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taylorwdriggers.bsky.social
Taylor Driggers(-McDowall)
@taylorwdriggers.bsky.social
1.5K followers 390 following 340 posts
Author, QUEERING FAITH IN FANTASY LITERATURE (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022). Editor & nonfiction writer: fantasy, queerness, theology. 2024 Le Guin Fellow. Secretary of Govanhill Voices. Creative nonfiction at https://buttondown.com/taylordriggers-mcdowall
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taylorwdriggers.bsky.social
19. CALL AND RESPONSE (Christopher Caldwell, 2025)

I found myself lingering over each sentence of these stories, organised as paired dyads in a nested structure. With gorgeous prose, Chris's stories probe at the complex ways Black people & queer people respond to impermanence in a hostile world.
Cover of Christopher Caldwell's CALL AND RESPONSE: the title appears in ornate black letters against a swirling light blue, orange, and red background.
November 23, 2025 at 10:17 PM
taylorwdriggers.bsky.social
18. FATE'S BANE (C. L. Clark, 2025)

If you're based in Glasgow, you can hear me discuss this book with the author tomorrow (Wednesday 5th November) at Waterstones Argyle Street at 7 p.m. Get your tickets here: www.waterstones.com/events/an-ev...
Cover of C. L. Clark's FATE'S BANE: two women swirl around each other in murky marsh water. One of them has brown skin and braided hair, and the other is pale with red curls.
November 4, 2025 at 9:20 AM
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17. THE SOVEREIGN (C. L. Clark, 2025)

If you live in or near Glasgow, you can hear me discuss this book with C. L. Clark next Wednesday 5th November at Waterstones Argyle Street! Find more info & get tickets here: www.waterstones.com/events/an-ev...
Cover for C. L. Clark's THE SOVEREIGN: a red-tinged illustration of a black woman with short hair crouching in front of a massive oak tree. She is cradling a pale woman in tattered clothing in her arms. A cane lays on the ground in front of them, with a knife thrust into the earth to the side.
October 30, 2025 at 9:40 AM
taylorwdriggers.bsky.social
16. THE FAITHLESS (C. L. Clark, 2023)

Read in preparation for "An Evening with C. L. Clark" at Waterstones Argyle Street in Glasgow, 5th November. Get your tickets here: www.waterstones.com/events/an-ev...
Cover of C. L. Clark's THE FAITHLESS: a woman with pale skin and long blonde hair slouches on an ornate gilt throne, holding a cane in one hand. She is wearing a rich blue coat, waistcoat, and trousers and looking directly at the viewer with an impassive stare.
October 15, 2025 at 8:07 AM
taylorwdriggers.bsky.social
15. THE UNBROKEN (C. L. Clark, 2021)

Read in preparation for "An Evening with C. L. Clark" at Waterstones Argyle Street in Glasgow, where Cherae & I will be in conversation about their novel THE SOVEREIGN & novella FATE'S BANE.

Details & tickets here: www.waterstones.com/events/an-ev...
Cover for C. L. Clark's THE UNBROKEN: a muscular Black woman with short hair stands with arms stretched between two pillars beneath an ornate stone archway, with a city bazaar suggested behind her. She is clad in a sleeveless hooded shirt with a long, curved knife at her hip.
September 26, 2025 at 4:39 PM
taylorwdriggers.bsky.social
14. DANCING JACK (Laurie J. Marks, 1993)

Marks is simply one of the best to ever do it & this is probably her best: an introspective fantasy about women rebuilding their lives after a failed revolution & a devastating plague, with lots of fraught lesbianism & earthy, practical magic.
Cover of Laurie J. Marks's novel DANCING JACK. A human face, bifurcated down the middle, half smiling & wearing a fool's cap & face paint, half weeping & wearing a crown. In the backdrop, a steamboat journeys up a wide river.
August 26, 2025 at 7:34 AM
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13. ARA'S FIELD (Laurie J. Marks, 1991)

Marks's Triad series continues to boast the strangest (complimentary) fantasy world I've ever read, but this is the first one that really shades it in with lived-in detail in a way that prefigures her later, more grounded work.
Cover of Laurie J. Marks's novel ARA'S FIELD: an Orchth, a dog-like creature with six limbs, carries an Aeyrie, a humanoid with wings and fur, on his back. Beside him, a humanoid Walker woman dressed in red surveys the landscape. In the water below is a Mer, a water-dwelling creature with webbed hands. A white-walled fortress sits to the right and in the distance, against a mountainous backdrop.
August 8, 2025 at 8:11 AM
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Snippet from today's #WIP: a queer reading of the oracle in Ursula K. Le Guin's VOICES.

