Tricia Barr Talks Science Fiction Storytelling with Natacha Guyot

Wynde Full BannerI had a chance to answer some questions for Natacha Guyot’s #SciFiWomen interview series. I talked about being a fangirl, female characters in science fiction fantasy and also what I have been working on in my fictional realm. Here were my thoughts on female characters:

NG: Do you believe that Science Fiction is a genre welcoming to complex female characters?

TRICIA: Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor were something new and fresh at the time they appeared in science fiction, but the dynamic that followed in their wake set a tone that a good female character had to be in the same vein of badass, even stripped of their femininity. Women come in all types, just as men do. We are finally seeing signs of change. While science fiction stories can be forward-thinking, too often the contemporary community still fosters backward and dangerous mindsets about women. We’re in an interesting time now, where female characters are breaking out of the limited number of molds and more women are becoming empowered from experiencing the stories of these amazing characters. With every step forward in feminism there is always a backlash, but it feels like women are in a better position to fight for their space in genre storytelling.

Check out the rest of the interview here. For more on her novel Wynde, see TriciaBarr.com.

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Fangirl

Tricia Barr took her understanding of brand management and marketing, mixed it with a love of genre storytelling, and added a dash of social media flare to create FANgirl Blog, where she discusses Star Wars, fandom, and the intersection of women within Star Wars fandom. She is co-author of Ultimate Star Wars and Star Wars Visual Encyclopedia from DK Publishing, a featured writer for Star Wars Insider magazine with numerous articles on the Hero's Journey. Her FANgirl opinions can be heard on the podcasts Hyperspace Theories and Fangirls Going Rogue. Tricia Barr's novel, Wynde, won the 2014 Independent Publisher Book Award Gold Medal for Best Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror Ebook. She was also part of Silence in the Library's successful all-female creator science fiction and fantasy anthology Athena's Daughters, which is available now. For excerpts and tales of her adventures in creating a fictional universe, hop over to TriciaBarr.com.