A cozy little science fiction convention that I've been attending regularly for over half my life.
Join the Mod Squad: Enhance Your Moderation Skills (GS1)
Participants and moderators-to-be will consider how to help foster discussion, guide a conversation, avoid a runaway panel, and bring more voices into the discussion when it comes time to share the mic. Keeping yourself organized, queuing up comments and questions, and discouraging premature audience participation will also be discussed.
How to Do Research For Your Book Without Scaring Yourself Away (GS2)
Research is a key ingredient in good storytelling, as many writers tell you. When the character knows something you don't or the world works in a way that's beyond your current knowledge, accurate details are a must. What do you do when your character knows the ins and outs of a subject when you can only absorb the cliffnotes? How do you build a world's political climate when you flunked government class? Where do you even start researching, and how do you know what you're looking for? This panel gives advice to those who need to do research for aspects of their books, but are intimidated or flummoxed by the process.
Nevertheless, She Persisted (GS2)
This comment about Elizabeth Warren's refusal to be silenced during a Senate session were meant as an explanation for how Warren's behavior was unacceptable. Instead, they quickly became a feminist battle cry, celebrating women who never gave up in a system stacked against them. In this panel, we talk about the badass women in history who Got Shit Done.
Reading: Heather Rose Jones (C6)
Excerpts from "Gifts Tell Truth", a story that will be appearing in the next Lace and Blade anthology edited by Deborah J. Ross and coming out in February 2018. This is an Alpennia short story about Jeanne de Cherdillac's adventures with a French spy during the Napoleonic occupation of Alpennia.
From Sherlock to Sheldon: SF/F Characters on the Asexuality Spectrum (GS3-5)
This panel discusses what asexuality is and is not, and proposes ways for authors to explore this overlooked orientation in their characters. Is it enough that a character has no on-page sex life, or should asexuality be more positively portrayed? Asexuality in real-time fandom and asexual characters in fiction and media may also be discussed as time allows.