The third year of Sirens focused on the theme of “monsters” and what it means to be “monstrous.” Presentations on female fantasy characters and authors were welcome as well.
Dates
October 6–9, 2011
Location
Vail Cascade Resort and Spa, Vail, Colorado
Conference - Guests of Honor - Schedule - Books and Breakfast - Reading List
Programming - Vetting Board - Call for Proposals
Guests of Honor
Justine Larbalestier, born to anthropologist parents in Sydney, Australia, now divides her time between Sydney and New York City. Her first work, a scholarly examination called The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction, was short-listed for the Hugo Award in 2003, and her first work of fiction, Magic or Madness, won the 2006 Andre Norton Award for best Young Adult Science Fiction or Fantasy work. Since then, she has written How to Ditch Your Fairy, two additional books in the Magic or Madness trilogy, and the critically acclaimed Liar, and has edited the award-winning Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century and the zombie works in Zombies vs. Unicorns. She has also dabbled in short films, radio programs, essays, and short stories. She is currently working on a book set in 1930s New York City, which means she spends a lot of time listening to Duke Ellington and learning to Lindy Hop.
For more information about Justine, please visit her website or her blog.
Nnedi Okorafor, born in the United States to Igbo (Nigerian) immigrant parents, holds a B.A. in rhetoric, masters degrees in both English and journalism, and a Ph.D. in English, and is a professor at Chicago State University. Though American-born, Nnedi’s muse is Nigeria, and therefore, many of her stories take place there, either literally or figuratively. Her first work, Zahrah the Windseeker, won the Wole Soyinka Prize for literature, and was shortlisted for several other awards, including a nomination for the Locus Award for Best First Novel. Nnedi’s second book, The Shadow Speaker, won the CBS Parallax Award and was a finalist for the Essence Magazine Literary Award, the Andre Norton Award, and the NAACP Image Award. Nnedi has also won the 2007/08 Macmillan Writer’s Prize for Africa for Long Juju Man, and her next work, Who Fears Death, features magical realism. Nnedi also writes short stories, plays and scholarly works, and her most recent, Akata Witch, was published in spring 2011.
For more information about Nnedi, please visit her website or her blog.
Laini Taylor grew up with her toes in many oceans and her nose in many books. A graduate of U.C. Berkeley and a non-graduate of the California College of the Arts, she has written three young adult fantasy books: Dreamdark: Blackbringer, Dreamdark: Silksinger, and Lips Touch: Three Times, the last of which was a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award. She also collaborated with husband Jim Di Bartolo on The Drowned, a supernatural horror graphic novel. Her books have been YALSA Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults, NPR Best Young Adult Fiction and Book Sense picks, and Junior Library Guild selections, among other honors. Her next book, Daughter of Smoke and Bone, was published in fall 2011.
For more information about Laini, please visit her website or her blog.
Schedule
The following files will open in your web browser.
- Thursday
- Friday
- Saturday
- Sunday
Books and Breakfast
Friday, October 7, 2011
Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves
In the Forests of Serre by Patricia McKillip
Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson
Nightshade by Andrea Cremer
Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Chime by Franny Billingsley
Dark Goddess by Sarwat Chadda
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
Racing the Dark by Alaya Dawn Johnson
Zoo City by Lauren Beukes
Reading List
The following list will open in your web browser.
2011 Accepted Programming
PAPERS AND LECTURES
Papers and lectures feature one or more presenters talking about the topic at hand. The specific style and formality of each presentation varies according to the speaker: some may be more formal readings of scholarly papers, with or without time for questions at the end; others may be relatively informal lectures with more audience participation.
Annihilating HER Again: How Eroticized Rage Against True Blood’s Vampire Lorena—Avatar of the Monstrous Feminine—Resurrects the Forgotten History of Goddess Culture’s Suppression
Rachel E. Seiler
Rachel E. Seiler, LMSW, PhD, is a licensed master social worker and adjunct professor at the College of Mount Saint Vincent. She is keenly interested in the intersections between popular culture and systemic change; she is also a devoted truebie and writes a blog, the Pierced Pomegranate Tavern, with her sister Rebecca on social issues through the lens of True Blood from a uniquely feminist perspective. Rachel hopes her scholarship, teaching, and work in the non-profit sector can help birth a culture of justice and peace.
This talk revolves around the scene of eroticized violence perpetrated against
True Blood’s Lorena during Season 3, Episode 3: "It Hurts Me Too." Drawing upon 800,000 years of art, myth, histories, and poetry, and amplifying leading voices in archaeomythology, women's studies, and Goddess scholarship, we will trace parallels between this scene and the mythologies of goddesses dismembered, slain, or made subordinate to male gods which represent the shift to the “dominator” world of today. We will explore contemporary issues like gender relations, sex and sexuality, and rape as a social and cultural metaphor for behavior and identify models for partnership.
