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I had such a lovely WisCon. It was my first in-person convention since 2019, and I didn't know what to expect, but it was a lot of fun, and so nice to see friends and colleagues I hadn't seen in years. I was on four panels, plus a wonderful group reading for Fantasy Magazine. At the Sign Out, I signed a surprising number of my books. (It was my first in-person appearance for Can't Find My Way Home since it came out in January 2022, so this was especially gratifying.) I was happy to spend time in Madison again (though I ate too much cheese and too many rich desserts!).

The Covid safety protocols at the con were quite good. Three people tested positive during the con (I assume that they'd had Covid when they arrived, but only became symptomatic later), but so far I haven't heard of anyone becoming infected there. Dealing with airports and air travel amid the mostly maskless hordes was not fun, and I will try never to fly through Dallas again (they switched my terminal three times for my flight home), but WisCon made the hassle worth it.

I've decided not to attend Wiscon in person this year. (I will attend virtually.) I've missed the in-person convention, the Concourse, and Madison so much since the start of the pandemic, but between airlines lifting their mask mandate, cases rising (the positivity rate in Dane County is currently 9.9%, as opposed to 1.7% in LA County), and my mother passing away, the timing just isn't right for me.

This is the first time ever that my airline tickets have been automatically refunded without me having to do a song and dance. So that's a relief.

My poem "jungle red," crankily inspired by The Women (1939), will appear in The Cascadia Subduction Zone.

In other news, I had a lovely Wiscon in spite of the damn vertigo. (The vertigo seemed like it was on the wane last week, but it's been back with a vengeance the past few days. Begone, vertigo!)

Also, Leslie Howard is TCM's June Star of the Month. Last night I watched The Petrified Forest for the first time in years. I love the fact that they'd wanted to replace Humphrey Bogart with Edward G. Robinson for the film (Bogart had been in the stage play), and Leslie Howard sent the studio a telegram: "No Bogart, no deal." (After Howard's death, Bogart and Bacall named their daughter Leslie Howard.)

My day began with two excellent things. The first: Charles Payseur's in-depth review of the latest Mithila Review, which includes my poem "family (a form somehow must)."

The second: My finalized WisCon schedule!

This Genre Kills Fascists
Sat, 1:00–2:15 pm
Capitol B
Gwynne Garfinkle (moderator), ANONYMOUS, Alexis Lothian, Victor J. Raymond
Let's dig into the history, the present, and the future of genre fiction as resistance texts. The uses of genre conventions to speak out in ways that would be dangerous if stated baldly in a realist or non-fiction text, the power of imagining a way forward, the issuing of warnings, the rallying cries. The epitaphs and the freedom songs. The voices that endure and the voices that are needed.


Fanfic, Retcon, and Zombies, Oh My!
Sat, 9:00-10:15 pm
University B
Carrie Pruett (moderator), Gwynne Garfinkle, KJ, Victoria Janssen
Let's talk about what happens in the murky territories where fanfic meets original works. Do writings that use original works in the public domain—modern-day Sherlock Holmes characters, zombies in Jane Austen's worlds—count as fanfic? When a series gets unwieldy or unpopular, it can be rebooted or rewritten with different parameters: maybe a character comes back to life, changes gender, or gets a new backstory. Are there differences between retcon and fix-it fic, other than who owns the copyright?


Personal Demons
Sun, 10:00-11:15 am
Conference 4
Carol Anne Douglas, Gwynne Garfinkle, Cath Schaff-Stump , LaShawn M. Wanak
What haunts us, what scares us, what makes us tick. Works that deal with metaphorical and actual demons.


When the Monster Isn't the Monster
Sun, 4:00-5:15 pm
University C
William Paimon (moderator), Gwynne Garfinkle, Leigh Hellmann
Science fiction and horror have always displayed a unique ability to play with allegory and metaphor by making monsters. Sometimes, though, the monster is more than just a flesh and blood (or protoplasm) villain to be defeated. As these genres have had a resurgence over the past few years, high concept genre work has undergone something of a renaissance. From big screen successes like The Babadook, It Follows, and The Witch, to television like Jessica Jones and Mr. Robot, science fiction and horror are finding commercial and critical success by having something to say again. Let's talk about what we loved in works with horrors that are more than meet the eye, note where they fell flat, and share hidden gems we might not have run into yet.

I am hennaing my hair on a cool May day in Los Angeles. WisCon fast approaches, and I have So Much To Do. Fortunately, some of what I have to do involves watching Jane the Virgin for a panel.

Last night I was watching The Incredible Shrinking Man yet again, and I consulted Cinema Cats to find out about the cat that appears in the film. I was pleased to learn that the cat who menaces the Shrinking Man is none other than veteran cat actor Orangey!

