I’ll be attending Readercon 29 July 12-15, 2018 in Quincy, Massachusetts. My schedule is below.
Thursday, 9:00 pm, Salon 6
“Living in Material Worlds, Part 1: Fabric Goods in Fictional Settings”
In many post-apocalyptic landscapes and colony worlds, everyone has clothing but no one ever talks about where it came from. Who wove the cloth for that shirt, and who designed the pattern and cut and sewed it? What do station inhabitants feed their fabricators? This panel will dig into the influence of material culture on worldbuilding, and may also explore dye, fiber, and fabric in handicrafts, art, communication systems, and more.
Elaine Isaak [moderator]; Tom Greene; Victoria Janssen; Natalie Luhrs; Sarah Smith
Friday, 5:00 pm, Salon 5
“Reclaiming Stories of Victimized Women”
After reading Theodora Goss’s The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter and Catherynne M. Valente’s The Refrigerator Monologues, Amal El-Mohtar tweeted, “Please please let these books usher in a new era of books in which women claim the fuck out of popular stories where they’re victimized.” Are we seeing other signs of such an era on the horizon? Which stories are the ripest for this sort of reclamation?
Victoria Janssen [moderator]; Naida Bulkin; Teri Clarke; Hillary Monahan; Elsa Sjunneson-Henry
Friday, 8:00 pm, Salon C
“Dorothy Dunnett, Literary Legend”
Alaya Dawn Johnson called Dorothy Dunnett “the literary equivalent of the Velvet Underground”: not many people read her, but everyone who did wrote a book. A painter, researcher, and opera lover, she wrote what she wanted to read: epic historical drama. Come learn what our panelists and many other writers learned from Dunnett.
Kate Nepveu [moderator]; Lila Garrott; Alexander Jablokov; Victoria Janssen; Nisi Shawl
Saturday, 10:00 am, Seven Masts Room: Kaffeeklatsch
Saturday, 9:00 pm, Salon C
“Living in Material Worlds, Part 2: What Do Clothes Convey?”
Having examined where clothing comes from and what it says about a culture, this panel will move on to discussing what an individual character’s clothing conveys about gender, class, wealth, affiliation, ability, access to materials and craftsmanship, and much more.
Elaine Isaak [moderator]; J.R. Dawson; Samuel R. Delany; Greer Gilman; Victoria Janssen; Emily Lavin Leverett
