Bounded in a nutshell...

My excellent small Readercon schedule.  Many thanks to the splendidly inventive progcom.  I hope to see many of you there!

Reading: Greer Gilman
Fri 2:00 PM, Salon C

Snatched from the Sun: Alternative Shakespeares and the Zemblance of Reality
Greer Gilman
Fri 4:00 PM, Salon A

Why does a small but vocal and impassioned band of conspiracy theorists believe that Shakespeare wasn't Shakespeare? Why do they read his work for the common stage as the encrypted secret history of a genius suppressed? Why do they think that Hamlet was a selfie? While examining these questions, Greer Gilman will explore the shipping of John Donne’s muse, sepulchral monkey-heads, canals on Mars, vice-versal doublets, the Elizabethan elevator pitch, the seacoast of Bohemia, ciphers, triflers, Templars, and the true author of As You Leak It.

The White Space Around the Words: The Camaraderie of Poetry and Comedy
Amal El-Mohtar, Greer Gilman, Julia Rios, Romie Stott (mod), Sonya Taaffe
Sat 1:00 PM, Salon A

In a 2018 interview, comedian Dylan Moran said, "The verbal fun of standup is much more like poetry than prose... because a lot of it is about elision, suggestion, inference, the white space around the words. They’re much closer than people think, poetry and jokes." Our panelists explore this similarity between poetry and comedy, sharing some of their favorite examples of wordplay that works within the white space.

Food at the Corner of Fiction and Community
N.S. Dolkart, Andrea Martinez Corbin (mod), Greer Gilman, Michael Swanwick, Sabrina Vourvoulias
Sat 9:00 PM, Salon A

Food plays a central role in many cultures and accordingly takes center stage in the work of many speculative fiction writers. How does cuisine help define, or build, a community? How can food be used to communicate important information about a people to the reader? What are some particularly noteworthy examples of the way food can be used to set, or subvert, expectations?

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Yes, I will touch on Aemilia Bassano Lanier as the coming thing, though her devotés are some of the less–er—picturesque Bedlamites.  Give them time.

If all goes well, the reading will be from a new one-act blank-verse play, inspired by the excellent Catherine Rockwood.  Ben Jonson, frustrated by his afterlife on the Moon, is joined by Dame Ethel Smyth, suffragist, Sapphist, and composer.  Opera ensues.

Nine