I got back from Wiscon on Tuesday night, but I keep forgetting to post about it due to jetlag. Travel was much smoother than last year, with no flight delays or cancellations (in spite of some fairly bad weather the day I flew out of Madison).

It was great to hang out with nwhepcat, and I really enjoyed the programming I was on (a reading with Patty Templeton, Nicole Kornher-Stace, and Shira Lipkin, and a panel on "What Makes a Character Come Alive?"). I attended some terrific panels and readings, including a panel on Afrofuturist music and a reading featuring Karen Joy Fowler's hilarious memoir about her trip to Italy as a teenager.

I've been home for two days, but I'm still a bit jetlagged. Looking forward to Readercon, fast approaching!

I got home from Madison last night, after an epic day of travel (resulting from my original flight being canceled due to weather). Wiscon was excellent, especially getting to hang out with my friends, including nwhepcat, oracne, cafenowhere and many others. The panel and reading I participated in were both a lot of fun (especially the reading, with cafenowhere, Patty Templeton, and shadesong). N.K. Jemisin's and Hiromi Goto's Guest of Honor speeches were very powerful.

Books I bought at the con:

Women Scientists in Fifties Science Fiction Films by Bonnie Noonan
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
Re-Generating WisCon edited by Rebecca J. Holden
Naomi Mitchison: A Profile of Her Life and Work by Lesley A. Hall

Also I bought a beautiful necklace by elisem entitled "Pink Ladies of the Singularity."

I may have eaten more cheese and drank more alcohol than I usually do at Wiscon. Fried cheese curds plus a giant gin beverage are an ill-advised combination, but I was relatively unscathed.

My poem about Bride of Frankenstein, "she's alive, alive," is in the new issue of Apex Magazine. It's the second poem of mine to refer to Elsa Lanchester; let's see if I can finish the poem I'm working on about Una O'Connor!


Here is my WisCon schedule. It is rather light, which is fine with me. Both my events are on Friday (before the jetlag wears off but before exhaustion sets in?).

Fri, 2:30–3:45 pm: Feminist Utopias Redux
In the 1970s and 80s, Women's Studies classes had courses on "Feminist Utopias," which read Herland and Les Guerilleres, Woman on the Edge of Time and The Female Man, and several others, and speculated about the future of feminism. Some of us remember those classes; others have read the books at some time or other. Let's go back and examine them, and see which ones the "suck fairy" has visited, and which ones are relevant in the 21st century.

Fri, 9:00–10:15 pm: Spindles and Spitfire
Join us for a reading packed full of sinister whimsy, folkloric sensibilities, dark humor, and SNACKS! Lisa Bradley dances with the skeletons in her closet. Gwynne Garfinkle is a red headed hellion who will capture your heart and put it in a jar above her writing desk. Shira Lipkin has returned from the castle beyond the goblin city. She brought you a present. Patty Templeton does not appreciate when ghosts keep her up at night.

What did you just finish reading?
Kathleen Gilles Seidel, Again (1994), which I wanted to read after seeing oracne's write-up. It's a romance novel dealing with the cast and crew of a daytime soap opera (and what's more, it's a soap opera set in the Regency era). I wasn't 100% on board with how the actual romance (between the soap's head writer and one of the actors) played out, but I enjoyed the book thoroughly. I read the bulk of it while traveling to and from Madison, and it was the world's most perfect airplane book (at least for soap fan me).

What are you currently reading?
ed. Sigrid Ellis and Michael D. Thomas, Queers Dig Time Lords. I'm pretty sure I went directly from the Wiscon panel discussion on the book to the dealers' room to buy a copy.

Lesley Wheeler, The Receptionist and Other Tales...and I bought this because Lesley Wheeler moderated the Wiscon panel on speculative poetry. The title poem is a speculative narrative poem in terza rima set in academia.

What will you read next?
I want to start Sofia Samatar's A Stranger in Olondria very soon!

It is Henna Day, on a pleasantly warm day in L.A. (following a spate of hot weather). I think I'm having my usual post-WisCon slump, and massive allergies aren't helping.

I never did properly write up WisCon, but it was so great to spend time with nwhepcat, oracne, skogkatt, cafenowhere and many others. The Open Secrets group reading (Lisa Bradley, Amal El-Mohtar, Gwynne Garfinkle, Nancy Hightower, Kathrin Köhler, Shira Lipkin, Alex Dally MacFarlane, Elizabeth R. McClellan, Julia Rios, S. Brackett Robertson, Sofia Samatar) was one of the best poetry readings of any kind I've ever participated in. And there was the amazing panel discussion on speculative poetry featuring tithenai, shadesong and Sofia Samatar, and the also amazing panel on the new Queers Dig Time Lords book of essays, and papersky reading from her two upcoming novels, and far too much more for me to reconstruct at this point...