Author Archives: naomikritzer

LIBERTY’S DAUGHTER comes out today!

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Today is the release day of my new book, LIBERTY’S DAUGHTER.

Publisher’s Weekly gave it a starred review: “Kritzer shows off her worldbuilding chops in this impressive mystery set in a near future world.”

Cory Doctorow reviews it here: “There’s so much sf about “competent men” running their families with entrepreneurial zeal, clarity of vision and a firm confident hand. But there’s precious little fiction about how much being raised by a Heinlein dad would suuuck. But it would, and in Naomi Kritzer’s Liberty’s Daughter, we get a peek inside the nightmare.”

You can order Liberty’s Daughter from the publisher or from the bookstore of your choice. You can order signed copies from Uncle Hugo’s (online ordering page here) or Dreamhaven Books (online ordering page here) — I’m planning to go sign stock today, and I will also be doing a reading and signing at Dreamhaven on December 6th.

New Short Story, New Book

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I had a short story come out this month in Uncanny called “The Year Without Sunshine.” It is set in South Minneapolis and you can read it free online here. If you prefer audio fiction, it’s also available on the Uncanny pocast.

I also have a book coming out on November 21st, Liberty’s Daughter.

You can order Liberty’s Daughter from the publisher or from the bookstore of your choice. Uncle Hugo’s has an online ordering page available and you can get a signed copy (because I will go in and sign copies once Don gets the books). Dreamhaven Books also has an online ordering page available and I will be doing a reading and signing there on December 6th.

Election 2023: Sample Ballot / Index of Posts

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Hello to a bunch of people looking up this site on their phone from a voting booth! Here are links to (hopefully) all my posts about this year’s races. (If you scroll and don’t find what you want, try a search, but remember, I only write about races that appear on the ballot in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Here is my new post about researching a race from the voting booth, though, if you’re looking at this from elsewhere, and here is a set of Google Docs put together by someone else for school board races statewide — she tells you who’s endorsed by the teacher’s union vs who’s endorsed by the MN Parents Alliance, a hair-raisingly right-wing group.)

MINNEAPOLIS

Minneapolis has a City Council race this year but no school board race. There will be another round of citywide races (for City Council and Mayor) in 2025, when everyone will run for a four-year term.

WARD 1

Elliott Payne

WARD 2

Robin Wonsley

(No one else will appear on the ballot but there are a couple of write-in candidates campaigning actively enough to make it worth showing up to vote for Robin.)

WARD 3

Marcus Mills

WARD 4

Marvina Haynes, I guess, or maybe whichever Ward 4 friend doesn’t object to being my write-in protest vote of a lack of better candidates.

WARD 5

Jeremiah Ellison

WARD 6

Kayseh Magan

WARD 7

Katie Cashman

WARD 8

Soren Stevenson

WARD 9

Jason Chavez

WARD 10

Aisha Chughtai

WARD 11

I would write in my cat before voting for either candidate on the ballot.

WARD 12

Aurin Chowdhury

WARD 13

  1. Write in my cat.
  2. Linea Palmisano I GUESS or maybe I’d write in one of my other cats.

More info on Ward 13 here.

SAINT PAUL

Saint Paul has a City Council race on the ballot (four-year terms, because our City Council and Mayor aren’t in sync) and a citywide School Board race (choose four).

Ward 1

  1. Omar Syed
  2. Anika Bowie
  3. Suz Woehrle

More info on Ward 1 here.

Ward 2

Rebecca Noecker

Ward 3

  1. Saura Jost
  2. Isaac Russell
  3. Troy Barksdale

More info on Ward 3 here.

Ward 4

Mitra Jalali

Ward 5

  1. Hwa Jeong Kim
  2. Nate Nins
  3. David Greenwood-Sanchez

More info on Ward 5 here.

Ward 6

Nelsie Yang

Ward 7

  1. Cheniqua Johnson
  2. Pa Der Vang

More info on Ward 7 here.

Saint Paul School Board

Pick four (not ranked choice). I am probably voting for Carlo Franco, Zuki Ellis, Chauntyll Allen, and Yusef Carillo, but Erica Valliant is also a strong choice. More info on that race here.

Saint Paul City Question 1

A grumpy Yes vote.

