Friday, June 6th
	The Big Room	The Reading Room
18:00	A Good Read Mathieu Glachant (M), Marianne Aldrich, Mary Ellen Shaw, Libby Vega
19:15	Writing the Future Ada Palmer (M), Jon Evans, Ruthanna Emrys, Naomi Kritzer, Alison Sinclair	Jo Walton Reading
20:30	Italy True or Feigned in the Work of Jo Walton Greer Gilman, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Ari David, Naomi Kritzer, Shaz Taslimi (M)	Book club: Permanence Emmet O'Brien

 

Saturday, June 7th
	The Big Room	The Reading Room
10:00	How to Write Middle Sherwood Smith, Teresa Nielsen Hayden (M), William Alexander, Yves Meynard, Victoria Goddard, Michèle Laframboise	Ruthanna Emrys Reading
10:35		Naomi Kritzer Reading
11:15	Susanna Clarke Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Zach Smirin, Jo Walton (M), Eugene Fischer, Tamara Vardomskaya	Ada Palmer Reading
13:00	Lunch
14:00	Pacing and Genre Ada Palmer, Jo Walton (M), Jon Evans, Mal Frazier, Alison Sinclair	Re-reading Vlad Emmet O’Brien, Mathieu Glachant, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Lila Garrott
15:15	Papal Election Letters Jo Walton (M), Thomas Noriega, Elise Darragh Ford, Zach Smirin, Kristen Hendricks	William Alexander Reading
15:45		Su Sokol Reading
16:30	Not Saving the World: Stakes in Fantasy Jo Walton (M), Naomi Kritzer, Victoria Goddard, Mal Frazier, Gretchen McCulloch	Book Club: The Invisible City Eugene Fischer
17:45	Shaping the Book Mal Frazier, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Dyl Haston, Sherwood Smith (M)	Just Starting Out Jack Larsen
18:45	Supper
20:00	Imaginary Education Greer Gilman, William Alexander, Victoria Goddard, Michèle Laframboise, Shaz Taslimi (M)	Norse Hour Ada Palmer, Lauren Schiller, Jo Walton
21:00	Surprise! Tamara Vardomskaya, Su Sokol, Yves Meynard, Mal Frazier (M), Alice Degan, Ruthanna Emrys	Beowulf Reading Jack Larsen, Greer Gilman, volunteers

 

Sunday, June 8th
	The Big Room	The Reading Room
10:00	The Underpinnings of the Future Jon Evans, Zach Smirin, Alison Sinclair, Ruthanna Emrys (M), Su Sokol	Yves Meynard Reading
10:35		Michèle Laframboise Reading
11:15	Worldbuilding for Beginners Ada Palmer, Avani Gadani, Victoria Goddard (M), Michèle Laframboise,Gretchen McCulloch	Delany Eugene Fischer, Thomas Noriega, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Jo Walton (M), Lila Garrott
11:50
12:30	Lunch
14:00	Inventing the Renaissance Ada Palmer & Dyl Haston	Lila Garrott interviews Sherwood Smith
15:15	Discovering Forgotten Writers Rich Horton, Jo Walton (M), Lila Garrott, Sherwood Smith, Mal Frazier	H.M.S. Surprise: Patrick O’Brian Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Ari David, Thomas Noriega
16:30	Why We Need Hopepunk More Than Ever Ada Palmer (M), Ruthanna Emrys, William Alexander, Naomi Kritzer, Su Sokol	Victoria Goddard Reading
17:05		Greer Gilman Reading
17:45	Raffle

 

Programme Descriptions

Everything is in the Big Room unless specified otherwise. All hour long items are in a 75 minute slot, to allow for over-run, bathroom breaks, and the need to move between rooms. Reading times are mostly 30 minutes in a 35 minute slot.

Friday 18.00 A Good Read: Four people each choose a novel, everyone reads all of them, and then discuss them

Friday 19.15 Writing the Future How long does it take for a new thing to become an accepted thing? How do we make first order changes into second and third order changes? How do we make the future still feel like the future, even when time has passed?

Friday 19.15 Book club: Permanence Karl Schroeder’s Permanence is a fascinating and unusual science fiction novel. READING ROOM

Friday 20.30 Italy True or Feigned in the Work of Jo Walton My Real Children, Lent, Or What You Will and Everybody’s Perfect all use Italy differently. Is that weird?

Saturday 10.00 How to Write Middle People talk a lot about how to start stories, and quite a lot about how to finish them. But what about that huge excluded middle? How do you do the bit after you’ve got it going and before the climax?

Saturday 11.15 Susanna Clarke Susanna Clarke has written very few works, but what she has written is brilliant and different from everything else. Let’s consider her work so far and what’s so great about it.

Saturday  14.00 Pacing and Genre Different genres use different pacing to do their things. In Exadelic Jon used thriller pacing to do SF and made it work.

Saturday  14.00 Re-reading Vlad Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos series began in 1983, and is now nearly complete.

Saturday 15.15 Papal Election Letters The letters we write for the papal election are their own unique microgenre. Let’s talk about it.

Saturday 15.15 The Territory Is Not The Map Exploring Fantasy map style. A presentation by Jonathan Crowe. READING ROOM.

Saturday 16.30 Not Saving the World: Stakes in Fantasy It used to be that every fantasy had to save the world; now we can have fantasies with different and more interesting stakes. But what propels a fantasy when the world isn’t at risk?

Saturday 16.30 Book club: The Invisible City Elizabeth Vonarburg’s The Invisible City was published first in French and is a vivid and unusual science fiction novel that doesn’t get enough attention. READING ROOM.

Saturday 17.45 Shaping the Book Cover, back cover copy, blurbs, quotes -- before we start reading the experience has been shaped for us to help us know what to expect. How do editors do this in a good way?

Saturday 17.45 Just Starting Out This is a meetup for writers who have as yet published little or nothing to connect and talk to each other and make friends.

Saturday 20.00 Imaginary Education Schools and universities and education play a big part in a lot of SF and fantasy. Let’s look at what we can do with that and why we love it.

Saturday 20.00 Norse Hour Norse music and poetry. READING ROOM

Saturday 21.00 Surprise! When we write something that has a surprise for readers, how do we do it? How do we make it a good surprise that is surprising but that still feels as if it fits, so readers say “Aha!” and not “Huh?”

Saturday 21.00 Beowulf Reading Jack and Greer will lead a reading of Beowulf, all welcome to listen and take a turn reading a chunk. We will have several translations available, feel free to bring your own.

Sunday 10.00 Underpinnings of the Future In the future we’ll need infrastructure: healthcare, childcare, sanitation, schools, distribution of goods and information. Maybe SF should think more about this stuff?

Sunday 11.15 Worldbuilding for Beginners Where do we start with building a world, how do we make it feel real to ourselves and to our readers? What are some resources and some techniques, and good examples to learn from?

Sunday 11.15 Delany Transgressive, fascinating, and just plain weird, Samuel Delany has long been one of our best and strangest SF writers. READING ROOM.

Sunday 14.00 Inventing the Renaissance Ada’s new non-fiction book is fun, erudite, and very very different from most history books, and it’s about a lot more than just the Renaissance.

Sunday 15.15 Discovering Forgotten Writers Finding a new writer is a real thrill, even when they’ve been dead for centuries.

Sunday 15.15 H.M.S. Surprise: Patrick O’Brian Let’s just hang out and talk about how great O’Brian is.

Sunday 16.30 Why We Need Hopepunk More Than Ever