Photograph by Daniel Glasser

Juanita Coulson is one of the grand dames of filkdom, repeatedly nominated for Pegasus Awards. In 1996, she was inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame at FilKONtario. She is also a published author, with a writing career spanning several decades. She won a Hugo award in 1965 as co-editor of the fanzine Yandro.

Juanita's Bio (in her own words):

B. 2/12/33 Anderson, IN US. Public school (US) education.

BA, MA Ball State University: Elementary Education, with a minor in literature (which turned out to be a lot more useful and profitable in the long run).

Music: started piano at age three. Studied -- with breaks -- for eight years. Learned a lot of con brio and was encouraged to compose, but never mastered transcription and time signatures. (Brain injury at age seven mangled my math neurons.) Taught myself guitar after entering fandom in the '50s. Had a strong interest in folk music at that time, but lifetime interest in ALL forms of music, with exceptions of big band swing and, currently, most rap. Began composing, if that's the word, while walking to classes on campus in '40s and '50s. Only after I had the form fully worked out did I use any instrument but my voice.

Married Robert "Buck" Coulson in 1954. He had well-honed poetry abilities but was totally tone-deaf. Wrote a lot of verse I eventually set to music -- "Reminder/Star Drive," for one. He introduced me to Martha Keller's poetry; he had become addicted to her work in the mid-'40s, before we met.

Have been attending conventions since 1952, singing at cons since the mid to late '50s, singing at club meetings much earlier -- just as soon as I got at a piano wherever the club meeting was being held, in fact. Watched what was going to become filkdom bloom and fade several times before it finally took off strongly in the Midwestern fan circles in the '70s. Stuck with it ever since, trying to encourage newcomers.

Never had stage fright myself and feel obligated to tell those who do that they should not, no never, give up on performing. (At age 3 I was put up on a tabletop in a tavern and Daddy told me to "entertain the boys" -- which I did with song and dance, after which they gave me candy. Decided that was a pretty good deal and haven't shut up since.)

PWL: What came first, the music, or the science fiction?

JC: What came first -- music or lyrics? Generally, lyrics. In the fanzine collection I donated en toto to Bowling Green University's Popular Culture Library there were 1930s fanzines edited by the legendary Sam Moskowitz. Very serious, technocracy oriented stuff. But they contained what can only be called filk lyrics -- "on to the stars" and "science will rule" themes. If there was music, Sam didn't mention that. But I imagine he and his fan friends concocted, or "borrowed", appropriate musical accompaniment when signing their lyrics in the tiny room parties of that fannish era.

But it isn't always that way. Karen Anderson and other West Coasters, being heavily into Gilbert and Sullivan, among other stuff, were setting their SF lyrics to G&S music. Filthy Pierre, by the '60s, was not only using a lot of Tom Lehrer but also writing parody SF lyrics for existing music.

My own approach was double-barreled. As soon as I discovered printed SF, in particular Heinlein, like many another fan, I had to set it to music. (There must be umpty-ump musical versions of "Green Hills of Earth," to name just one of his inspirational take-off points.) But at the same time I was writing my own lyrics and setting them to music. Occasionally I concocted lyrics and music simultaneously on my mile-long hikes to campus; later I set two of those compositions to piano music and eventually converted them to the guitar; the odd aftermath of those two songs seems to be that I simply can't a cappella those oldies of mine -- I have to play music and lyrics together. Other fans across the US (though damned few of us) were creating various versions of filk songs at the same time, in most cases initially unaware that anyone else might have come up with the same notion. Eventually, through different avenues, we learned that other fans -- including fans in other geographical regions -- shared our enthusiasm for musical SF and Fantasy. In the Midwest in the '50s, we'd sit in a circle of three or four and run through our entire repertoires -- which at most was three or four songs, including our adaptations of Heinlein's lyrics -- until we'd done them all; then we'd repeat them, or stray into folk music or Tom Lehrer. By the '60s, we'd acquired a few more original songs, but still relied heavily on folkie stuff to pad the program. By the '70s, in the Midwest, SCA interbred with the old fan musickers. SCA brought in new lyrics set to existing music, for the most part. Thanks to that influx, the Midwestern filk population and the number of songs available for our enjoyment expanded exponentially. And, happily, the end is not yet in sight.

PWL: So many science fiction authors seem to have been involved in filk over the years, and yet filkers in general, and filk in particular, seem to be almost sneered at by fandom at large. Why do you suppose that is?

JC: Short answer: I think some pros with sour opinions of our subculture, and some fans as well, had a bad first exposure to filking. Maybe it was at a con where filk hogs took over the room, and from then on everything was limited to their own interests -- Dr. Who, Star Trek, slash fiction, gaming, whatever. Point is, the might-have-been-hooked first time listener, fan or pro, wasn't into that particular branch of fandom. In fact, he or she might have been actively hostile to Who, ST, or whatever. Once burned, permanently shy, in a lot of cases, unfortunately.

(I ran into a tiny version of that at the Brighton Worldcon in '79. Some wonderful Scots fans had first encountered American filk earlier in the evening through Filthy Pierre's singalong version of filk, and it had turned them off tremendously. Only by accident did they later wander into the general filk room. Their reaction after listening to a bit of that was, "Oh, this is filking, too? This is great!" and they joined in, favoring us with some marvelously obscure Scots folk songs.)

Longer answer: there are pros and fans who have already formed extremely strong opinions regarding what they like in music. And some of them won't tolerate anything else. Marion Zimmer Bradley, a close friend of mine since we were in our 20s, put up with me singing bluesy stuff and admitted she actually enjoyed it. When I sang that stuff. But not when anyone else did. And if filk and the filker didn't fit her prejudices, that was that and off with their heads. If they didn't have a trained voice (though I certainly don't!) and weren't singing in a strictly classical style, she was completely turned off.

In the '70s, Ted Pauls of the Baltimore area wrote in his fanzine that he'd suffered through having to listen to local fans singing at a con and that turned HIM off. He went on to rave about his then-favorite singer, Barbra Streisand, and said since none of the female singers he'd heard at the con sounded remotely like Streisand, why didn't the amateurs just go out and drown themselves. In his narrow opinion, no one but Streisand sound-alikes should live. Or sing.

He wasn't alone. Hundreds of fans and pros, no doubt, have already made up their minds on what "music" is before they ever encounter filk. If what they hear in the filk room doesn't match that template, they go into scorn mode and rarely change their opinions afterward, sad to say.

Some have company in the filk field itself. There are purists of a variety of stripes. Kanef even wrote them up in one of his parodies. "Nothing's a filksong unless it's acoustical. . ." Gotta be unplugged wood or out, out, damned filk assassin! "Show me the wood and the tree whence it grew." That branch of purism abhorred the introduction of rock linked filk and electronic instruments.

And then there's a Steven Brust attitude out of Minneapolis. Very talented performers there, but it's hard rock- and jazz-based. Brust decided that was the rule book and used to post signs telling filkers to keep out of his musical room parties. The one time he shut up on that score occurred at a WorldCon when the Childs-Heltons joined his party for a while and showed him what pro musicians who love filk sound like. Much better than Brust did, I can assure you. He couldn't fault them on technique or any other tack.

At that Worldcon, I wandered from room to room, sampling something of everything, because I like damned near everything. My taste is extremely eclectic. Bring it on. A cappella to full synthesizer. Love it all.

And then there are those who just don't like music. Especially when they've previously convinced themselves nothing worthwhile could be performed by "amateurs." Telling them that filk includes performers who get paid for what they do doesn't convince them. In their minds, unless it's a full symphony orchestra, with name opera singers soloing, it isn't "real" music.

So what are we -- chopped liver?

Lastly, and unfortunately, filk must acknowledge that not everyone who participates has the greatest voice or the greatest -- or even, in some cases, passable -- instrumental technique. Or lyric-writing ability. We're a village, in an anthropological sense. Once you're part of the filk community, you learn patience -- or should. Everyone gets to play, if they want to. If they're really inept, but only ask to perform once an evening, we bear with them, and even try to help them out by singing and playing along. That's a form of kindness the "it must be professional or it ain't music" members of the wider SF community simply don't "get."

Footnote. There are also fans, some of them on con committees, who aren't hostile to filk; they just don't have the slightest clue what it's all about. Those are the cons that don't give us a room -- not because they hate us, but because they never even realize we exist. We can try educating them, though that rarely proves successful. I worked hard on one convention, for years. And I never did get through. They're charmingly oblivious to filk in its entirety.

Onward.

PWL: Do you incorporate music into your science fiction writing?

