CoW Ep. 216: Banned Books Week – This Story Begins With You

[danooli]

Episode 216: Banned Books Week – This Story Begins With You by Rachael K. Jones



• Narrated by Jen R. Albert
• Audio production by Jeremy Carter
• Banned Books Weeks 2016 photograph courtesy of Jeremy Carter
• A Cast of Wonders Banned Books Week original!

Rachael K. Jones grew up in various cities across Europe and North America, picked up (and mostly forgot) six languages, an addiction to running, and a couple of degrees. Now she writes speculative fiction in Athens, Georgia, where she lives with her husband. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in many venues including Shimmer, Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Strange Horizons, EscapePod, InterGalactic Medicine Show, and The Drabblecast. She is a SFWA member and a secret android. Follow her on online or on Twitter.

Jen R. Albert is an entomologist, writer of science fiction and fantasy, gamer, and (in her own words) all around geek. She is co-editor at PodCastle and submissions editor at Uncanny. Her first story appeared in Mad Scientist Journal in June 2015. You can follow her online or on Twitter.

The story goes that your dad got a new job.
The story goes that you moved 5,000 miles away. You didn't know anyone in your new town, and none of them knew you.
You had a best friend in your old town named Marco, but you left him behind. You had a playground on your old street. A favorite climbing tree. A secret hideout behind the garden shed made from plywood and latticed tree branches, papered with mildewed books the library had thrown out after the classics section flooded.

Click here to listen to Episode 216
Click here to read the text of the story


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The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is a non-profit dedicated to protecting the First Amendment rights of the comics medium and is an annual sponsor of Banned Books Week. Founded in 1986, the CBLDF has managed and paid for the legal defense of artists, worked with libraries to resist challenged to comics and graphic novels, and undertaken advocacy work against unconstitutional proposed legitlation at the state and Federal level.
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Tags: Banned Books Week, Cast of Wonders, escapism, Fantasy, Jen Albert, Jeremy Carter, Modern Fantasy, peer pressure, peers, Rachael K. Jones, school, Young Adult fiction

[Unblinking]

When did this story get added to the feed?  Was this just released?  This renumbering, and changing the date on episode posts is really screwing me up.  How many episodes have I missed?

[Fenrix]

When Piggy shows up, you know shit's about to get real.

I read voraciously in high school. College broke me, and I'm just now getting back to my earlier consumption levels. I had several teachers that interacted with that habit interestingly. One would hold me after class and give me a hall pass to chat about the books. Another gave me flak for reading under the desk. I was acing the class, so we came to an agreement that I could continue as I had been if I would read a book of their choosing and do a report. The Fountainhead. I can't decide if they were trying to mold me or troll me. I think about this occasionally.

[Unblinking]

Really enjoyed this one, I particularly liked the idea of bookhopping, especially talking to Friday to get some stories from him to jump off to the next story, especially given that Friday is not treated real well by his writer.