PROTECTRESS on sale at Smashwords!

You can get the epub edition of PROTECTRESS at Smashwords for just $1.49 from now until January 1, 2025. Visit https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1181759 and apply the coupon!

PROTECTRESS, a novella in verse, is a modern-day sequel to the Medusa myth, in which Medusa and her sisters have lived into the present and must contend with Athena, who, raised in the toxic masculinity of Olympus, is trying to slut-shame and victim-blame Medusa for having been raped by Poseidon in Athena’s temple. But the gorgons aren’t having any of it, and they’re not alone–a host of women from Greek myth come to their aid. There’s also a very good boi dragon, Ladon.

Here’s a sample. The gorgons have left their everyday lives in the US and France and returned to their original home, a sea-cave in Greece. They’re trying to figure out how to stop Athena’s campaign against Medusa, which includes trying to drive Medusa mad. They realize they can’t do it alone, so they’ve invited friends to a brainstorming party. Here’s everyone arriving to the party.

Three sisters arrive first,
these oft-tricked by hubristic men,
daughters of Nyx who give off,
paradoxically and resplendently,
great banners of light.
The Hesperides are glad to leave
their little garden, where they must
spend their days tending
apples of immortality,
playing with an easily-bored
dragon, and currying favor with
Hera.

Indeed, Hera accompanies them,
followed by the puppy-like
Ladon, who cavorts
and tumbles and leans on
everyone’s legs, begging for
attention and petting behind his
great floppy scaly ears.

I thought you were running
some kind of
hearth-home
bullshit group,
Hera,
says Euryale.
The goddess sighs
deeply and
the corner of her mouth
twitches
unhappily.
I changed my mind,
she says.
The nymphs invited me,
I can go if you don’t—
no, says Euryale, but
what are you doing here,
now?

I—
she closes her eyes
and puts up her hands
defensively—
I do other things,
now. I—
I teach self-defense
and anti-harassment training
and—

Hera! says Stheno
putting her arm around the
shorter woman.
Euryale,
did you know that Hera’s
foundation paid for
the processing of six thousand rape kits
last year?

A round-faced woman
pops up on the other side of Hera.
Io! says Stheno,
I heard you two were working together,
waggling her fingers at the two women:
Zeus be damned, am I right?

Euryale’s eyebrows assume heights
unknown to mortals
and her beautiful mouth
falls ever so slightly
open.

Let me get you some drinks,
says Stheno, who has already had
a few herself, relaxing
and not having to be forgettable
for the first time in many years.
More trios and triads arrive:
Thriae, Naxians, Mysians,
Asterionides.

Quartets and quintets
and solo travelers:
hamadryads and naiads,
happy maenads bringing
boxes of wine and
skins of ouzo.

Ladon is the favored guest
until at last he stretches out,
scales on stone,
and sleeps, his long
whiskers gently rising
and settling like the sun.

My Skin: A Selkie’s Story

Composer Angela Elizabeth Slater is well-known in the UK as the founder and director of Illuminate Women’s Music, which commissions and performs music by women all over the country. This winter, Illuminate Scotland is bringing works by Marie Dare, Hildegard von Bingen, Babara Strozzi, Emily Doolittle, and Gemma McGregor, plus new commissions by Sonia Allori, Simone Seales, Kate Sagovsky and composers in residence Ruta Vitkauskaite and Angela Elizabeth Slater to Glasgow, Aberdeen, Dundee, Kinlochard, and Edinburgh. All of the concerts feature Illuminate artists in residence soprano Stephanie Lamprea and cellist Jessica Kerr. Stephanie and Jessica are amazing new music performers and I am honored to have them playing a piece I’ve contributed to!

Angela and I have collaborated on a topic we both love–the legend of the selkies. The selkie is a being from Scottish and Irish folklore that can shapeshift between seal and human forms. While there are stories about love between humans and selkies (the 2014 film Song of the Sea is one example), many selkie stories—including the one we tell—focus on what happens when a man steals a selkie’s sealskin in order to trap her in bondage to him. Recent literature about selkies includes A Sweet Sting of Salt by Rose Sutherland, which I reviewed here; Seanan McGuire‘s October Daye series; and Nicole Peeler‘s Jane True series.

A wicker statue of a selkie, shown as a woman with a seal's tail, stands in a green field.
Willow selkie sculpture as Culzean Castle, South Ayrshire, Scotland, by David Powell. Photo by Billy McCrorie, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. 

You can hear Angela’s and my new song, “My Skin” being workshopped on December 11, at 1 pm GMT (8 am Eastern) at https://www.youtube.com/live/Xm_J_jYfTTc?si=Ve3_-exvUywCAUC8. Here’s my text:

Where is my skin?
Where does it dry and crack,
you coward?

I am born of the tides,
seal—girl, girl—seal, seal and girl and girl-seal.
I swim, I gleam beneath the auroras
until the day he comes and 
my kin scatter, tiny suns under the water
and he comes and takes my skin.

I ask, I plead, I beguile
in desperation as hot as a star:
where is my skin?

Without it, I am just half—
a selkie, raw and rent down the middle.
Human man, where do you hide my skin?

He cuts away the finger-webs
of the children that I bear,
and when my sister Flora comes,
he slays her at the door.

But Flora’s death gives me a gift,
for with her skin I make coats for my daughters—
my girls, who hear me nightly ask,
where is my skin?—
and find it themselves in the floor of the shed—
my skin, the saving of me.

Tonight we escape.

Kirsty as lookout,
Maggie brings her gun,
Grace drives.
Together we go to the shore.
I dress my daughters in my sister’s hide,
above the moon welcomes me home to the sea.
The women’s eyes 
suddenly rich with salt.

In our dappled coats, 
my seal-girls, girl-seals and I slide
into the water’s loving rocking,
and swim and swim until we become the sun.

SMT Award!

I’m delighted that Expanding the Canon: Black Composers in the Music Theory Classroom, edited by Melissa Hoag and published by Routledge has been awarded the 2024 Outstanding Multi-Author Collection by the Society for Music Theory. The collection includes my chapter “Teaching Julia Perry’s Homunculus C. F.” (click for page proofs). I’m honored to be part of the collection.