JC: I've occasionally used music -- or at least lyrics -- in my SF. In The Past of Forever my alien world archaeologists had a "pit fit" (which is a genuine custom among southwestern US archaeos): on a long dig, tensions can eventually run high, so they break out the home brew and whatever else is needed, and everybody parties in the pits previously excavated but which turned up nothing useful. Dry holes, as it were. When you get stinking falling down drunk, you're already down in the pit, so you can't hurt yourself falling over. At any rate, particularly during that sequence, I quoted some filk created by the archaeos themselves to poke fun at various members of the crew and themselves. I even had some of the alien members of the crew indulging in their own unintelligible version of what the humans had to assume was filk.

On the other hand, I've written filks about what I wrote, even material that I didn't use in the books themselves. My filk song that people think of as "Ad Astra" -- the actual title is "Chess" -- was written at least fifteen years before the book; the idea was always there, but I never really thought I'd be able to sell the story. So I sang it. "Chess" is the story that became Outward Bound of the Children of the Stars series for Del Rey Books. And in Outward Bound I concocted an "Advance Australia Fair" type sappy anthem for the human Martian colonists to sing. Not sure if that qualifies as filk. And though I haven't performed it for a very long time, there's a song (more than one, but only one performed in a circle) for my fantasy novel, Web of Wizardry. (I concocted a lot of music for my own private fantasy universe used as background in Web of Wizardry and The Death God's Citadel, but had no occasion to include them in the books. It was just for my own amusement.)

I might say that while I'm writing a book I inevitably imagine the music accompanying various scenes. It may or may not be filk. It may be a favorite classical, rock, Afro Cuban, or whatever selection. However, unlike a number of my friends who are authors, I absolutely cannot write while music is on the boombox or radio. No background music. Nononono. When I listen to music, I listen to music. When I writes, I writes.

PWL: Would you say that filk fandom has changed over the years, and if so, how?

JC: Oh, yes, enormously. No matter where you were in the '50s (fandom in the '30s really didn't have filk, just earnest technocrats occasionally singing in room parties, and the '40s were wartime and its re-organizing aftermath) -- East or West Coast or middle of the country -- to be a proto-filker was a lonely thing. We all were inventing the wheel separately, unaware of the existence of others in other geographical areas of the US. Blundering along, as it were. What we had in common was a love of SF/Fantasy and music and a burning desire to combine the two, if only for our own satisfaction.

This meant bunches of tiny little clots of two or three proto-filkers who had stumbled upon one another at the far too few cons existing in that era. Travel was difficult and expensive. Not many of us ventured out of our own bailiwicks. I can't stress enough that there were little sings, totally impromptu. Likely to be heavily slanted toward whatever outside musical influences had worked upon us prior to discovering fandom. Generally folk music. A bit of Tom Lehrer thrown in. G&S. Such influences were reasonably constant -- then.

At Pittcon, the 1960 Worldcon, proto-filkers from all parts of the country got together for once, almost by accident. We were singing in our tiny little clots all over various parts of the hotel, and getting shut down by annoyed party hosts or hotel security. Finally someone from the concom said programming was finished for the evening, and if we wanted to, we could go up to the program floor and have the "XYZ" room until tomorrow at noon -- or whenever the next day's programming started again. (Don't remember the exact name of the room. It was on an upper floor, though; maybe the top floor.) We took them up on the offer, drawn as though by a magnet. For one thing, the concom had said there was a piano there and we could use it. Guitars were still pretty scanty in proto-filkdom at the time, so the piano was muchly appreciated. We had Jock Root and other East Coasters, Bruce Pelz and others from the West Coast, and a varied assortment from the Midwest, including yours truly. It was a fine mix, a courteous mixture of bardic and what was going to become chaos. The piano got a workout. Guitars were loaned as needed. I think I gave up to Morpheus at about four a.m., but some stayed until breakfast and dragged themselves to the hotel restaurant for revivals.

At the time I thought we were on our way. But it was not to be. The con ended and we scattered our tents and went back to former patterns -- widely isolated.

Repertoires then were very heavily borrowed. Pelz was writing some originals, though often setting them to G&S. Jock Root (long since gafiated) wrote a superb original Calypso on the horrors of car-caravaning across the US to get to the con. Lots of Lehrer and other "be sure always to call it please 'research'" borrowings from the great musical world outside. There weren't as many singalongs as today -- except that if it was a popular proto-filk from a certain area of the US and there were enough fans there from that region to constitute a chorus, it became a singalong, because they were all familiar with the song through repeated listenings.