I have a book coming out this fall, in November! Liberty’s Daughter is near-future SF about a teenage girl on a libertarian seastead. A lot of it was originally published as short fiction in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. You can pre-order it in either book or ebook format from whatever you like. ETA 11/7: Also! You can pre-order it directly from local bookstore Uncle Hugo’s and get a signed copy. And new today, you can read my short story (set in Minneapolis), The Year Without Sunshine, for free on Uncanny Magazine, if you’d like.

I do not have a Patreon or Ko-Fi, but I get a lot of satisfaction by pointing people at fundraiser that I can then see fund, so if you’d like make a donation to encourage my work, check out check out this first-year art teacher at Lucy Laney in Minneapolis who is raising money to provide easels, drying racks, and art materials for her students, or this music teacher at Washington Technology Magnet in St. Paul, who is raising money to buy guitars so that students don’t have to share 1 guitar between 4 students.

“How do I know who to vote for?” — the quick guide

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I have a longer, more in-depth how-to on researching candidates that I wrote in 2022, which you can read here, but what I want to offer here is a shorter version for people who are, say, reading this while standing in a voting booth.

ETA: If you are trying to vote in a Minnesota school board race, someone (tallmomrunning on Tiktok/IG) has put together a guide to all the school board races in the state in 2023. It tells you who’s endorsed by the Education Minnesota affiliate (the teacher’s union) vs who’s endorsed by the MN Parents Alliance (the Moms-for-Liberty affiliate of wannabe book-banners and anti-gay bullies.) In most races, that’s really all you need to know!

  1. If you’re picking between a Republican and a Democrat, vote for the Democrat. (Very, very occasionally this will be the wrong answer, but usually in those cases it’s a district that’s so tilted it won’t matter.)
  2. Visit the candidate websites, if they have them. Google the candidate name + the office they’re seeking to (usually) turn them up. If you don’t find anything that way, try looking on Facebook (many small campaigns set up a page on Facebook.)
  3. Check for endorsements. Even in a non-partisan race, progressive candidates often have endorsements from labor unions, LGBTQ+ groups, and local Democratic politicians. On the other hand, if you see endorsements from Republicans, or from groups with names that give you bad vibes, trust your gut. You can generally treat it as an endorsement if someone appears with a candidate at an event, says nice things about them publicly during the campaign, or co-hosts a fundraiser.

    In my area, there’s a group called the Minnesota Parents’ Alliance (with local affiliates) that’s hair-raisingly conservative and endorses candidates. Every single candidate endorsed by a group like this, you can assume you should not vote for.
  4. Check for news coverage. Searching for a candidate’s name + controversy (or their name, the office + controversy) might get you helpful hits.
  5. Check the reddit subforum for your area; there is frequently discussion of local races and redditors do not mince words.
  6. Ask your friends. Talking to people you know about the upcoming races in your area is a GREAT idea and they might have already done the research, and can just tell you what they found.
  7. If you have time, check to see if there was a candidate forum (the League of Women Voters sponsors many of these, and posts them on YouTube) that you can watch. (That’s probably not helpful if you’re standing in a voting booth.)
  8. It is OK to vote based on incomplete information. Also, if there are four school board seats open and you can find only two candidates you like, it’s still worth voting for those two candidates.

Popular dog whistles to watch for in school board races: “parental rights” (they mean that in a bad way); “divisive social issues” (they mean that LGBTQ kids should have to stay in the closet and Black kids shouldn’t be allowed to talk about racism); “should be taught how to think, not what to think” (means that schools should not be allowed to say that slavery was bad). If someone’s website makes fun of mask mandates or objects to vaccination requirements, that’s another huge red flag. Candidates who talk a lot about how schools want too much money or aren’t providing a good “return on investment” are usually conservatives trying to redirect attention away from their desire to ban books. Anyone who talks about social-emotional learning (SEL) like it’s a bad thing or uses the term “critical race theory” is an automatic no from me.

