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The new issue, No. 5, of Transformative Works and Cultures, the academic journal with which we’re affiliated, was published this week, and I haven’t had time to do more than skim the editorial, which in an academic journal such as this sums up and gives an overview of the issue, and read one article which immediately leaped out at me.

The editorial finds the theme of “the embodied fan” to be running through many of the works in this issue. There’s a great summary of what you can find in all the articles on the OTW’s own blog; if you didn’t know about it I strongly recommend following it as well as this one. I believe Francesca Coppa does most of the posts there, and that blog for the umbrella organization does links roundups and points out a lot of cool stuff that I certainly miss.

Given that my main interest in media fandom is fan fiction, and that I primarily approach media fandom as a writer and a reader, I of course immediately gravitated to the interview the editors of the journal did with three women who have experience writing fan fiction, tie-in novels for TV shows, and their own original fantasy and science fiction.

The interview, with Jo Graham, Martha Wells and Melissa Scott, was fascinating to me.

I was particularly struck by the distance that these authors maintain from the fannish community compared to authors who write primarily fan fiction, and was also intrigued and found much to think about in their examination of the much wider and more eclectic audience they see for tie-in novels for TV shows compared to the audience for slash or other types of fan fiction.

A fascinating look at how writers have navigated all three of these types of writing — how they are different and how they are the same.

I’m looking forward to reading more of the issue and I hope you are too!