In the bleak midwinter...

Light and liveliness.

My Arisia schedule (d.v.), with comments:



Worlds Within Worlds: Cartography in Literature
Fri 5:00 PM
Catherynne M. Valente (m), Greer Gilman, Sarah Smith, David Camacho

Since the advent of mapmaking, there has been a desire to define places, including those which are unreal or fantastic. Likewise, many fantasy novels begin with a map of the terrain to be traversed. What happens when F/SF/H authors create maps of their own--psychological, fantastic, of known and unknown worlds--and where can we go with them?
 
Getting away from the map mocked in The Tough Guide to Fantasy, this could be fascinating. I'd like to talk about cosmography as well, and (since architecture disappeared) imaginary building plans, as in Little, Big. I'd like to talk about maps that aren't one-to-one, but unfold or tesseract in strange ways.

 
 
Re-reading Childhood Classics  
Fri 6:30 PM
Vikki Ciaffone (m), Greer Gilman, Patricia M. Cryan, Sonya Taaffe

We all have favorites from our childhood, but some of them, when we read them as adults, sour us on our original warm memories. Others surprise us with depths that we never caught the first time. And still others have the lyricism which we first fell in love with. Let's all look again.
 
Oh, I'd love to talk about this. Sadly, I've lost Oz and Narnia is shifting ground. But others--Lucy Boston, Lloyd Alexander, George MacDonald, P.L. Travers, Kenneth Grahame--still give me joy. These stories are the heartwood of the tree.
 
 
Beyond Binaries 101: Exploring Gender Roles  
Fri 9:30 PM
Trisha Wooldridge (m), Greer Gilman, Steve Berman, Adam Nakama, Suzanne Reynolds-Alpert

How do science fiction, fantasy, and horror explore beyond our existing gender roles? How often do we see authors fall back on traditional gender roles or just flipping gender roles? Or how often do we do it ourselves? Who has created unique roles separate from gender or dealing with gender beyond binaries? What would we like to see?

  http://blog.bookviewcafe.com/2010/09/...

So many good panels! So few slots! As a recent Tiptree winner, I'd like to have this conversation.

 
Selkies: The Next Big Thing?
Sat 9:30 PM
Vikki Ciaffone (m), Greer Gilman, David Sklar, Sonya Taaffe

 They won’t drink your blood. They won’t eat your brain. When the moon is full, they …um…slip off their seal skins and dance on the beach? Selkies may seem helpless, but they’ll probably break your heart. And are they the next big thing? This panel will look at the sealfolk in legends, in modern retellings, and in stories still to be told. 

I hope Sonya Taaffe will be on this? She writes wonderfully of sea lore. Another of my ballad-passions.
   
 
Language and Linguistics in Genre Fiction  
Sun 12:30 PM
Sonya Taaffe (m), Greer Gilman, John G. McDaid, Jack Dietz, Rachel L. Silber

 There's more to language than a dictionary and grammar, as these experts will tell you. Whether written, spoken, or signed languages grow out of specific cultural settings and specific neurologies, and affect those cultures and neurologies. The ways that languages affect minds and societies and what we can learn from a culture's language are fertile fields for research, discussion, and cool ideas.
  
C'est moi. I love to talk about how writers *spell* with language; how worlds are made of words. I have a commissioned chapter on "The Languages of the Fantastic" forthcoming in The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature.
 
 
Ballads of the Supernatural
Sun 8:00 PM
Greer Gilman (m), Jeff Keller, Ellen Kranzer, Susan Weiner, Mark A. Mandel, Sonya Taaffe

 Many traditional songs tell stories of the supernatural: Ghosts, faeries, shape-changers and so forth. Come listen or sing in this themed song circle. 
 
I don't sing. But I'm passionate about ballads: I collect them (I have thousands of recordings) and I write about them in my books. My otherworld, Cloud, is made of ballads. Can I moderate?
 
Reading—G.Gilman, Oakes, Ronald
Mon 9:30 AM
Greer Gilman, Rita Oakes, Margaret Ronald

Authors Greer Gilman, Rita Oakes, and Margaret Ronald will read selections from their work. 

I hope to read some of the work in progress.
 
The Object In the Story, the Story In the Object
Mon 11:00 AM
David Sklar (m), Greer Gilman, Catherynne M. Valente

Stories are not the only things about story! Many artists contain stories in their work and many writers have magical objects in their stories. This is a chance for visual artists and writers to meet and see where their crafts cross.  

Marbles. Wooden jigsaws. Water-bored stones. Half-human bicycles. There's more to fantasy than rings!


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