Except for PittCon, filks were pitifully small in those days, as a general rule. You might assemble two or three singers, if you were lucky, and the entire rest of the room consisted of listeners. I made a practice of hooking up with a pretty young thing -- Janet Hunter, Annie Passovoy -- who could do the sweet and pretty songs -- and drag in a fair sized audience of panting male listeners. And while she rested her fingers and voice between numbers, I'd hit the listeners with some of my funny stuff. I'd made a specialty of that early on. "Make 'em laugh, make 'em laugh. . . ." Gave the audience a chance to surreptitiously wipe up the drool, too.

Fandom in those days was still at least 75% male. Closer to 85%. But post-Star Trek the gender imbalance began to right itself. It took a while, however, for us to reach the point where female filkers can outnumber males at a sing. Another gender aspect, at least in Midwest filk, was that most female filkers had sweet and soft voices and it was sometimes hard to break in and do a "filker up." I never had that trouble, but I got annoyed occasionally when I saw some femme I wanted to hear not being able to get into the melee of booming male voices doing -- usually -- bawdy and SCA-adapted stuff. I had to use my built-in mike now and then to play announcer for the patiently waiting sweet voice.

SCA and Star Trek fans seemed to discover fandom almost simultaneously. What that did was to bring in a whole lot of people, a lot of them female, and boosted the numbers of singers wonderfully.

And it brought in new material. Some of these people had cut their musical teeth on R&R and began composing accordingly. And there was a lot more composing, a lot more genuinely original material sprouting up everywhere. So much so it eventually spawned the Willitses and other demon collectors to start compiling every piece of alleged filk they could get their hands on.

From being ignored or actively opposed by concoms, filkers began to get rooms to sing in at cons. Not always, but often enough that the old timers felt a New Millennium had dawned. Concoms had recognized that some people paid for a membership because they wanted to listen to or participate in filk -- so the con had better make sure filk was on the program and it had a space to use.

Newer filkers came in with newer attitudes to not just the vocals and writing but also to instrumentation. The old standards of acoustic guitars and -- extremely rarely -- an upright or baby grand piano were joined by electric guitars and electronic keyboards and all sorts of other interesting music makers. Filk writers cast wider and wider nets and brought in styles of composing from far outside the mostly folkie orientation of the '50s and '60s.

That trend accelerated mightily throughout the '70s and '80s and '90s. So did the numbers of filkers. And cons. No one could have dreamed in the '50s and '60s that someday we'd have entire cons devoted to nothing but filk.

Filk also, alas, did some fragmenting. Part of that was due to the new recording phenomenon. Some friendships end, and if they've been business connected, that raises hell with the business. Partnerships fell apart. And on the other end, the people singing into the mikes and the ardent audiences listening to these new stars in the filk firmament -- we had a filk generation in love with the concept of recordings, and watching things being recorded. That trend glutted filk rooms at worldcons which had provided multiple filking rooms for our convenience. (Ah! Bliss!) Instead of parceling themselves out sensibly, everyone insisted on being in the one room where the recording was taking place.

Studio recordings eased that problem a trifle and introduced yet another new situation to filkdom: the concert star. People who record have large repertoires by necessity. And listeners want to hear those songs. Hear a LOT of those songs. So the dedicated filk cons and the cons with dedicated filk tracks sprang up to provide audiences with big chunks of those stars' repertoires.

We still have open filking, bardic circles, and Midwestern chaos, and even Filthy's obligatory "follow the bouncing ball" singalongs. But a lot of modern aspects have been added to what was originally two or three isolated proto-filkers sitting in a hotel corridor swapping their repertoires of three, count 'em, three songs apiece. I happen to think the results are richer. And there's certainly a choice available for every taste, in modern filk. At a dedicated filk con or filk-track gen con there's nothing to stop you from finding a quiet corner and playing your three or four favorite songs for a tiny group of appreciative friends. Then you can go to the huckster room and buy the stars' CDs and go back to more concerts and hear the latest and newest star or star group perform -- and rush back and buy more CDs. Or maybe sit down again in your corner and write a parody based on one of the new star's newest songs.

Which means the circle still remains unbroken. It's all about music, stupid, and loving music.

