End of Winter Culture round-up

• First some reading material, a list of 100 Books by black women  and the  impressive (if slightly daunting) prospect that is the The Lesbrary Good Reads Project.
• Some Writing wisdom from Toni Morrison and here she is again being completely awesome in an interview.
• I was pleased to see lesbian writer, Sarah Schulman, getting her latest book reviewed in a non LGBT publication.
• Lesbian.com featured an interview with brilliant lesbian poet Staceyann Chin

• From New Inquiry, 7 Days of Queer Theory. This brought back some good memories of reading all these people and getting my head cracked open (in a good way).
• The full text of Mythologies, Roland Barthes seminal work of cultural criticism, is available here.
• I’ve come across a lot of interesting  speeches by and interviews with Ursula K Le Guin recently: The Intersection of Anarchism and Fiction,  Getting Away with Murder, and A much needed literary award are all good reads, but my favourite is A Left Handed Commencement Address. This is one of those pieces that I can tell I’m going to keep returning to whenever I feel the need to ground myself.
• Autostraddle, a site that’s been going from strength to strength recently, has an interview with black, lesbian, fantasy writer, Jewelle Gomez.
• The World SF Blog had a post from Aliette Bodard on Mixed race people in SFF
• I really like this nuanced post from Fantasy writer, Kate Eliot, about definitions of strength and writing “strong characters” in literature (via Foz Meadows)
• Bad Reputation did a good series on women in horror.  I especially liked The Countess is Waiting for You: Daughters of Darkness, Modernism, Feminism and fear: The Uncanny Stories of May Sinclair  and Lisa Tuttle’s guest post about women who write horror.  There were other posts too though and you should check it out.
• Two of my favourite pop culture posts were Anne Billson’s Kidnapped: Women in action movies and Genevieve Valentine’s hilarious review of Hansel and Gretel, which actually made me want to watch the film, dire though it sounds.
• From i09.com, Why can’t any recent Sherlock Holmes adaptations get Irene Adler right?  I do find it sad that television shows made in 2012 have managed to be less feminist than a short story written by a Victorian man in the 1890s.
• The Rocky Horror Show turned 40 and The Guardian celebrated with an image gallery (Hat tip Bethan)
• From Huffington Post, George Takei On Coming Out, LGBT Rights and ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill.  I do love George Takei.
• Now this is a weird and creepy thing indeed, Star Trek TNG original hair and makeup screen tests. But if that made me shudder, this twitter parody account, TNG: Season 8, made me cry and half suffocate myself with laughter.