Pre-orders are now open for Luna's latest Call for Papers! Follow Me: Religion in Fantasy and Science Fiction. Pre-order yours here! Ebook also available on the usual retailers' sites.
Our Award Winning series, welcomes essays from academics, independent researchers, fans and creative writers, appealing to both the casual reader and a more research-oriented one. We consider this cross-disciplinary collaboration a strength, and the beginning of many more journeys.
The book will be released on the 20th of June, so we have plenty of time to introduce you to our contributors.
Today we'll introduce you to Cheryl Morgan - Wales - presenting the paper, Darling, You’re Just Divine! Queer Gods in science fiction and fantasy.
Abstract:
In modern Western society, we tend to assume that religion is the enemy of the LGBTQ+ community. Some religious people certainly give us plenty of ground for thinking that. Outside the Abrahamic religions, however, attitudes towards queer people could be very different. Some gods were decidedly queer. Also the history of the Abrahamic religions is nowhere near as heteronormative and cisnormative as some modern church leaders would like to make out.
This paper will look at queer gods from history and their provenances. It will look at how the gender of god/s is understood. It will also argue that for much of human history, religious cults were one of the main safe spaces for queer people.
About the Author:
Cheryl Morgan is a writer, editor, publisher and critic. She owns Wizard’s Tower Press and has written for a variety of outlets including Locus, The SFWA Bulletin, SFX, Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Holdfast Magazine and SF Signal. She is, to her knowledge, the first openly transgender person to have won a Hugo Award.
In addition to her science fiction interests she lectures widely on transgender history.