance”, Paul Park (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction 1-2/10)
“The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Window”, Rachel Swirsky (Subterranean Magazine Summer ’10)

Novel
The Native Star, M.K. Hobson (Spectra)
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit UK; Orbit US)
Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor)
Echo, Jack McDevitt (Ace)
Who Fears Death, Nnedi Okorafor (DAW)
Blackout/All Clear, Connie Willis (Spectra)

The Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation
Despicable Me, Pierre Coffin & Chris Renaud (directors), Ken Daurio & Cinco Paul (screenplay), Sergio Pablos (story) (Illumination Entertainment)
Doctor Who: “Vincent and the Doctor”, Richard Curtis (writer), Jonny Campbell (director)
How to Train Your Dragon, Dean DeBlois & Chris Sanders (directors), William Davies, Dean DeBlois, & Chris Sanders (screenplay) (DreamWorks Animation)
Inception, Christopher Nolan (director), Christopher Nolan (screenplay) (Warner)
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Edgar Wright (director), Michael Bacall & Edgar Wright (screenplay) (Universal)
Toy Story 3, Lee Unkrich (director), Michael Arndt (screenplay), John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, & Lee Unkrich (story) (Pixar/Disney)

Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy
Ship Breaker, Paolo Bacigalupi (Little, Brown)
White Cat, Holly Black (McElderry)
Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins (Scholastic Press; Scholastic UK)
Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword, Barry Deutsch (Amulet)
The Boy from Ilysies, Pearl North (Tor Teen)
I Shall Wear Midnight, Terry Pratchett (Gollancz; Harper)
A Conspiracy of Kings, Megan Whalen Turner (Greenwillow)
Behemoth, Scott Westerfeld (Simon Pulse; Simon & Schuster UK)