My Readercon Schedule
Looking forward to seeing friends old & new at Readercon in Burlington, MA (just outside Boston) in 2 weeks! Weekend & day pass memberships are available at the door - and the Thursday evening program is just plain free and open to the public! I should be there then. I have no formal autographing session, so feel free to simply grab me in the hallway or after a panel. If it's not convenient, I'll tell you, so don't be shy!
Friday July 13
1:00 PM VT Reading. Ellen Kushner. Ellen Kushner reads from a work to be determined.
Any requests?
4:00 PM CL Kaffeeklatsch. Mike Allen, Ellen Kushner.
NB: This is actually the annual Interstitial Arts Foundation Town Meeting! Please come with your ideas for ways to make the IAF a better medium for all artists - and lovers of their work - who create art that falls in the interstices between recognized genre categories, whatever they may be.
Bring your suggestions, questions, and enthusiasm!
5:00 PM ME How I Narrated and Produced the 'Illuminated' Swordspoint Series Audiobooks. Ellen Kushner. Ellen Kushner discusses the making of her latest audiobook, The Privilege of the Sword (released this month, deliberately scheduled to coincide with Readercon!), and its predecessor, Swordspoint, both written and narrated (and co-produced) by Kushner for ACX/Neil Gaiman Presents. A year ago, she'd never even listened to an audiobook; now, using extra voice actors, sound effects and commissioned soundtrack music, she and producer/director Sue Zizza have created a new style called the "Illuminated" audiobook. She will play excerpts and answer questions about the process, including her experiences with ACX, Audible's new initiative for empowering authors to create their own audiobooks.
Yes, there will be pre-release excerpts of TPOTS!Saturday July 14
2:00 PM G The City and the Strange. Leah Bobet, Amanda Downum, Lila Garrott (leader), Stacy Hill, Ellen Kushner, Howard Waldrop. In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs writes, "By its nature, the metropolis provides what otherwise could be given only by traveling; namely, the strange." N.K. Jemisin's Inheritance trilogy demonstrates that epic-feeling fantasy can still take place entirely within the confines of a single city. Fictional metropolises such as Jeff Vandermeer's Ambergris, China Miéville's New Crobuzon, and Catherynne M. Valente's Palimpsest are entire worlds in themselves, and the fantasy cities of Lankmar and Ankh-Morkpork shine as centers of intrigue and adventure. In what other works, and other ways, can cities be stand-ins for the lengthy traveling quest of Tolkienesque fantasy?Sunday July 15
11:00 AM F Performing Books to Ourselves. Ellen Brody, Andy Duncan, James Patrick Kelly, Rosemary Kirstein, Ellen Kushner (leader). In a 2011 blog post, Daniel Abraham wrote, "Reading a book is a performance by an artist (the writer) for an audience (the reader)." But readers also perform works to themselves, imagining characters and settings and events, and perform works to others when reading aloud. In those cases, is the writer taking more of a directorial role, or is there a more complex synergy afoot, especially when we get into audiobooks, fiction podcasts, and other carefully produced performances? How does awareness of these layers of performance shape the ways that writers write and readers read?