Readercon 2019!
Jul. 16th, 2019 04:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynnegaI'm so glad I was able to make it to Readercon this year (after missing it last year due to illness). This may have been my favorite Readercon yet, in spite of my vertigo. The vertigo did make things challenging at times, but to my surprise, I felt exponentially better than I did at Wiscon, less than two months ago. This is encouraging, to say the least.
As usual at a con, I didn't see or spend time with everyone I would have liked to, or attend all the panels and readings I wanted to (some of which were scheduled opposite my programming items), but I thoroughly enjoyed myself. It was so great to see Lisa Bradley (and family), Sonya Taaffe, Victoria Janssen, Virginia Mohlere, and many others. I saw readings by Lisa, Sonya, C.S.E. Cooney (her forthcoming novella Desdemona and the Deep is going to be fantastic), Carlos Hernandez, and Marissa Lingen, as well as readings from Ellen Datlow's The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories (Gemma Files, Jeffrey Ford, Stephen Graham Jones, John Langan, Paul Tremblay). Then there were the hilarious (and at times disturbing, but mostly hilarious) Dramatic Readings from the Ig Nobel Prizes (Marc Abrahams, C.S.E. Cooney, Rose Fox, Heath Miller, Sonya Taaffe). I'd been hearing about the Ig Nobel readings for awhile, and they did not disappoint.
A couple of terrific panels I attended were: Being Vague to Make Space for Horror (Stephen Graham Jones, Darcie Little Badger, Sonya Taaffe, teri.zin, Paul Tremblay) and Writing While Chronically Ill or Disabled (Lisa Bradley, Vylar Kaftan, Darcie Little Badger, Sheila Williams). I'd already watched it at home, but I attended the screening and Q&A of Tananarive Due's excellent documentary on black horror films, Horror Noire, and got even more out of it than the first time I saw it.
I was very happy with the panels I was on this year: The Horrors of Being Female (with Gemma Files, Arkady Martine, Gillian Daniels, Nicole Sconiers, and Kate Maruyama) and The Peril of Being Disbelieved (with Meg Elison, Sonya Taaffe, and teri.zin). The second of these was held on the last day of the con, when I'm typically feeling at my most drained and incoherent, but the topic was so rich, and Sonya and Teri had such great insights, I happily would have continued for another half hour at least. (And I enjoyed describing my favorite scene from The Exorcist, in which a mansplaining doctor gets backhanded across the room.)
Also, I had fun at my poetry reading, albeit sparsely attended. I'm sure I've left things out. But it was a wonderful Readercon.
As usual at a con, I didn't see or spend time with everyone I would have liked to, or attend all the panels and readings I wanted to (some of which were scheduled opposite my programming items), but I thoroughly enjoyed myself. It was so great to see Lisa Bradley (and family), Sonya Taaffe, Victoria Janssen, Virginia Mohlere, and many others. I saw readings by Lisa, Sonya, C.S.E. Cooney (her forthcoming novella Desdemona and the Deep is going to be fantastic), Carlos Hernandez, and Marissa Lingen, as well as readings from Ellen Datlow's The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories (Gemma Files, Jeffrey Ford, Stephen Graham Jones, John Langan, Paul Tremblay). Then there were the hilarious (and at times disturbing, but mostly hilarious) Dramatic Readings from the Ig Nobel Prizes (Marc Abrahams, C.S.E. Cooney, Rose Fox, Heath Miller, Sonya Taaffe). I'd been hearing about the Ig Nobel readings for awhile, and they did not disappoint.
A couple of terrific panels I attended were: Being Vague to Make Space for Horror (Stephen Graham Jones, Darcie Little Badger, Sonya Taaffe, teri.zin, Paul Tremblay) and Writing While Chronically Ill or Disabled (Lisa Bradley, Vylar Kaftan, Darcie Little Badger, Sheila Williams). I'd already watched it at home, but I attended the screening and Q&A of Tananarive Due's excellent documentary on black horror films, Horror Noire, and got even more out of it than the first time I saw it.
I was very happy with the panels I was on this year: The Horrors of Being Female (with Gemma Files, Arkady Martine, Gillian Daniels, Nicole Sconiers, and Kate Maruyama) and The Peril of Being Disbelieved (with Meg Elison, Sonya Taaffe, and teri.zin). The second of these was held on the last day of the con, when I'm typically feeling at my most drained and incoherent, but the topic was so rich, and Sonya and Teri had such great insights, I happily would have continued for another half hour at least. (And I enjoyed describing my favorite scene from The Exorcist, in which a mansplaining doctor gets backhanded across the room.)
Also, I had fun at my poetry reading, albeit sparsely attended. I'm sure I've left things out. But it was a wonderful Readercon.