Elections 2023: Saint Paul City Question 1 (the Sales Tax question)

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Saint Paul ballots will include the following question:

CITY QUESTION 1 (St. Paul)

1.0% SALES TAX FOR IMPROVEMENTS TO STREETS, BRIDGES, AND PARKS

Should the City of Saint Paul establish a one percent (1%) sales and use tax over the next 20 years to generate $738,000,000 to repair and improve streets and bridges, $246,000,000 to improve parks and recreation facilities, and associated bonding costs? A vote YES means repairs and improvements to streets, bridges, parks, and recreation facilities would be funded through a new one percent (1%) sales and use tax. A vote NO means repairs and improvements to streets, bridges, parks, and recreation facilities would not be funded through a new one percent (1%) sales and use tax.

You can vote yes, or no.

I’m going to vote yes, but I’ll admit I’m doing it kind of grudgingly, despite being a Democrat who is generally happy to pay more money for better services.

Continue reading →

Election 2023: Saint Paul School Board

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There are four open school board seats, and this race is not done with instant runoff, you just vote for four people and the top four vote-getters win.

On the ballot:

Zuki Ellis (incumbent)
Chauntyll Allen (incumbent, DFL-endorsed)
Yusef Carillo (DFL-endorsed and not an incumbent but he served on the school board previously to fill out Marchese’s term)
Erica Valliant (DFL-endorsed)
Carlo Franco (DFL-endorsed)
Gita Zeitler
Abdi Omer

Sahan Journal did interviews with every candidate. There was a LWV forum that Zuki Ellis, Chauntyll Allen, Yusef Carillo, and Carlo Franco all attended but the others did not; you can also see the screening interview done by SPFE with Yusef, Erica, and Carlo (although I didn’t get very far because FB video is so frustrating to watch for anything long-form — there’s no easy way to skip forward/backward).

Cut for length.

Continue reading →

Election 2023: Saint Paul City Council, Ward 6

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Another fast one. The incumbent is Nelsie Yang. On the ballot:

Nelsie Yang
Gary Unger

Gary Unger

Gary is a retired engineer and it took me a while to find his campaign website, so I looked for one on Facebook and found his personal page, which is top to bottom stuff like “[picture of a sad dog] I’m 15 today and I bet I can’t get even ONE SHARE,” shared three times in a row.

He’s endorsed by Republicans, took a strong stance against the Summit Bike trail (he’s at least honest about believing that it doesn’t need the sewer/water lines replaced, either), and says he wants a return to the basics (which he defines as roads, trash collection, and public safety.) He has not filled out any questionnaires and did not show up for the Ward 6 LWV forum. (ETA: the Republican site that recommended him is apparently not official, so I have changed my statement to say that he is endorsed by Republicans, i.e. the people running the site, vs. by the Republicans, i.e. officially by the party.)

Nelsie Yang

Nelsie was elected last time and has been a strong progressive on the St. Paul council. She also showed up for the LWV forum and has filled out all the questionnaires despite not having much in the way of an actual opponent. I would vote for Nelsie.

I have a book coming out this fall, in November! Liberty’s Daughter is near-future SF about a teenage girl on a libertarian seastead. A lot of it was originally published as short fiction in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. You can pre-order it in either book or ebook format from whatever you like.

I do not have a Patreon or Ko-Fi, so if you’d like make a donation to encourage my work, check out this music teacher at Washington Technology Magnet in St. Paul, who is raising money to buy guitars so that students don’t have to share 1 guitar between 4 students.

Elections 2023: Saint Paul City Council, Ward 2

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Rebecca Noecker is the incumbent and has three people running against her, none of them very impressive.

On the ballot:

Rebecca Noecker
Noval Noir
Bill Hosko
Peter Butler

Bill Hosko

Bill Hosko’s hobby is running for office. He is not very good at it. In 2015 he ran for the Ward 2 seat on a “no parking meters” platform. In 2019 he ran for the Ward 2 seat on a “we should spend huge amounts of money to install turnstiles around every light rail station; also, taxes are too high; also, we should spend huge amounts of money holding referendums on literally everything” platform. In 2021 he ran for mayor on a “turnstiles” platform and also on the grounds that Mayor Carter had weeds in his yard, which Bill videotaped. And last year he ran for Ramsey County Board on a platform that went something like, “crime is bad.” Also he still wanted turnstiles. This year, he doesn’t mention turnstiles; his unreadable, inaccessible website (it’s entirely blurry graphics without alt-text) basically says things are bad and taxes are too high. Given his commitment to losing elections very badly, I’m surprised that he apparently hates ranked choice voting (or at least did in 2017) since without it, he’d get even fewer votes than he does already. He’s endorsed by Republicans, because in St. Paul, they’ll take what they can get. (ETA: the site with the recommended candidates for Republicans to vote for is not an official Republican site, so I have changed my statement to say he’s endorsed by Republicans, i.e. the people running that site, vs. the Republicans, i.e. the actual party.) Anyway, for so many reasons, as I noted in 2021, I would not want Bill as a City Council rep or for that matter as a neighbor.

