4th Street Fantasy…
continues June 22-24, 2012 in Minneapolis, MN
| Thursday, June 21, 2012 | |
| 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM | Jewelry with Elise |
| Our very talented and generous Elise Matthesen has offered to teach a jewelry making class for any registered 4th Streeter at no cost. [This is indeed a generous gift from Elise!] Bring your own tools and materials. If you have any questions head over to her LiveJournal post. | |
| 8:00 PM – | Storytelling |
| For this year's welcoming party we are going to hear stories. And we'll be the ones telling them. We'll use the "pick, play, or pass" approach as we usually do with the music party. Each person will be able to ask someone in the circle to tell a story, pass the turn on to the next person, or tell a story. Stories can be true, made up, or classic. If you've got a good tale, bring it along; notes are allowed. Your story might come in the form of a tale, a joke, a poem, or a song. Have fun with it! We may not get all the way around the circle, but we'll make some good fun together! | |
| Friday, June 22, 2012 | |
| 9:00 AM – 1:30 PM | Writer's Seminar: Storytelling |
| The Writer's Seminar schedule can be found over here. | |
| 5:00 PM – 5:30 PM | Welcome! |
| ... to 4th Street 2012. Join us for a few opening remarks, after which the party really starts. | |
| 5:30 PM – 6:30 PM | Story Templates and the Folk Process |
|
Patricia C. Wrede Dana M. Baird Tim Cooper Oneal Isaac Tom Whitmore |
It seems like every story, ballad, or epic that's endured for a significant amount of time has been recast and retold repeatedly. Is the folk process necessary to these stories' survival? Is it cultural omnipresence that brings us back to the likes of Robin Hood, Cinderella, and Tam Lin (or, in other cultures, the Monkey King, Coyote, or Baba Yaga) again and again, or do the characters and narrative templates found in these stories share a common resonance? How does the oral folk process (in songs and spoken storytelling) affect our written use of these stories? |
| 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM | POV Fixes Everything |
|
Beth Meacham Alec Austin Emma Bull Steven Brust Scott Lynch |
Various Scribblies have advanced the claim that 'POV fixes everything'. The readers of recent sprawling fantasy series might take issue with this. What sorts of problems can the careful and intelligent use of POV resolve? What sorts of challenges does choosing a specific POV (or an ever-expanding set of POVs) to use for your story create? |
| 9 PM – | Welcome Reception and Evening Merriment |
| Begin your evening in the ConSuite sharing munchies, libations, and your stories since last we saw you. Continue with songs and good conversations. | |
| Saturday, June 23, 2011 | |
| 9:30 AM – 10:30 AM | Politics, Complexity, and Fantasy |
|
Marissa Lingen Marie Brennan Alec Austin Sarah Monette Susan Palwick |
Fantasy sometimes seems to have a love/hate relationship with politics: It often wants to deal with grand political issues (revolutions, alliances, continent-spanning conflicts) without addressing the complexities of governance. What challenges do authors face when trying to depict political scenarios? Are there modes of governance or types of conflict that are particularly challenging to work into fiction? Do long-running series, like C.J. Cherryh's Atevi books, allow for more robust depictions of politics and diplomacy? |
| 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM | Teens, Work, & Fantasy |
|
Anne Gwin Stella Evans Ellen Klages Ginger Weil Patricia C. Wrede |
In the historical periods many secondary worlds are based on, the concept of adulthood was different than it is now, and teens and pre-teens were often part of the workforce or the military. How are these issues addressed (or glossed over) in fantasy? How do our modern, first-world, and genre sensibilities affect how children and teenagers are depicted in fantasy? |
| 1:30 PM – 2:30 PM | Get Your Reality Out of My Fantasy |
|
Lynne M. Thomas David Grouchy Scott Lynch Beth Meacham Caroline Stevermer |
Some authors insist on dragging readers through the grim, harsh realities of their world in ways that can be tiresome, or even abhorrent. Is there an argument to be made for "letting fantasy be fantasy", without dragging the real world into it? Even if we can't avoid considering certain aspects of reality, do we want or need more exuberance in the genre? What would stories that are more "pure fantasy" and play to the genre's core strengths look like? |
| 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM | Accessibility, Genre, and Depth |
|
Michael Merriam Elizabeth Bear Chris Modzelewski John Scalzi |
Making fantasy accessible to new readers without making it seem simple or "dumbed down" to a more experienced audience can be challenging. What can we learn from the burgeoning YA genre? What are some techniques for ensuring new readers won't feel like they've been thrown in the deep end, and to what extent can these techniques be reconciled with the intertextual complexity and deconstruction of genre tropes that experienced readers often desire? |
| 4:30 PM – 5:30 PM | Collaborations & Shared Worlds |
|
Emma Bull Steven Brust John Scalzi Will Shetterly Skyler White |
How different are the motivations behind collaborating with another writer, working in a shared world, or writing tie-in work or fan-fiction? Does the stigma that's often attached to tie-in work and fanfic have anything to do with the drive to create it? What can the rhetoric surrounding originality, work-for-hire, and other related issues tell us about how the collaborative process is understood by non-participants? |
| 7:30 PM – 9:00 PM | Families, Festivals, and Fireworks |
|
Elizabeth Bear Catherine Lundoff Elise Matthesen Jon Singer Michael D. Thomas |
A different angle on the "Three Fs" panel we've had every year since 4th Street's return. What cool things do our panelists know about families, festivals, and fireworks (treating fireworks as a stand-in for imported and repurposed technology) that would be good to see in books or are just neat to talk about? How have work, family life, celebrations, and international trade interacted with each other historically and in fiction? |
| Evening... | Tea, Music, and Conversation... |
| The rest of the evening, as usual, is fairly unstructured. We have the rooms all night to use as we will. | |
| Sunday, June 24, 2012 | |
| 9:30 AM – 10:30 AM | Science, Technology, and Fantasy |
|
Ellen Klages Marissa Lingen Chris Modzelewski Sarah Monette Catherine Schaffer |
There is a tendency for fantasy to depict worlds mired in technological stasis, or to imagine magic and technology as polar opposites. Even when authors combine the two, as in more fantastic end of steampunk, they often choose to reproduce a subset of ideas from our world and prior art. What are some of the sources of this approach toward technology in fantasy? What sorts of narrative opportunities open up when you introduce disruptive technologies, magical or otherwise, into a fantasy story? |
| 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM | Blood, Love, and Rhetoric |
|
Marie Brennan Pamela Dean Kit Gordon Mary Robinette Kowal Inez Schaechterle |
A character in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead claimed that: "I can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and I can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and I can do you all three concurrent or consecutive, but I can't do you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory — they're all blood, you see." Is blood (that is to say, direct, dramatic conflict) actually necessary for stories to 'work'? What about Love and Rhetoric? Are narrative templates that rely on blood just more familiar, or is there a deeper reason why domestic narratives in fantasy are hard to pull off? |
| 1:30 PM – 3:00 PM | Another Panel |
|
To be decided |
Yup, you guessed it... the time slot left open for one of those topics that would otherwise derail or consume another panel that we deferred for another time. |
| 4:00 PM – 4:30 PM | Thanks and What about 2013? |
| Closing words, thoughts, etc. Also, we'll talk a little about what we're thinking for 2013. | |
| Evening... | Dead Dog Party |
| We've got the rooms, so use 'em! | |
© 2012, 4th Street Fantasy Society