PWL: When did you start writing science fiction?

JC: I suppose you can say I dabbled at writing SF most of my life, even before I could write, thanks to an ultra-supportive mother. I'd come rushing in from the back yard babbling about how I saw the ants doing this that and the other and filling in imaginary conversations for the critters. Mom would stop me and ask if it was a true story or a made-up story. Once it was established I'd elaborated on real events, she said that was fine. That was called "fiction," and wait till she got a paper and pencil so she could write down the story, and then I could draw pictures of the ants talking to one another.

When I got into fandom in the '50s, like many another fan, I wrote short fiction and published it in fanzines. Eventually, I got out of the habit. Probably because Marion Bradley convinced me you don't waste your efforts if you have no chance of earning a check for the results -- though she wrote fan fiction too. She just later turned it into paying fiction.

I wrote a fantasy novel set in my own universe, which I'd begun creating when I was nine. That particular for-my-own-amusement novel was written during the summer of '58, when my son was in a playpen, getting fresh air out under the trees on the lawn of our apartment. The kid was peaceful and content as long as Mommy was in sight. Fine. I'd always wanted to put that story out of my private universe down on paper, anyway. Later on, Marion read it, said it was too long but had commercial possibilities if it was cut and tightened, which I did again and again over the next two decades, driven by her nagging. 20 years later the book got published by Del Rey as Web of Wizardry, so I guess she was right.

My first SF was a short story collaboration with Marion, "Another Rib" in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

She kept nagging me to keep trying the pro route, and at about the second or third three-chapters-and-outline I submitted to Ace Books I got a note back from fan-turned-junior editor Terry Carr, saying, "In the words of another of our friends now turned pro, 'you have just lost your return postage.' In other words, get busy writing the rest of the chapters; contract is on the way."

The short story was published in '63, the first novel in '68. Being a mommy, a farmwife, and a fanzine publisher sort of took up time I might have used for writing along the way. Plus I never really believed Marion was right, but kept working up story ideas to keep her happy.

Been writing intermittently ever since. I now seem to be back in the business again, but this time writing stuff like mysteries and Western short stories for Tekno Books, which does most of its business supplying libraries.

PWL: Has the genre changed since you began writing?

JC: Oh, yes, the genre has changed enormously over the decades. The whole publishing industry has changed, and is still changing, exponentially now that the computer revolution is here. Probably the major shift has been thanks to the enormous power of the media over the imaginations of younger readers. We didn't used to have this plethora of TV and film series after series after series. Whereas virtually 100% of SF used to be original from scratch writing, it's now at least 60-70% "franchise" writing: One contracts to write a novel using the characters and background of an existing media franchise. Star Trek, Highlander, Star Wars, Babylon 5. . . . I like some media a lot, and I've written Star Trek fiction and been paid for it. But I wish there was more of a market for absolutely original SF. Part of this situation is the readers' fault, and it's been building for years. It's not just in SF but in Fantasy and other genres as well. When Web of Wizardry was published, I felt I had told the story I'd wanted to tell of an epic battle in my private universe, a turning point that had to be won for the good guys if that universe was to survive. Story is complete. First con I went to after the book was out, I got deluged with questions about when I was going to write a sequel. What sequel? The story's finished. When I wrote the CHILDREN OF THE STARS series for Del Rey I designed it so it was multi-generational -- each book jumps forward in time a generation of the same family, so you have a whole new cast of characters each time and a completely different problem to be solved in each book. But it's hard to find that sort of opportunity unless you're a top-of-the-line writer and can name your own ticket. I'm not in the class, not remotely.

PWL: What advice would you have for someone starting out to write today?

JC: The basic and prime answer is extremely old: keep your day job. The IRS no longer permits a writer to go along indefinitely deducting "research" etc. in hopes of somewhere down the pike actually getting a contract. Do not go into writing expecting to become the next Stephen King or Dean Koontz. But then you already knew that, didn't you? If you're just starting, and you're really in for the long haul, keep your day job but write steadily in your spare time, if that's available. And it doesn't hurt to take any sort of writing job that pays. Work part-time as a stringer for small local newspapers, if you have a knack for it. Hunt for tiny and out-of-the-way markets. I know what you really want to write full-time is SF or Fantasy, but established names are going to get first crack at the big contracts.

