My Arisia 2012 Schedule

Arisia 2012 is taking place January 13-16, 2012, at the Westin Boston Waterfront hotel. Here’s where you can find me during the convention:

Schools for Magicians
Douglas, Friday 5:30 PM
Cecilia Tan (mod.), Mary Catelli, Frances K. Selkirk, Victoria Janssen, Ken Schneyer
A Hogwarts degree isn’t the only path from mundanity to magehood. Let’s consider how writers have portrayed schools, including Roke, Unseen University, Brakebills, and more. Why a school setting? Is it due to the innate familiarity for both reader and writer? Having a built-in rationale for info-dumps? How do these fantastical academies compare to SF’s schools for space cadets. As we look outside of Harry Potter, we’ll examine the continuing fascination with such sorcerous scholastic settings.

Paneling 101: A Primer
Revere, Friday 8:30 PM
Jonathan Woodward (mod), Ann Crimmins, Christopher Davis, Victoria Janssen, Hugh Casey
A panel on doing panels, for noobs and the plain unaware. Etiquette, preparing, benefits, the role of the moderator, how to moderate, how to handle a rogue panelist, how to handle a rogue audience member.

Anne McCaffrey Memoral Panel
Griffin, Saturday 5:30 PM
Victoria Janssen (mod), Dennis McCunney, Twisting Star, Mary Catelli
The late Anne McCaffrey was a highly popular writer of SF and romance. A generation of fans discovered SF through Anne’s work. She is best known for the Dragonriders of Pern series. She was a Grandmaster of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, a winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and British Fantasy awards, and her Pern novel The White Dragon became the first SF book to appear on the New York Times bestseller list.

Point of View
Douglas, Sunday 1:00 PM
Elaine Isaak (mod), Michael A Ventrella, David Sklar, Victoria Janssen, Joshua Palmatier
The use of different points of view can reveal or obscure elements of your story from the audience. Do certain points of view only work with certain types of stories? What are the strengths and weaknesses of each form?