Readercon
For those travelling to Readercon in Boston, here's my schedule:
Friday July 15
4:00 PM G Myth, Midrash, and Misappropriation. K. Tempest Bradford (leader), Marilyn "Mattie" Brahen, Jack M. Haringa, Claude Lalumire, Kaaron Warren. From Walter M. Miller and James Blish to Neil Gaiman, S.J. Day, and Greg Van Eekhout, writers have created fiction that draws inspiration from the characters, images, and stories of well-known religions. Of Victor Pelevin's Sacred Book of the Werewolf, Janet Chui wrote, "Now I know what a Buddhist modern fantasy novel looks like," and Kaaron Warren has said her debut horror novel, Slights, was inspired by pictures in a Hare Krishna text. What are the appeals and challenges of creating fiction from a religious source? Are there dangers of appropriation? Can adaptation start to look like fanfic? How do authors incorporate their own ideas and modernize ancient texts without offending readers of the faith?
6:00 PM NH Teeth group reading. Steve Berman, Suzy Charnas, Ellen Datlow, Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman, Kaaron Warren. Contributors to Teeth, a YA vampire anthology, read selections from their work.
Saturday July 16
12:00 PM E Autographs. Claude Lalumire, Kaaron Warren.
1:00 PM NH Reading. Kaaron Warren. Warren reads "All You Can Do is Breathe" from Datlow's Blood and Other Cravings.
9:00 PM ME There's No Homelike Place. Debra Doyle, Theodora Goss, Victoria Janssen (leader), Tom Purdom, Kaaron Warren. Many portal quest fantasies function by exploiting anxieties surrounding the location of home: either home is to be found beyond the portal, where the nerd/outcast finds their true tribe, or home is to be returned to, enriched by the fantasy land left behind in its favor. However, given that our world is increasingly mobile and rootless, why do we seem to produce so few sympathetic narratives of adventurers who never find home–for whom home is less a destination than a journey? Among all the stories of nomads who extol the traveling life but then either settle down (Sharon Shinn's Samaria books) or are forced to stay in one place (Daniel Abraham's Long Price Quartet), why are there so few where wandering is the happy ending?
Sunday July 17
12:00 PM RI How I Wrote Walking the Tree. Kaaron Warren. Kaaron Warren discusses the writing of her novel about communities surrounding an enormous tree inhabited by ghosts.
I'll also be appearing at Bank Square Books in Mystic, CT from 3 – 4 on Wednesday, July 13, then speaking about writing at the Otis Library, Norwich, CT, from 6.30. Love to see you there!