Network all you're able. Ask for help from established writer friends. Often they'll know of an obscure market they are too busy to bother with, but they'll put in a good word for you with the editor and you just may get a shot. Don't be too proud to write fluff, if it sells. (At least, that's my philosophy; if you are committed to a loftier attitude, then stick to your guns, but be prepared for long, long waits between jobs, which may, unfortunately, happen to the very best of beginning writers as well as the worst.)

And follow Heinlein's rules. You must write. You must finish what you write. You must submit what you write. You must keep submitting what you write until it sells. . . .

Or you give up. Those are called "drawer orphans," and we all have them. I just sold one, after it had been in limbo for 20 years. So hang tough and keep trying.

PWL: What advice would you have for someone who may want to give filk a try?

JC: Easier. Go out there and filk. And before you start studying lyrics, music composition or all the other accoutrements, here's what you should study the hardest: Yourself. Honestly. No ego walls. Nitty-gritty. What can you do? What are your fortes? Are you primarily a lyricist/reciter or a singer? If the latter, what sort of singer, because the kind of voice you have very much determines what kind of material you should put to use. I don't sing lovely, high-note, ethereal celtic stuff because I simply don't have the voice for it. If you do have that type of voice, maybe you should stay away from loud, brawly, bellowy non-celtic humor songs. Do you play an instrument? How well? Playing one isn't required, especially if you have good material and have figured out what to do with your voice. Being able to project enough to bust into a circle and announce, "I have a follower" is good. If your voice is soft, think of a gimmick. Ann Sheller uses an African thumb piano or a bow psaltry; both of those instruments have the kind of sound that breaks through the after-a-song babble with their unique tones, makes people shut up, turn toward the sound, and pay attention. Then she can say, softly, "I have a follower," and demonstrate -- without needing to play those unique instruments any further. (Plus they're both very light in weight and easy to carry into a filk, always a consideration.)

Don't be bashful. That seems to be a difficult instruction for a lot of new would-be filkers, but it's essential, particularly in a big sing or a noisy one. I try to play den mother in those circumstances and notice the newcomers and super-shys and insist they at least get a chance to perform if they want to. Frequently, after I shut up the loudies and invite the newcomers, they turn all bashful. Maybe it's an honest silence -- "I'd like to do something, but I really don't have anything to share" or "I honestly don't think I'm good enough; I was just looking eager because I was enjoying myself so much." Those are valid excuses. But I always hope that the real reason they refuse to join in is that they're just scared.

Go ahead. Jump in. Please. Take a chance. Maybe it won't be perfect. None of us is. But share with us. Each time performing should get a little easier for you, and then you too will be swaggeringly confident and able to butt in with followers whenever the opportunity arises.

As I try to reassure neo-filkers, I've been at this gig a very long time, and I have yet to see a filk crowd so bummed off by a neo performance that the performer is stoned and eaten. Hasn't happened. At least not yet. And if I'm in the circle, it ain't gonna.

Everybody's gotta start somewhere, so come on in and let us hear what you've got. Recitation, a cappella, or full-fledged Julia-style debut. Hey, this is supposed to be fun, not an ordeal. Remember that.

PWL: Do you have any closing words you'd like to add?

JC: Remember that filking is -- or should be -- an extended family/village/community. Which means there will be squabbles and, unfortunately, occasional major disagreements. But that also means those not involved should do their best to keep on amicable terms with all squabbling parties and, if possible, get them to at least be civil to each other. Makes for ever so much more pleasantness in the circles.

Be kind to each other and polite in the sings. If you want to talk while filkers are up, please retire to a place distant enough that the chat won't interfere with the filk. Some people don't realize how their voices carry (took me decades to find that out about myself); so holding a conversation right outside the filk room -- even if the door is closed -- is a no-no. Move on down the hall a ways. A goodly ways. Then enjoy.

I know you're happy to see friends you haven't seen in ages and have lots to exchange. Same in the filk rooms. Filkers have new songs to share and old and goodie songs to satisfy requests. With courtesy and consideration, we can all revel in this party of, to paraphrase Naomi, a thousand closest friends.

Filk On.

Sound Clips

Heroics (Buck & Juanita Coulson)

Sisterhood of Sword & Spell (Juanita Coulson)

Further Information

Juanita's CDs can be purchased through Firebird. Her books can be purchased through Rudy's Books. A full bibliography is also online.

Peggi Warner-Lalonde is a Music Editor for Strange Horizons.