A quest for the story "Spidersong."

While searching for a story to post for today's 365 Short Story Challenge, I ran across a mention of a story called "Spidersong" by an author named Susan C. Petry. The story won the Hugo Award for best short story in 1981, the year after Petry died. There is a Clarion Workshop Scholarship dedicated to her memory (writer Kathe Koja won it in 1984) and that's about all I can find out about her. On the scholarship site there's a mention of a book that compiled her stories (Gifts of Blood) but they don't make it easy for you to buy it. (No link, no way to buy it online from them.) You can buy the book new on Amazon for $49 or used for a penny and $3.99 postage.  Most of the stories seem to be about a race of healer/vampires with intense world-building involved.  I had hoped to find the story online, perhaps in the Magazine of SF&F, where it originally appeared, but no such luck.  You know what that means?  I HAVE to buy another book. 

Friday Feminist Fiction--Connie Willis

Photo by Kyle Cassidy from http://www.sftv.org/cw/

The first time I attended San Diego Comic Con (2008), Connie Willis was one of the guests. She showed up for her seminar looking like a statuesque suburban granny and totally rocked the hour to a packed house of admirers. She told a story about how she met her husband (a retired physicist and how she might not have in response to a question about faith and fate. She talked about her unsentimental treatment of death and how her mother's death when she was a child shaped her world view.
She had brought along her lovely, equally statuesque, daughter and everyone in the room went away feeling like they'd shared some quality time with the woman who has just been named a "Grand Master" (for lifetime achiement) by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
I (heart) Connie Willis.
She has won 11 Hugo Awards and seven Nebula Awards and a ton of other awards too. She has won for both novels and short stories. Connie Willis can write anything!
Lincoln's Dreams was the first of Connie's novels I read, a wonderful love story that slipped gracefully between genres. I followed that up with To Say Nothing of the Dog, which delighted me in the way it looped back and forth over itself and is one of her Hugo Award-winning works.
She has talked about the long spaces between books (and pointed to her friend George R. R. Martin as another writer who teastes his fans this way), but while we're waiting for the next novel, there are plenty of her short stories to keep us reading.
Her official website is here.
You can "like" Connie Willis on Facebook.