Chicks Dig Gaming: A Celebration of All Things Gaming by the Women Who Love It

Book excerpt: In Chicks Dig Gaming, editors Jennifer Brozek (Apocalypse Ink Productions), Robert Smith? (Who is the Doctor?) and Lars Pearson (the Hugo Award-winning Chicks Dig series) bring together essays by nearly three dozen female writers to celebrate the gaming medium and its creators, and to examine the characters and games that they love. Catherynne M. Valente (The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland...) examines Super Mario Bros. through the lens of Samsara, the Wheel of Birth and Rebirth; Seanan McGuire (the Toby Daye series) shows how gaming taught her math; G. Willow Wilson (Alif the Unseen) grapples with World of Warcraft; and Rosemary Jones (Forgotten Realms) celebrates adventurer Nellie Bly and the board game she inspired. Other contributors include Emily Care Boss (Gaming as Women), Racheline Maltese (The Book of Harry Potter Triffles...), Mary Anne Mohanraj (Bodies in Motion), Jody Lynn Nye (the MythAdventures series), and E. Lily Yu ("The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees").