Three Reminders and a Giveaway!

[sirens_mods]

Registration
Remember, the current registration rate of $165 expires April 30, 2010. After that, the rate is $180 until September 8, 2010 (when we stop registration until we open again at the door). Registration includes access to all conference programming and events, including the three keynote presentations by our guests of honor and a

Comments

[anonymous]

I'm interested in something about language in fantasy. I don't know how to explain it. Some authors have a really lush style and others a sparse, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

-I.

[newsboyhat]

Round table idea! Can you think of any books in particular?

[anonymous]

Not in particular. I'm thinking about how sometimes flowery language is a little much for an urban setting, for example.

[sirens_mods]

Do you like one more than the other?

[praetorianguard]

I've been pondering doing something on the romanticization of the (non-human) "other" in a wide swath of YA fantasy lit, but I don't know that I'm attached to it (so if you want it, speak up!). There are a lot of books lately where a (purportedly) normal, mortal girl meets a (usually non-human) "other" (read, "special") boy and he either chooses her (and much swooning commences) or helps her discover that she's (usually) a fairy princess or a Mary Sue.

There's some serious grounding fairy tales here (Hi, Cinderella), but there seems to be a significant focus on this concept in publishing post-Twilight, and with apparently much commercial success. Maggie Stiefvater's Shiver and Lament, Carrie Jones's Need, Lesley Livingston's Wondrous Strange, and so on. (And I could blather about how this is the modern equivalent of the bodice rippers my generation read as teens, when YA lit was much less prevalent, which also tended to romanticize the "other"; the "other" then, however, tended toward rakes, bandits, pirates, etc

[sirens_mods]

Do you have a preferred way that you'd like to present this? Would you rather talk for a while and then discuss, or would you like the audience to do most of the discussing?

[praetorianguard]

Nah, no preferences. I think the presentation style, at least for me, is driven by the topic and the focus.