As some of you might know, there’s this immensely stupid idea out there that women don’t write speculative fiction — science fiction, in particular, but also fantasy and horror. This comes up every time somebody makes a list of 50 Best Science Fiction Novels or reveals the nominees for some genre-related award. There will often be a near to total lack of female writers involved. Someone will notice, and the most common response will be, “Yeah, but that’s cause girls don’t actually write stuff with aliens and zombies and non-sparkly vampires.”

Of course, that’s total bullshit. It might not be deliberate bullshit — I have no doubt many people actually believe men are the only ones who care about robots and superheroes — but regardless, it’s still hugely inaccurate. Fortunately, some people have come up with their own lists of fantastic female speculative writers with works that are particularly worth reading.

For instance, A.C. Wise — who’s written numerous short stories and co-edits The Journal of Unlikely Entomology — has been writing a series of guest posts on SF Signal titled Women to Read: Where to Start. In her latest post, she highlighted four stories by new speculative writers, and get this — I wrote one of them!

I’m pretty excited about this. In ten years, when I’ve written 57 books and won eighteen Hugos and everyone bows in front of me and calls me Master . . . well, I’ll probably be a little more chill about such things. As is, though, I’m still incredibly new to the professional writing world, and the fact that another talented working writer saw something I did and chose to spotlight it — and my very first published short story, too — well, it means the world to me. So, I figure today’s a good day.

If you’re interested, Wise posted a much longer list of new female writers on her blog  — which, spectacularly, includes my friend Laura Friis. If you have the time, I highly suggested checking it out.