Peter Butler

Peter Butler has an even weirder hobby than Bill’s, which is to organize petition drives to put stuff on the ballot in St. Paul, turn in his petition, and when it fails because a bunch of the signatures got declared invalid, he sues the city. (Should you want to fact-check this, pay attention to middle initials: there’s a Peter Butler who’s a drunk driver but it’s a different person.)

He did have one tantalizingly innovative proposal, which was to bring back boarding houses: “Many older residents have spare rooms and can remain in their homes by earning rental income and having someone to help with household chores.” He shows absolutely zero self-awareness of the fact that this idea clashes with his firm commitment to single-family zoning (“Should St. Paul allow at least three units of housing on any residential lot? Why or why not?” “No. I strongly support neighborhood preservation. Entry level homes (pricewise) will be demolished for the lot, removing affordable homes from first-time homebuyers.”) He’s another “absolutely not.”

Noval Noir

Noval Noir apparently didn’t fill out the questionnaires for either the East Metro Voter Guide or the MinnPost election guide; she was interviewed and was mostly pretty incoherent. Her main issue is the opioid crisis and she has a list of things she wants to do that are a mix of things that we’re already doing (collecting data, harm reduction, educating people on opiate risks, tracking prescriptions), things that would genuinely be a good idea and have broad support among Democrats (expand treatment facilities), and things that are extremely nonspecific (“Develop a long-term strategy to combat the opioid crisis, recognizing that it is a complex issue that will require sustained effort and resources.”) I guess if I really really hated Rebecca Noecker she’d be my pick. I guess.

Rebecca Noecker

Rebecca Noecker is a normal Democrat and I would vote for her if I lived in Ward 2. I feel like possibly I’m damning her with faint praise here, but I am trying to get through the last few races and all you really need to know here is, “she’s fine, and even if she made you mad in the last four years, you probably don’t want to vote for any of her opponents.”

I have a book coming out this fall, in November! Liberty’s Daughter is near-future SF about a teenage girl on a libertarian seastead. A lot of it was originally published as short fiction in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. You can pre-order it in either book or ebook format from whatever you like.

I do not have a Patreon or Ko-Fi, so if you’d like make a donation to encourage my work, check out this music teacher at Washington Technology Magnet in St. Paul, who is raising money to buy guitars so that students don’t have to share 1 guitar between 4 students.

Elections 2023: Saint Paul City Council, Ward 4

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Going to knock this one off because it is VERY VERY FAST. On the ballot:

Mitra Jalali
Robert Bushard

Mitra is a progressive Democrat who supports transit, housing, bike lanes, etc.

Robert Bushard is a Republican who brags about personally clearing a homeless encampment, refers to the murder of George Floyd as “the death of a career criminal,” scaremongers about LGBTQ+ people, wants to ban bail funds, and at least flirts a bunch with election denial. Even if you oppose the Summit bike trail, he is a bad, bad, bad choice. Although very unlikely to win.

I would vote for Mitra Jalali.

I have a book coming out this fall, in November! Liberty’s Daughter is near-future SF about a teenage girl on a libertarian seastead. A lot of it was originally published as short fiction in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. You can pre-order it in either book or ebook format from whatever you like.

I do not have a Patreon or Ko-Fi, so if you’d like make a donation to encourage my work, check out this music teacher at Washington Technology Magnet in St. Paul, who is raising money to buy guitars so that students don’t have to share 1 guitar between 4 students.

Election 2023: Saint Paul City Council, Ward 7

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Another open seat, a long list of candidates, but! in this case! four out of the six candidates are wildly unacceptable, sometimes for reasons you would probably not expect!

