The schedule is online and Magenta Griffith has provided info on how to get to the hotel.

Our con chair Elise Matthesen posted information about the playreading event to the 4th Street Livejournal; be sure to check the comments on that post if you're planning to attend the playreading on Thursday as Laramie Sasseville put together a nifty PDF version of the play for folks to download and print.

The pre-registration period for Fourth Street has ended. Big thanks to everyone who registered early, helping us to build the convention!

We do still have some at-the-door memberships available. While we call them "at-the-door memberships," they can be purchased now – you don't have to wait until you're actually at the door at the convention. At-the-door memberships are $100. If you get one by June 11th, our registration person Beth Friedman will make sure you have a nice pre-printed badge, and we can make sure there's room for you at the Sunday brunch.

We will continue offering these $100 at-the-door memberships until we run out of room at the brunch. If you think you'll be needing one, doing it early will help us make sure we've got room for you. Thanks! (They will only be available online through June 11th, after that you'll have to take your chances at the con.)

(Since Fourth Street Fantasy Convention is a single-track convention with one on-going conversation stretching over the whole weekend, there are no one-day or partial memberships available.)

Some friendly hotel reminders from Jenett:

Still need somewhere to sleep?
The deadline for reservations under our room block is Wednesday, May 27th, 2009. If you plan to reserve a room, and haven't yet, please help us out, and do so before the deadline!

Already reserved yours?
Thank you! Please help us out by checking the following, too:

• If you booked in any other way than through the hotel website link (which is available from our hotel page), please make sure that Jenett has your name to add to our room block list.
• If you have any questions about your reservation (or whether you're on our list) please feel free to email to check: jenettsilver@gmail.com.

We're planning brunch!
As noted, brunch on Sunday is included in our registration costs, and we're working with the hotel's chef to provide a wide range of foods and tastes. We're already planning for vegetarians and vegans (and the chef has rave reviews on the vegan front), but if you have other food needs we should be aware of, please tell us soon! (again, jenettsilver@gmail.com for all your hotel-related needs.)

Our list of folks who have purchased memberships has been updated. The deadline for registration is just five days away!

Programming
We have a page about programming which includes a note from Steven Brust and Beth Meacham (our programming co-heads), a list of panel ideas, and a form you can fill out if you're interested in volunteering to be on programming.

Dealers' Room
Our Dealers' Room page has info about the consignment service we're offering to authors coming to the convention. It also has the hours of operation for the Dealers' Room and how to get in touch with Daniel "Stitch" Mohr if you're interested in having a table in the room or having something at the consignment table.

Hotel
Jenett Silver put together a helpful page with more information about the convention hotel. It tells you what spaces we're using in the hotel (and where they're at in relation to each other), plus has information about accessibility, amenities, and all sorts of stuff.

Members
We've also added more folks to our list of members and will continue to add people as registrations roll in.

Committee
We've added some folks to our committee since anyone last nattered here on the website. Beth Meacham will co-head Programming with Steven Brust. Michael & Jean Mornard have signed on to run the consuite. Kit Gordon volunteered to investigate restaurants near the con hotel. Thanks to everyone who is helping make Fourth Street happen!

We now have a flyer for Fourth Street Fantasy Convention 2009 in PDF format which is suitable for downloading, printing, and distributing to friends and strangers at conventions and other places.

Fourth Street is now listed as an event on Facebook; if you spend time on Facebook, you should check it out. (Anyone have a good picture we could use with the event listing? For that matter, if you have pictures or art you think would look on the website, get in touch with Laurel. )

We've had twitter account since before last year's convention, but haven't done too much with it. We hope to post updates to it from time to time before, after, and during the convention. So far Laurel's been the one updating it.

There are now buttons on the website that link to us on Facebook and Twitter.

Do any of you post photos to Flickr? Did you post photos there from the previous Fourth Street? What tag did you use? What tag should we use going forward? We could link to Flickr and suggest a tag for everyone to use there.

You can subscribe to our website updates as a feed, get the feed via email, or read the feed as well as community postings on Livejournal.

The list of folks who've registered thus far is now online. If you're listed and would prefer not to be or would prefer that your name be altered in some way, please let us know. If you think you're registered and you aren't on the list, please get in touch with us. (If you sent us a check in the mail this week, it's possible we may not have it yet, but anything older than that probably has been processed.)

The observant among you may notice that most of the committee hasn't registered yet. And lots of other folks who've indicated they'll be there haven't registered yet. While the pre-registration deadline isn't 'til near the end of May, it would help us a lot if people registered sooner rather than later. (Reserve a room while you're at it, too.)

We could use some help in making another fabulous Fourth Street Fantasy Convention happen in 2009. Our chair Elise Matthesen is having some not-fun health issues that have derailed her a bit and of course all of us on the concom have jobs and families and other things taking up our time. We know that so far we may not have done our absolute best with making this con happen and we're sad we can't have Cory as our GoH this time around, but we're still confident Fourth Street 2009 can be a really good time . . . we just need your help to make it happen.

I know there are lots of people who attended Fourth Street last year who are very excited about the con and want to see it continue. I know there are some folks who couldn't attend last year, who'd love to go this year and might even be up to pitching in.

