Loose-leaf Links is a feature where I gather together the interesting bits and pieces on sci-fi and fantasy I’ve come across and share them with you over tea. Today’s tea is from The Art of Tea, the same lovely people who made the Tabitha Blend for Livia Day’s The Blackmail Blend. This is their Mount Wellington, named for the peak overlooking Hobart. It’s a floral tea that puts me in mind of French Earl Grey with a dash of vanilla.

Follow Up

The Canberra launch of Defying Doomsday took place last weekend and I had a lovely time attending. Dave Versace offers a few photos of the event.

Awards News

The winners of the 2016 Mythopoeic Awards have been announced.

On Equity

The program for the 2016 World Fantasy Convention was recently released and looks like the programmer was making an effort to offend as many people as possible. File 770 has a round-up of the complaints.

SFF author Emma Newman (who also runs one of my favourite podcasts, Tea and Jeopardy) has a guest post at the Mary Sue on why feminism in fantasy is important.

Danielle Binks discusses the representation of women’s bodies in SFF, with a particular focus on YA.

Over at Lady Business, Renay posted a list of 60 essential SFF books. Cheekily, she made the list all female, except for one token male. John Scalzi was delighted. The replies to his tweet promoting the list have been very entertaining.

Over at Fireside Fiction, Cecily Kane has some depressing figures in relation to antiblack racism in speculative fiction. P. Djeli Clark unpacks these figures and their implications.

Mariah Ramsawakh discusses disability representation and the Miraculous Cure trope, the latter of which I’ve commented on in recent reviews.

For Writers

A new market is opening for speculative poets on 1 September. Twisted Moon is looking for erotic speculative poems. Please check their guidelines.

Over at Badredhead Media, Melissa Flicks discusses the difference between beta readers and ARC readers.

BookRiot has 30 podcasts for writers.

How to get yourself blacklisted. Seriously, people, don’t do this.

For Readers

Bout of Books is running on 22-28 August and sign-ups are now open!

Forestofglory has offered her short fiction recommendations for July.

Terri Windling sings the praises of rereading.

BookRiot takes a look at Amazon’s best-selling books for the last 15 years.

Satalyte Publishing are launching Gillian Polack’s The Wizardry of Jewish Women in Melbourne on 5 September. Check out their post for details and for an interview with Gillian.

Jodi Cleghorn released her chapbook The Heart is an Echo Chamber yesterday. There are a limited number of physical copies, so get in quick!

Lastly, Alexandra Pierce has news of a heap of other new releases in her ANZ-focused column for Tor.com, Aurora Australis.