Brevity is the Soul: BaltiCon and the Compton Crook Prize

For Memorial Day Weekend, my girlfriend Nkechi and I traveled to Baltimore for Balticon 57. I was invited as guest of honor because my debut novel, The Ballad of Perilous Graves won the Compton Crook Award for Speculative Fiction, given by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society. This was my first time as guest of honor at a science fiction convention, and the first SF convention I attended in my home state of Maryland.

Alex Jennings and Kechi Chibueze in Columbia, MD smiling

New Orleans adopted me almost exactly 17 years ago, but until 2019, Columbia, Maryland was where I spent the most time out of all the places I’ve lived. I was very much into nerd culture—comic books, SF, genre films and literature—but I knew virtually nothing of fandom. Moving to New Orleans with my brother Brandon was my way of “breaking my eye open” and learning to see the world I needed to in order to produce the best fiction I could create.

Because of the way I grew up—a Foreign Service Brat bouncing from Gaborone, Botswana to Norfolk, VA, then Washington Courthouse, OH, then to Columbia, MD for years, followed by a longish stint in Olympia, WA, then back to MD before settling in New Orleans, there was a time where Maryland only felt like home because that was where most of my family was located. Most of them, including my parents, are still there, and these days, Maryland feels more comfortable to me when I was an awkward kid or a college drop-out working the radio ratings for Arbitron. Part of the reason is the warmth I receive from people living there whenever I return. Another reason is that this was my first trip back to my stomping grounds since Nkechi and I have been together—and while we didn’t spend much time in Columbia, we had dinner with several of my family, including my parents, my Aunt Donna (not pictured) and Mr. William “Soopaman” MacDonald, who is always a joy to see.

The Compton Crook Award was presented at Balticon’s opening ceremonies by Micaiah Johnson and P. Djeli Clark, and several of my family members were in attendance. Receiving it and participating in Balticon was a homecoming for me, a profoundly gratifying experience that left me quiet, thoughtful, and very appreciative. Debi Choudhry and the rest of the Balticon team have done a wonderful job, and while it felt strange to miss WisCon, I could not have enjoyed myself more. One of the best things about the award is that Balticon is bringing me back as a guest next year, and I’ll present next year’s Compton Crook to the winner. I cannot wait.

I kept my acceptance remarks short, but it was important to me to say something about our current political climate, even if only glancingly. Seeing the progress LGBT rights have made since I began making memories in the 80s made me feel as if we would continue an unbroken progression for the rest of my lifetime, but of course such hopes are naive. Seeing the way conservatives are attacking drag, trans rights, and our democracy as a whole—and seeing the way groups holding various priveleges seem bound and determine to pretend that snatching the rights away from one group simply stops there and that the firing squad will never turn on them—it’s geniunely dispiriting. Part of the reason I wrote this book was to celebrate my queer and trans loved ones and my own queerness. The process of publication made it clear that the things I thought made me and my work unpalatable to large audiences are actually strengths, that the specificity of my experiences and understanding can be related to by those different from myself. I’m still terribly saddened by what I see going on outside my window, but that sadness is not without hope, not without joy.

This summer, I’ll be teaching again at the Stonecoast MFA Residency in Maine. I’ll also beteaching my adult speculative fiction course, Writing for the Real World through the NOCCA Institute again. I’m supremely excited about it. I’ll also be working on a major fundraising program for Con or Bust, as well as more than once project I can’t mention just yet. I’m so glad that The Ballad of Perilous Graves has been received as well as it has, and I’m excited for the future.