On the ballot:

Cheniqua Johnson
Pa Der Vang
Alex Bourne
Dino Guerin
Kartumu King
Foua-Choua Khang

The good news for me is, I have written about several of these people previously.

Kartumu King

Kartumu King ran previously in 2019. She is a convicted child abuser (link goes to my post from 2019, which provides some details on what she did.) Back in 2019 she’d also sued people 19 times; she’s added several lawsuits since then. Also, just as a side note, her website says nothing useful about what she wants to do on the City Council, and her campaign Facebook is mostly just links to things like the Ballotpedia page about the city of Saint Paul. I would not rank Kartumu.

Foua-Choua Khang

Foua-Choua links to a website that doesn’t work and her Facebook (linked above) is about her campaign in 2022 for a completely different job (and when I wrote about her last year, I had a hard time finding information then, too.) I’m not sure she knows she’s running. (OK, that is slightly unfair; she filled out the East Metro Voter Guide questionnaire and I would take her over Kartumu or Alex but there is just not much here.)

Alex Bourne

Alex also ran in 2019 (but in Ward 6), and I’m going to link to my post about that race because it has many quotes from the Pioneer Press article about his history. To very briefly sum up an extremely convoluted story: you can laugh off the shoe theft, you can laugh off the dognapping-for-profit, but the multiple arrests for violence, including sexual violence, against women he knows: nope, nope, nope. Absolutely not.

Dino Guerin

When Dino ran for mayor in 2021, his criminal conviction was the very first hit. Good news for him: now it’s below his campaign Facebook. Since his was for bad checks rather than (a) child abuse or (b) partner abuse or (c) dognapping, and also it was over two decades ago, I’d probably let the conviction slide. But he’s also a Republican, and that’s a nonstarter.

Pa Der Vang

On some topics, Pa Der seems more progressive than Cheniqua — on the MinnPost questionnaire she’s solidly in favor of allowing triplexes (“Allowing families to turn their current homes into multi-unit housing would open up more housing options for residents and in essence increase the housing availability in our city as well as provide opportunities for families to be landlords and provide housing”), she favors the sales tax, and she’s pro-rent control, with the caveat that she thinks we should do a study on the current policy and whether it’s working the way we thought. But she’s also Dino Guerin’s second choice, which makes me kind of suspicious. She’s also endorsed by the Chamber of Commerce and supported by the SuperPAC “Saint Paul Works” which is apparently funded by a landlord group. This all makes me very wary in a “clearly these people, all of whom I dislike, know something I don’t” kind of way.

Cheniqua Johnson

Cheniqua Johnson is endorsed by the DFL and seems like basically a normal Democrat. On the MinnPost questionnaire where they asked about triplexes, she gave a long answer that made it sound like she thought triplexes were great without ever actually saying “yes, they should be allowed on any lot. (She finishes with “This could be a step in the right direction.”) This is part of why I took a second look at Pa Der. I wound up watching the LWV forum (it goes a lot faster if you’re skipping over 4 out of 6 candidates), and honestly, Cheniqua and Pa Der both came across as normal Democrats.

I would rank Cheniqua first because the fact that the landlords want Pa Der makes me deeply suspicious. I would rank Pa Der second. I would rank Foua-Choua Khang third, because while she’s barely running and didn’t show up for the candidate forum, as far as I know she hasn’t committed any violent crimes and she’s not a Republican.

ETA: Sustain Saint Paul sent me a link to their questionnaire, which both Pa Der and Cheniqua answered. Again, both of them had really good responses. Pa Der might in fact be better on biking. Cheniqua talked about accessibility. They’re both in favor of mixed-use zoning, improved transit, and slowing traffic on city streets.

I have a book coming out this fall, in November! Liberty’s Daughter is near-future SF about a teenage girl on a libertarian seastead. A lot of it was originally published as short fiction in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. You can pre-order it in either book or ebook format from whatever you like.

I do not have a Patreon or Ko-Fi, so if you’d like make a donation to encourage my work, check out this music teacher at Washington Technology Magnet in St. Paul, who is raising money to buy guitars so that students don’t have to share 1 guitar between 4 students.