My Readercon Schedule for July 15-17th, 2011
We’ll be heading to Readercon this weekend. Readercon is one of the few conventions that I attend each year. SFRevu has a table in the dealers’ room — our semi-annual book sale to clear out our basement actually so if you’re there stop by the table for a chat.
Here’s my schedule:
Friday: 12:00 PM G And They Lived Happily Ever After, Until They Died: Retelling Russian Folktales. Patricia McKillip, Gayle Surrette (leader). Ekaterina Sedia’s The Secret History of Moscow, Catherynne M. Valente’s Deathless, Patricia McKillip’s In the Forests of Serre… it appears we’re in the middle of a renewed interest in fairy tale retellings—and specifically, postmodern, genre-challenging fairy tale retellings—based in the folklore of Russia. Is there a specific element to Russian stories that makes them particularly fit for contemporary adaptation?
Saturday: 7:00 PM ME The One Right Form of a Story. Judith Berman, Marilyn “Mattie” Brahen, John Langan, Meghan McCarron, Gayle Surrette (leader). Quoth Mark Twain: “There are some books that refuse to be written…. It isn’t because the book is not there and worth being written—it is only because the right form of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story and if you fail to find that form the story will not tell itself.” Anyone who has adapted a fairy tale for a poem or developed a short story into a novel might disagree, yet many authors have also spent years chasing stories that evade capture until they’re approached in just the right way. What makes some stories easygoing and others stubborn? Is the insistence on a story “telling itself” a red herring? And what does “form” really mean here?
Hyperion and I look forward to meeting our readers and making new friends.