I'm in early stages of writing a book on fantasy literature, archival silence, & queer kinship, & this feels like a passage that encapsulates what I'm trying to say with this project.
In the context of the archive, then, ‘the spaces left by silence suggest ways in which incomplete conversations and elided narratives allow for empathetic and embodied experiences of queer history and memory’ (Ditzler 2014). Silence becomes a space in which to reflect on all the aspects and modes of life not encompassed by hetero- and homonormative cultures’ drive to endlessly catalogue and taxonomize, all that is still left to be said, all that is rendered invisible by the heteropatriarchal frame, embodied in Voices by the position Memer herself occupies in relation to the patriarchal hero-tale. Silence is also a humble surrender to the unknowability of the other, as in Betsy James’s formulation. Attebery suggests that the oracle ‘seems to represent voices from the past and the collective voice of the culture’ (2022: 138), while Elizabeth Anderson’s reading stresses the oracle’s ‘deep alterity’ in relation to Ansul’s religious and literary culture (2016: 191). As the foundation for the hidden library at Galvamand, yet utterly other in relation to it, the oracle cave evokes Jacques Derrida’s différance, the elided originary alterity that makes any signification, any archive, any relation of kinship possible (1996: 84-5).
July 25, 2025 at 10:30 AM
taylorwdriggers.bsky.social
12. THE SAINT OF BRIGHT DOORS (Vajra Chandrasekera, 2023)

Difficult to describe, but I'll try: a maximalist, genre-defying novel about how state & religious authorities re-write history, & how the power of the state relies on both its own inscrutability and the hyper-visibility of its subjects.
Cover of Vajra Chandrasekera's THE SAINT OF BRIGHT DOORS: a palatial doorway is bordered by the blue silhouette of a city, in which skyscrapers, domes, and minarets appear side by side.
July 22, 2025 at 4:57 PM
taylorwdriggers.bsky.social
Lemmey nails what's always irked me about the series' "relentless urge to save the ideal of homosexuality from [...] actually existing homosexuals" but he also writes with a real compassion for the guidance this type of media *could* offer its young target audience & so often fails or refuses to.
If Heartstopper’s teenage audience require any moral lessons from their literature, it’s surely not that they must emulate these models of queer moral perfection in order to be loved and cared about. It’s hard enough navigating new emotions and desires as a teenager without the fear of perdition for getting something wrong. For its adult readers, it seems to flatter us with a sense that victimhood is a moral good in its own right, regardless of what you do with it. It’s a curiously teenage attitude for adults to take: in reality, while our mistakes and insecurities don’t condemn us forever, neither do our experiences of oppression sanctify us.
July 10, 2025 at 8:22 AM
taylorwdriggers.bsky.social
11. THE SAPLING CAGE (Margaret Killjoy, 2024)

Killjoy imbues her witchy trans coming-of-age fantasy with warm humanity & an uncompromising ethical outlook, even if her literary craft doesn't quite rise to the sophistication of her ideas. Feels like a throwback to '80s YA fantasy, in a good way.
Cover for Margaret Killjoy's THE SAPLING CAGE: an ornate golden cage containing a skull, from which sprout leaves and flowers rendered in a style reminiscent of William Morris.
June 15, 2025 at 10:25 AM
taylorwdriggers.bsky.social
10. THE RIVER HAS ROOTS (Amal El-Mohtar, 2025)

Semiotics becomes a kind of playful & treacherous magic in this modern fairy-tale of the impossible demands of sisterly & romantic love, how that impossibility is the very stuff of language & music, & how they betray the truth in more ways than one.
Cover of Amal El-Mohtar's THE RIVER HAS ROOTS: pink and red flowers overlay and weave through a fragmented river landscape.
June 2, 2025 at 6:34 PM
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Glasgow pals: Govanhill Voices are taking part in the Clyde Chorus Community Choir Stage in celebration of the city's 850th birthday tomorrow (Saturday 31st May) at Govan Cross at 4 p.m. Expect songs about magpies, bicycles, & streets paved with diamonds.

Maybe we'll see some of you there?
May 30, 2025 at 3:19 PM
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9. DEEPLIGHT (Frances Hardinge, 2019)

This absolutely rips. Ingenious worldbuilding, gorgeous prose, & fully realised characters adorn this fantasy horror tale about the weird afterlives of old myths, & the large & small ways people reshape others to their will.
Cover of Frances Hardinge's novel DEEPLIGHT: watercolour illustration of deep sea creatures against a deep blue backdrop. In the top-left corner, a massive jellyfish holds a two-masted ship in its tentacles.
May 26, 2025 at 6:50 PM
taylorwdriggers.bsky.social
8. THREAD RIPPER (Amalie Smith, 2020 - translation by Jennifer Russell, 2022)

