| DAY | START | END | LOCATION | TITLE | DESCRIPTION | PANELISTS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Friday | 5:00 PM | 5:50 PM | Petoskey | Reading: Annalee Newitz | Annalee Newitz | |
| Friday | 6:00 PM | 6:50 PM | Petoskey | Reading: Sarah Gailey, Mur Lafferty, and Charlie Jane Anders | Charlie Jane Anders, Mur Lafferty, Sarah Gailey | |
| Friday | 9:00 PM | 9:50 PM | Petoskey | Mark Reads! | Mark Oshiro reads someone else’s work and reacts in real time for you! 18+ Only | Mark Oshiro |
| Saturday | 11:00 AM | 11:50 AM | Petoskey | Last Exit Before The Worst Timeline | Alternate histories that explore what the world would look like if a particular horror had been averted can be a way of resisting the narrative that slavery, genocide, colonialism, sexism, and other social evils are inevitable steps on the road to human progress. What are our favorite alternate histories (and alternate presents) that look at better worlds, and how can we use the format to inspire people to hope–and action–in uncertain times? | BluRaven C. Houvener, David D. Levine, Jackie (Literary Escapism), Michael W Lucas, Mark Oshiro |
| Saturday | 1:00 PM | 1:50 PM | Petoskey | It Was All A Dream…But Should It Have Been? | “You woke me out of oh! such a nice dream!” says Alice at the end of Through The Looking Glass. Modern authors are often warned to avoid dream sequences, because it’s difficult to get readers to invest in a story that can be wrapped up with a Deus Ex Alarm Clock. But the concept endures from Through the Looking Glass to Spirited Away and Inception. When is a dreamland the right choice for a setting, and how do successful dreamlands in fiction maintain stakes and tension? | Liz Derrington, Seleste deLaney / Julie Particka, Shweta Adhyam, Teresa Nielsen Hayden |
| Saturday | 2:00 PM | 2:50 PM | Petoskey | Fanfiction as Subversion and Commentary | Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass were spawning parodies and third-party sequels practically as soon as they were published, including multiple political commentaries. People write fanfiction for a lot of reasons, but fanfic as a format is particularly well-suited to commentary on popular works. What can we learn from transformative works like fanfic about the state of genre fiction, and how can we adapt techniques found in fanfic to challenge ourselves to make the most interesting choices in our original work? | Christine Knight, Stephanie Morris, Liz Derrington, Dessa Lux, Sunny Moraine |
| Saturday | 3:00 PM | 3:50 PM | Petoskey | Forgiveness and Redemption Narratives In Genre Fiction | Stories of terrible people seeking redemption and making amends can create powerful emotional resonance–but done wrong, they risk excusing inexcusable behavior. Who are our favorite evildoers turned heroes, and what makes their redemption work for readers? How do we built satisfying character arcs that end in forgiveness? And what role do race and gender play in redemption narratives? | Angus Watson, Bryon Quertermous, Marie Bilodeau, Merrie Haskell, Tracy Townsend |
| Saturday | 4:00 PM | 4:50 PM | Petoskey | Works We Love and What We Wish We Could Change About Them | Many stories we love contain critical plot elements that frustrate us–such as the memory wipes in The Dark is Rising and Doctor Who and the treatment of Susan in the Chronicles of Narnia. How do these stories inspire us to write and edit differently, and bring different kinds of stories to life in our own fiction and media? | Cherie M. Priest, Denise M. Beucler, Kate Elliott, Navah Wolfe, Patrick Nielsen Hayden |
| Saturday | 5:00 PM | 5:50 PM | Petoskey | Making Money in Fandom: Why and Why Not | We all like to express our love of fandom in different ways but not all of us like to get paid for it. Find out why our panelists do what they do for a profit or not. | Dessa Lux, Jason Sanford, Sunny Moraine, Mark Oshiro |
| Saturday | 6:00 PM | 6:50 PM | Petoskey | Design Is Easy! (Or So Every Client Says) | Three professional designers come together to discuss all they love about the work, and all the things you never knew went into it, beyond just colors and typefaces. Or maybe they’ll just recall all the times they heard the words in the title of this panel. | Gail Cross, Pablo Defendini, Steve Buchheit |
| Sunday | 11:00 AM | 11:50 AM | Petoskey | Your Cake Is In Another Castle | Carroll’s Through The Looking Glass sends Alice into a chessboard-world where she’s told that if she crosses the entire board, she’ll be crowned queen. It’s not until she reaches this goal that she learns it’s not what she really needs: the goal of chess isn’t to promote a pawn; it’s to put the king in check. When does moving the goalposts on a character feel like a satisfying next step, and when does it break the compact with the reader? | Amy Sundberg, Ken Schrader, Matthew Bin, Ryan Van Loan, Tracy Townsend |
| Sunday | 12:00 PM | 12:50 PM | Petoskey | Good Days and Bad Days In Narrative Arcs | Disabilities in fiction are often displayed as binary and static: characters with wheelchairs are completely unable to stand or walk. Blind and Deaf characters have complete and bilateral vision/hearing loss. Depressed characters are barely functional. In the real world, disability exists on a broad spectrum, and a person’s place on that spectrum is rarely static. Disabled people have good days and bad days and experience a range of effects from their disability. Some people are able some days and disabled other days. How do we portray these more realistic ranges of ability and disability in fiction without the characters’ changing capabilities coming across as a plot contrivance? | Dominik Parisien, Merrie Haskell, Mishell Baker, Yanni Kuznia, Annalee Flower Horne |
| Sunday | 1:00 PM | 1:50 PM | Petoskey | Analogue Media in the Digital Age | Paper, vinyl, and film, oh my! What are the unique advantages to analogue media, and what’s just a deeply ingrained sense of how media “should” be? Is it not a book without the paper smell, or a song without the soft crackle of a needle on vinyl? | David Klecha, Gail Cross, John Winkelman |