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In Memoriam
May. 22nd, 2022 04:59 pmSpeech given at the 57th annual Nebula Awards, in acceptance of the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award on behalf of Petra Mayer, presented by Amal El-Mohtar
(The ceremony can be viewed here)
Thank you, Amal. What a wonderful tribute.
This can only be a pale shadow of the speech Petra would have given you. She looked forward to the Nebulas every year, and she loved coming here and hanging out with her favourite bunch of people (and discovering new favourites with each passing year). I wish she were here to speak to you herself. There’s no substitute for her voice.
When you lose someone you love, sometimes you raise your head from the grief and shock, look out the window and think “why hasn’t the world stopped?” And you wish for a moment that everyone had known how amazing this person was.
So sinking into the abyss of Twitter in the aftermath of Petra’s tragic, sudden, early death, the consolation I found was that in her case, people did know. Even people who’d only heard her voice on the radio had a sense of her personality, and the authors and journalists and people from the book world among whom she’d lived and worked were dealing with their grief by raising her a cairn of words as only they could. So to everyone who felt Petra’s loss and wrote something, even a few words, at that terrible time, thank you. It helped.
It’s hard to think of Petra being gone. Petra was a force of nature, a tsunami of enthusiasms and brightly coloured plastic jewellery and baked goods and Doctor Who and Art Nouveau roses and Buster Keaton movies and elaborate costumes and loud singing and creative swearing and you could almost forget that you were in the presence of the doyenne of NPR Books, Petra Mayer of the razor-sharp mind and keen editorial eye, marshal to an army of reviewers and voice heard by millions for all her years on the airwaves.
Critics, especially in national media outlets, are to some extent gatekeepers; and editors even more so. But Petra was a gatekeeper who flung wide the gates, and would have ripped them off their hinges if she could. From the beginning, she sought out not just the authors she knew and loved, but the overlooked and the underpromoted. She sought out the work of authors and critics from marginalised groups— she couldn’t bear the thought of institutional bias robbing us of those stories, those voices. She widened her mandate to include not just SF and fantasy, but comics, horror, mystery and romance. And if she couldn’t fit in a review of your book, or if she read it after publication, it still might turn up in one of her Best Of lists or reader polls, or in the great work that drove her to distraction every year: the Book Concierge (now renamed Books We Love).
Whether you were an author or a reviewer, Petra was the person you always hoped would read your work. Petra had the book journalist’s talent for speed reading— she devoured books. But she savoured each one, and each particular blend of flavours would remain in her amazingly retentive memory.
As a reviewer, you would send Petra your work and it would come back better and clearer. She would discern your meaning through the layers of obfuscation and overthinking, and she would knock away your excess verbiage like the stone obscuring Excalibur.
Everyone here knows the hazards of making a profession of something you love— but in Petra’s case, that love never wavered. The world of American letters was lucky to have her— and she would have been even more of a presence had she lived to old age— but if she were here accepting this award right now, I know she’d say she was the lucky one. How many teenage nerds grow up to work with their icons? and to be admired by them? She loved every moment. She loved your work, and she loved you.
So, Petra would want me to thank all of you for this award tonight. She would want to thank Jeffee, Kate and the Nebula board. She would want to thank National Public Radio, all of her colleagues at NPR Books, and each and every one of her reviewers. She would give heartfelt thanks to her family, especially her parents, Elke and Jeff, and her longtime platonic life-partner Josh Drobina.
On behalf of the journalist, editor, reader, writer, and force eleven nerdicane that was Petra Mayer, I know she’d be overjoyed to accept this award. She would have longed to party with you afterward, but be assured that wherever you gather, she will be there in spirit. Thank you all.
(The ceremony can be viewed here)
Thank you, Amal. What a wonderful tribute.
This can only be a pale shadow of the speech Petra would have given you. She looked forward to the Nebulas every year, and she loved coming here and hanging out with her favourite bunch of people (and discovering new favourites with each passing year). I wish she were here to speak to you herself. There’s no substitute for her voice.
When you lose someone you love, sometimes you raise your head from the grief and shock, look out the window and think “why hasn’t the world stopped?” And you wish for a moment that everyone had known how amazing this person was.
So sinking into the abyss of Twitter in the aftermath of Petra’s tragic, sudden, early death, the consolation I found was that in her case, people did know. Even people who’d only heard her voice on the radio had a sense of her personality, and the authors and journalists and people from the book world among whom she’d lived and worked were dealing with their grief by raising her a cairn of words as only they could. So to everyone who felt Petra’s loss and wrote something, even a few words, at that terrible time, thank you. It helped.
It’s hard to think of Petra being gone. Petra was a force of nature, a tsunami of enthusiasms and brightly coloured plastic jewellery and baked goods and Doctor Who and Art Nouveau roses and Buster Keaton movies and elaborate costumes and loud singing and creative swearing and you could almost forget that you were in the presence of the doyenne of NPR Books, Petra Mayer of the razor-sharp mind and keen editorial eye, marshal to an army of reviewers and voice heard by millions for all her years on the airwaves.
Critics, especially in national media outlets, are to some extent gatekeepers; and editors even more so. But Petra was a gatekeeper who flung wide the gates, and would have ripped them off their hinges if she could. From the beginning, she sought out not just the authors she knew and loved, but the overlooked and the underpromoted. She sought out the work of authors and critics from marginalised groups— she couldn’t bear the thought of institutional bias robbing us of those stories, those voices. She widened her mandate to include not just SF and fantasy, but comics, horror, mystery and romance. And if she couldn’t fit in a review of your book, or if she read it after publication, it still might turn up in one of her Best Of lists or reader polls, or in the great work that drove her to distraction every year: the Book Concierge (now renamed Books We Love).
Whether you were an author or a reviewer, Petra was the person you always hoped would read your work. Petra had the book journalist’s talent for speed reading— she devoured books. But she savoured each one, and each particular blend of flavours would remain in her amazingly retentive memory.
As a reviewer, you would send Petra your work and it would come back better and clearer. She would discern your meaning through the layers of obfuscation and overthinking, and she would knock away your excess verbiage like the stone obscuring Excalibur.
Everyone here knows the hazards of making a profession of something you love— but in Petra’s case, that love never wavered. The world of American letters was lucky to have her— and she would have been even more of a presence had she lived to old age— but if she were here accepting this award right now, I know she’d say she was the lucky one. How many teenage nerds grow up to work with their icons? and to be admired by them? She loved every moment. She loved your work, and she loved you.
So, Petra would want me to thank all of you for this award tonight. She would want to thank Jeffee, Kate and the Nebula board. She would want to thank National Public Radio, all of her colleagues at NPR Books, and each and every one of her reviewers. She would give heartfelt thanks to her family, especially her parents, Elke and Jeff, and her longtime platonic life-partner Josh Drobina.
On behalf of the journalist, editor, reader, writer, and force eleven nerdicane that was Petra Mayer, I know she’d be overjoyed to accept this award. She would have longed to party with you afterward, but be assured that wherever you gather, she will be there in spirit. Thank you all.
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