Summer Schedule
I'm starting to get a sense for my summer schedule. Here is what I'm going to be doing – I think. Some of this may change.
May 26-30, I will be at Wiscon. I will be leading a writing workshop, participating in a reading, and speaking on three panels (one of which I will be moderating).
June 23-24, I will be at teaching at the Odyssey Writing Workshop, .
July 14-17, I will be at Readercon.
In between those days, I need to schedule two things: a trip to New York to see Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a trip to San Francisco to see Pulp Fashion: The Art of Isabelle de Borchgrave at the Legion of Honor Museum. I'll be letting New York and San Francisco friends know when I'm there. Come join me if you'd like! (There may also be trips to Virginia and North Carolina, for business rather than art. But I'm not sure about those yet.)
I do already have my Wiscon schedule, so for those of you who are going, this is where you can find me:
On Friday, 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., I will be leading one of the writing workshops. Then, my convention schedule is as follows:
Sunday 10:00–11:15 a.m. Love and Hate and the End of the World. Reading with Kat Beyer, Haddayr Copley-Woods, Marguerite Reed, M. Rickert. Stories of love, hate, and maybe the end of the world by five women who have been there. Perhaps spaceships. Maybe ghosts. Probably not unicorns. Almost certainly demons.
Sunday 1:00–2:15 p.m. The Rise of the Anthology. Panel with Sharyn November (moderator), Alan John DeNiro, Eric M. Heideman, Catherine Lundoff. Every time you turn around, there's a new anthology out about faeries/steampunk/vampires/insert hot trendy topic here. Anthologies offer some great writing, but like so much else, sometimes the quality can be a little off. Are we living in the era of the anthology? How do anthologies get it right? How do they fail miserably? What does the "dream" anthology look like? Does it already exist? How do we feel about authors becoming editors of anthologies about their fictional universe?
Sunday 2:30–3:45 p.m. Fiction Writing in the Age of Fast Information. Panel with Fred Schepartz (moderator), Gwynne Garfinkle, Andrea D. Hairston, Naomi Kritzer, Ann Leckie. You're sitting at your computer writing your novel or short story. A question comes to mind. In days of yore, you would head to the library to get your answer. Now, you just Google it. A treasure trove of information is right there at your fingertips, but does it ever become a barrier to good writing and storytelling? Will writers skip the process of exhaustive research before they write a single word in favor of a process done on a need to know basis? Is that a problem? And with so much readily available information, are writers in danger of loading their work with trivia that adds little to the actual story?
Sunday 4:00–5:15 p.m. Where Is the Indigenous American Fantasy? Panel with Valerie Estelle Frankel, L J Geoffrion, Andrea D. Hairston, Georgie L. Schnobrich, Katherine Mankiller (and me as moderator). Why is American fantasy so Eurocentric? If you believe our fantasists, American cities are populated with imported Romanian vampires, Russian werewolves, Celtic faeries, Nordic gods, Germanic witches, and the (very) occasional African god or Arabic djinn, but scarcely a homegrown magical being to be found. In fact, indigenous magical beings abound in the Americas and their stories of magic, wonder and horror are widely told by spoken and written word. North American mythology is rich with magical beings. Do these stories get adequate air time? Is it easier to imagine an Old World teeming with supernatural beings than to visualize a North America enchanted with indigenous mythical beings? Is it difficult to believe that we live in a naturally magical place? And if we did, what would it look like?
Yes, my reading and all of my panels are on Sunday. I have no idea why. It's going to be a long day, though!
In addition to traveling, I'm going to be working on two important projects. The first will of course be my dissertation. The last chapter I need to revise is due May 15th, and after that I'll be putting the manuscript together, into what will hopefully be its final form. Then, I'm planning to defend in the fall, as early in the semester as I can. The second project will be a novel.
There are other things I'd like to do this summer, other projects I'd like to try. And here I need your help. I've been thinking of making some of my stories available as an ebook. And maybe some of my poems as well. I've also been thinking of making some YouTube videos, probably of me reading. Also some podcasts. But what I'd like to know is, what do you think? What should I do? Assuming I have the time, what projects would you like me to tackle? I'd really like to know.
