Tag: Nnedi Okorafor

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Eastercon 2018: Follycon schedule – UPDATED

The official programme for Follycon is now up! Here’s where you can find me over 30th March – 2nd April.

SATURDAY
4:00pm – Posters Exhibiton (Half Moon Room)
Ruth EJ Booth

Follycon is holding a poster exhibition across the event, including my poster ‘Mapping the Way: Taoism and Landscape in Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea Quartet’. If you’ve got any questions about the poster, this is the first of my two half-hour sessions where I’ll be available for chat.

7:00pm – BSFA Awards Ceremony (Dining Room)
Nnedi Okorafor, Kieron Gillen, Christina Lake, Kim Standley Robinson, Claire Boothby, Dave Lally, Ruth EJ Booth (MC), Niall Harrison, Rosie Oliver

I’ll be MC for this year’s BSFA Awards ceremony – and, as it’s the 60th anniversary of the awards, this one’s bound to be a bit special. Do join us, if only to see if I managed to find summat proper to wear. In the meantime, if you want your say in this year’s vote, please note that advance online and postal voting for BSFA members is open until 26th March, while Follycon attendees (BSFA members and non-members) can vote at the convention until 12 noon on Saturday 31st March.

SUNDAY
4:00pm – Posters Exhibiton (Half Moon Room)
Ruth EJ Booth

If you’ve got any questions about my poster, ‘Mapping the Way: Taoism and Landscape in Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea Quartet’, this is the second of the two half-hour sessions where I’ll be available for chat.

MONDAY
2:00pm – Remembering Ursula K. Le Guin (Dining Room)
Edward James (M), Nnedi Okorafor, Patrice Sarath, Ruth EJ Booth, Sarah Ash, Matthew Colborn

If you’re still about, come join us for a celebration of the life and works of the late, great Ursula K. Le Guin. Looking at the line-up for this panel, it’s bound to be an interesting and insightful hour’s chat.

ALL WEEKEND

As previously mentioned, Follycon is holding a poster exhibition across the event in the Half Moon Room , and this will include my poster ‘Mapping the Way: Taoism and Landscape in Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea Quartet’. It’s based on work I completed as part of my MLitt in Fantasy, and this poster was last displayed in August at Worldcon 75 in Finland. So, if you missed it then, now’s your chance to see it!

You can click here for my main schedule in Grenadine. Outside of these times, I’ll likely be in the bar, if you’d like to say hi. Hope to see you there!

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Conventions Eastercon

Eastercon 2016: Mancunicon Schedule and the James White Award

Mancunicon

Going to Mancunicon (the 2016 BSFA Eastercon)? The full programme (and app) is now online – and it’s a cracker. With panels on SF Music, coping with Anxiety, Short Stories, Place and Identity — and my first ever moderating stint — it looks like I’ll be a busy bee this year.

In the meantime, I’ve been invited to judge this year’s James White Award, alongside Ian Sales and Neil Williamson. There really have been some imaginative entries amongst this year’s stories, so thank you to the entrants for making my first judging panel so much fun! The winner will be announced on Saturday 26th March during the BSFA Awards ceremony (also at Mancunicon), where I’ll be presenting the BSFA’s own Short Fiction Award. Hope to see you there!

So, if you don’t fancy barcon, here’s where I’ll be spending the weekend:

FRIDAY

14:30 – 15:30: Dealing with Anxiety in Fandom (Room 7)
Esther MacCallum-Stewart (M), Ruth EJ Booth, Meg Frank, Russell A Smith, Crystal Huff

Out of all my panels this weekend, this is the most important one to me. We’ll be talking about coping with Anxiety in relation to both going to cons and online interaction, but with the timing of the panel, expect that this will be focussed more on the former than the latter. Especially if Mancunicon is your first con, I’d encourage you to pop along if you can.

SATURDAY

A gentle day, but at the BSFA Awards (17:30, Deansgate 2&3) I’ll be presenting the Award for Best Short Fiction to either Aliette de Bodard, Paul Cornell, Jeff Noon, Nnedi Okorafor, or Gareth L Powell. Which is a marvellously surreal turn of events for my inner fan-girl.

SUNDAY – busy day!

13:00 – 14:00: Supporting the Short Stuff (Room 7)
Val Nolan (M), Ruth EJ Booth, Matthew Hughes, Juliet Kemp, JY Yang

This panel has sprung out of Neil Clarke’s recent comments in Clarkesworld on the future of Short Story outlets, sustainability, and what the future might look like for SF markets. Following his guest slot on the Coode Street Podcast just recently, I hope there’s going to be some good chat on this one.

20:30 – 21:30: Third Rock and Roll from the Sun (Room 7)
Michael Cobley (M), Gary Couzens, Ruth EJ Booth, Phil Nanson, Dave Tamlyn

SF music in all its forms. Join us for my forty minute lecture on the genius of Devin Townsend presents: Ziltoid the Omniscient. \m/

MONDAY

13:00 – 14:00: Place, Identity, Story (Room 6)
Ruth EJ Booth (M), Tiffani Angus, Ian McDonald, Taj Hayer, Russell A Smith

Guaranteed to be The Best Panel on Monday – not because I’m moderating it, but because we’re going to have Taj Hayer, whose latest play North Country is on Sunday evening (20:30 in Deansgate 2&3), Tiffani Angus (historical fantasist and academic, and an expert on the role of gardens in SFF), Urban fantasist Russell Smith, and Guest of Honour Ian McDonald. With a line-up like that, there’ll be plenty of proper chat, I’m hoping. So if you’re about, why not join us?

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‘The Love of a Season’ in Winter Tales

Out this week from Fox Spirit is Winter Tales, a collection of seasonal stories and poetry edited by Margrét Helgadóttir. Amongst tales from Jan Edwards, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Eliza Chan, and James Bennett, you’ll find my poem ‘The Love of a Season,’ telling of a love affair between the Earth and Winter. It’s a grand collection – and just look at the splendid artwork from S. L. Johnson below!

Click here to pick up a copy of Winter Tales.

Winter-Tales-coverFINAL-for-WEB

By the way, if you’re in London this week, Margret and James also will be launching African Monsters at Forbidden Planet’s megastore. The latest in the Fox Spirit ‘…Monsters’ series, exploring folkloric myths from different continents, this one also features tales from Nerine Dorman, Nnedi Okorafor and Joan de la Haye. If you fancy a signed copy, do pop along this Thursday at 6pm.