A double-stranded metafictional meditation on the intertwined histories of textiles & computing, how our abstract models remake the concrete world in their image & vice-versa, & the surplus meaning the image hides.
Cover of Jennifer Russell's English translation of Amalie Smith's THREAD RIPPER - plain white text on a black background, with a portrait of the English mathematician Ada Lovelace in the top left corner.
April 12, 2025 at 3:13 PM
taylorwdriggers.bsky.social
7. DARK HEART (Betsy James, 1992)

The 2nd entry in James's Seeker Chronicles is a poetic coming-of-age fantasy about learning to be at home in your body after a repressive upbringing, realising your new community is no less confining, & yearning for a place to simply *be*. Kind of wrecked me?
Cover of Betsy James's DARK HEART: a stylized illustration of a red-haired girl clutching a ceramic water jug as mountains loom behind her.
April 10, 2025 at 2:36 PM
taylorwdriggers.bsky.social
6. THE BOOK OF FLYING (Keith Miller, 2004)

I wanted to like this a lot more than I did. Some real moments of beauty but too enamoured w/ its own prettiness, & too glib in its heterosexism, to really sing for me. Its "power of stories" sentimentality probably landed better in 2004 than it does now.
Cover of Keith Miller's THE BOOK OF FLYING: a stylised painting meant to evoke late medieval art of a hooded figure playing a hurdy-gurdy among ruins. A winged figure perches atop the walls above them.
March 30, 2025 at 7:43 PM
taylorwdriggers.bsky.social
5. A GAME OF THRONES (George R. R. Martin, 1996)

This will never be my favourite mode of fantasy but Martin is a more sincere & hopeful writer than he gets credit for. At the core of this sprawling epic is an aching desire for real honour & loyalty in a world that cynically weaponizes them.
Cover of George R. R. Martin's A GAME OF THRONES: a dark-haired man with a fur cloak, armed with a sword, rides a horse across a snowy landscape with a stone keep in the background. A raven flies overhead.
March 5, 2025 at 2:36 PM
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Homerton College, you're looking swell this morning.

In Cambridge for a couple days to give a talk on fantasy, queer silence, & archives at the Centre for Research in Children's Literature.
A photograph of Homerton College at Cambridge University on a clear, sunny morning. Gothic brick buildings stand over a green lawn under a blue sky.
March 2, 2025 at 10:18 AM
taylorwdriggers.bsky.social
4. WATCHTOWER (Elizabeth A. Lynn, 1979)

Didn't come alive for me until the 2nd half which shifts from a rote fantasy adventure into something more tender & anarchic. Feel like we need more literacy in SFF for when a text is thematically *about* unspeakable queer desires vs. just not speaking them.
Cover of Elizabeth Lynn's novel Watchtower: a figure in a green cloak rides a horse away from a fortress framed by mountains on a moonlit night.
February 21, 2025 at 4:02 PM
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3. DEAD COLLECTIONS (Isaac Fellman, 2022)

This dryly funny gothic romance reinvents vampirism in astonishingly clever ways that intersect with transness, fandom, the lure of the archive, & a recognizably queer fear of actually living the life that you have & accepting the lifelines offered to you.
Cover of Isaac Fellman's novel Dead Collections: two stylized cartoon figures face each other, touching hands, while stray papers crowd around them.
February 11, 2025 at 11:45 AM
taylorwdriggers.bsky.social
2. THE MOONSTONE COVENANT (Jill Hammer, 2024)

This taut fantasy thriller is v. of the current moment w/ its concern w/ censorship & creeping fascism. Hammer's background as a rabbi & religious scholar shines through in her worldbuilding, & there's a particularly sensitive exploration of polyamory.
Cover of Jill Hammer's novel The Moonstone Covenant in which four women look out over a city of islands at sunset.
February 1, 2025 at 5:10 PM
taylorwdriggers.bsky.social
@borrowafeeling.bsky.social turns 40 today! John brings so much joy to my life - he gives me space to grow & change with him, is patient with my foibles, & reminds me to take myself less seriously. Happy birthday, love ❤️
Taylor and John Driggers-McDowall in Washington Park in Portland, Oregon. Taylor has brown hair, a beard, and glasses, and John is tall with a shaved head and beard and is wearing a red and blue Hawaiian shirt.
January 23, 2025 at 10:22 AM
taylorwdriggers.bsky.social
1. WATER HORSE (Melissa Scott, 2021)

Somewhat reminiscent of '70s/'80s gay epic fantasy, especially early Diane Duane, which is no bad thing. A bit heavy on plot & light on theme for my taste, but still a fun romp w/ some really well-drawn older queer characters & mature relationships.
January 10, 2025 at 2:20 PM
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10. FLIGHT FROM NEVÈRŸON (Samuel R. Delany, 1985)

I expected this book to wreck me, & it did, but in a completely different way than I was expecting. A poignant & provocative tale of gay sex work, AIDS, & how our language about ourselves & our own experience inevitably fails us.
January 3, 2025 at 11:31 AM