What You Can Do

• Register! If you haven't yet pre-registered for the convention and plan to attend, please register as soon as you can. It helps us a lot to know how many people are coming to the con, we can also put the money from membership fees to good use in making the con happen. We're grateful to everyone who has registered already and we look forward to seeing you this June.
• Spread the word about Fourth Street. Post about it to your blog. Tell your friends about it. Give registration forms to people you'd like to see there. We'll have a flyer for folks to download and print on the website soon – I'll let you know as soon as that happens. (If you're good at making signs or flyers, you could even try making one of your own and send it to us and if we like it, we'll use it as well.)
• Make the consuite fabulous. We need someone to run the consuite (a.k.a. parties department). One very handy thing about doing it this year: there's a Costco pretty much just across the street (and there's a Byerly's just down the highway a little ways). If you aren't up to running the consuite, maybe you're up to helping set it up or tear it down? Or perhaps you can commit to spending an hour or two there making sure snacks and drinks get replenished? And of course we expect that when you're hanging out in the consuite, you'll clean up yourself and make yourself useful when you see something you can do to help out.
• Send us your ideas for programming. Have you been thinking of something nifty we could talk about this year? Are there things we talked about last year (or many years ago) which should be revisited or expanded on? Who would you like to see on a panel at Fourth Street? Would you like to be on a panel?
• Gather useful info. Update the Wiki. Gather info about restaurants near the con hotel. Round up details on which restaurants deliver to the hotel. Make a list of nearby stores and hours. Find out the pool hours or other hotel details. Sure, we have people who are working with the hotel and on our website, but we can always use help. What sort of things do you want to know about when you're attending a con? Tell us what you want/need to know and/or gather some info you think would prove useful and pass it along to us (or post to the LJ or Wiki).
• Reserve a room. We know some folks can't afford a room or aren't interested in getting one, but if you're planning to get a room, it helps us if you reserve it sooner rather than later. And if you can swing a room, it can make the convention even more fun if you stay at the con hotel. Need a roommate? Post to our Livejournal and maybe you'll find one.
• Suggest merchants and artisans for our Dealer's Room. Who would you like to see there? Would you like a table there? I hear we've got really good rates for tables and memberships for dealers.
• Write something for us. Got something to say about Fourth Street or on a topic you think is of interest to folks who are attending Fourth Street? Write something and maybe we'll put it on the website or use it in our publications. If you've written something about the con in your blog or journal, we'd love to link to it and might even ask permission to reprint some or all of it.

Spread the word. Register. Make the consuite fab. Gather and share info. Reserve a room. Volunteer. Make suggestions. Pitch in. All that good stuff. It's gonna be a great con, thanks to you fine folks.

How can you get in touch with us? Use the contact form or post to the Livejournal (or make a comment there). Send email to feedback@4thstreetfantasy.com. Or contact folks on the committee directly.

[This was written by Fourth Street webmistress Laurel Krahn and wasn't approved by anyone else on the concom or anything like that. She hopes she got everything right and is confident people will correct her if she messed up.]

We regret to announce that Cory Doctorow will no longer be able to be the Guest of Honor at Fourth Street Fantasy Convention. The reasons why are complicated, but the biggest one is the way Fourth Street's current economic situation intersects with transportation costs and disability issues, since our cost-sharing and partnership efforts with other organizations have fallen through. Fourth Street hopes that we can host Cory at another convention some time in the future.

Because the convention is only three months away, and because replacing Cory just feels wrong, we're going to proceed without a Guest of Honor. Instead, we have the delight of conversation with all of our members – and after all, that's what Fourth Street is really about.

However, because of this change, we will be offering refunds to anyone who's already purchased a membership and would like one. If you purchased your membership on-line, you should be receiving an email offering a full refund within the next few days. If you do not receive one, please contact us.

Thank you.

Elise Matthesen,
conchair, Fourth Street 2009

Please join us for Fourth Street Fantasy Convention (the best fantasy convention on the block!) on June 19-21, 2009 in St. Louis Park, Minnesota (if you're not a local, think of it as Minneapolis).

We're a small convention with a passion for fantasy and a penchant for fun. We have fascinating panelists and rousing discussions – and music in the evenings. Programming is a single track, which allows the entire convention to evolve into an ongoing conversation.

Is the Doubletree Park Place on Fourth Street? No, it's on Park Place Boulevard. So why is this convention called Fourth Street anyway? We're glad you asked. Fourth Street Fantasy Convention was on hiatus for a number of years. Its return in 2008 was so much fun that we couldn't resist bringing it back again in 2009.

We don't know yet what programming will bring, but some of the fantasy will have a techie flavor. And with the fabulous folks we know are coming back, the conversations will be rich and varied. We never have to worry about finding material for the traditional Different Panel (as in, "… but that's a different panel") held near the end of the convention.

The Doubletree Park Place in St. Louis Park had a previous life as a Sheraton, with a different floor plan and a different logo. The one thing we hope will be the same is the same warm welcome and comfortable surroundings that made it our favorite Fourth Street hotel ever, back in the old days.

New this year: Sunday morning brunch is included in your membership, so please do plan to attend. We promise not to start it too early for our night owls, but we hope to have food so tempting that even Steven Brust will want to get up for.

The conversation and the fun will be better if you're there. You know they will.