The Birdcage: The Gender Politics of Publishing in L.E.L.'s “The Fairy of the Fountains”
Caroline Aksich
Caroline Aksich is a University of Toronto English literature and linguistics graduate. She has taken time away from her studies to pursue creative projects. Currently, she is working on a book of illustrated poetry entitled Flesh, Fruit, & Foul. She is also working on a visual biography of Sylvia Plath in watercolor and mixed media. She expects to show her visual biography this spring at the BronxArtSpace in New York. Caroline plans to continue her post-graduate studies this fall at York University, where she will focus on the evolution of autobiography and self-reflexive practices in British female-authored poetry.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon’s “The Fairy of the Fountains” was first published incongruously in the fourth edition
The Fisher’s Drawing Room Scrap-Book. Previous editions of the annual had contained only short poems that echoed accompanying engravings and systematically reinforced hegemonic ideals of feminine beauty. “The Fairy of the Fountains,” however, is over six hundred lines long and echoes no image. The independent poem, sans image, acts as subversive rejection of the publishing restrictions imposed on nineteenth-century female poets.
Friends Don’t Let Friends Use Similes
Justine Larbalestier, Sarah Rees Brennan
Justine Larbalestier, born to anthropologist parents in Sydney, Australia, now divides her time between Sydney and New York City. Her first work, a scholarly examination called The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction, was short-listed for the Hugo Award in 2003, and her first work of fiction, Magic or Madness, won the 2006 Andre Norton Award for best Young Adult Science Fiction or Fantasy work. Since then, she has written How to Ditch Your Fairy, two additional books in the Magic or Madness trilogy, and the critically acclaimed Liar, and has edited the award-winning Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century as well as the zombie works in Zombies vs. Unicorns. She has also dabbled in short films, radio programs, essays, and short stories. She is currently working on a book set in 1930s New York City, which means she spends a lot of time listening to Duke Ellington and learning to Lindy Hop.
Sarah Rees Brennan was born and raised in Ireland by the sea, where her teachers valiantly tried to make her fluent in Irish (she wants you to know it’s not called Gaelic) but she chose to read books under her desk in class instead. She began working on her debut novel, The Demon’s Lexicon, which received three starred reviews and was an ALA Top Ten best book, while doing a creative writing MA and library work in England. Since then she has returned to Ireland to write and use as a home base for future adventures. Her Irish is still woeful, but she feels the books under the desk were worth it. Her most recent books are The Demon’s Covenant and The Demon’s Surrender; in 2012 she will publish a romantic Gothic mystery called Unspoken. You’ll find her online at: http://www.sarahreesbrennan.com/.
Writing buddies Sarah Rees Brennan and Justine Larbalestier recently put their friendship, sanity, and careers at risk by writing a novel together—about Many Secret Monstrous Things. Come see their multidimensional and at least bi-media presentation about their collaborative process, the dangers of elbows, and why vampires can’t laugh.
I Will Be with You on Prom Night: Gender Roles in Frankenstein and Carrie
Meg Belviso
Meg Belviso is a lifelong horror fan. She holds a BA in English from Smith College and an MFA from Columbia University. During the week she chronicles angel encounters as staff editor of the bimonthly Angels on Earth magazine. As a freelance writer, she has terrorized “Malcolm in the Middle” with a malevolent stuffed monkey, attacked Dexter the boy genius with giant spiders in his laboratory, and sent the Tasmanian Devil on a quest to find his mother.
Despite the time and distance that separate the eighteenth century nobles of Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein from the 1970s teenagers in Stephen King’s
Carrie, both worlds retain a strict social order divided along gender lines where men are socialized to define themselves as individuals in charge of their own destiny, and women socialized to define themselves through their relationships to others. This paper compares Shelley’s tragedy of male self-absorption to King’s tragedy of female self-abnegation and looks at where each author draws the line between responsibility to self and responsibility to others.
Sponsor:
Amy Tenbrink
(Ir)responsible Feminism: Angry, Crazy, and Slutty Women in Fantasy Literature
Amy Tenbrink
By day, Amy Tenbrink dons her supergirl suit and practices transactional and intellectual property law for a Fortune 200 company in the entertainment industry. By night, she dons her supergirl cape and plans literary conferences, runs marathons, and reads a hundred books a year. She’s been an active member of fandom for nearly ten years, and a voracious fantasy reader since she first picked up Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. She likes nothing quite so much as warrior girls and Weasleys.
As we seek to write, read and support feminist works of fantasy literature, what it means for a fantasy work to be “feminist” becomes a critical inquiry. While some argue that varying portrayals of women in fantasy literature advance the feminist agenda, others contend that portrayals of women must be responsible in order to qualify as feminist. Working from a definition of “feminism” as a movement for equal rights for people of all genders, this presentation will first argue that portraying many types of women in literature—including angry, violent, wild, and promiscuous women—is not only validly feminist, but indeed, critical to the advancement of feminism, and then open the floor for audience discussion.
Ista dy Chalion: Saint, Madwoman, and Demon Swallower
Kristen Blount
Kristen Blount holds a BA in English from The University of Scranton and an MA in publications design from the University of Baltimore, and works as a graphic designer for Howard County Library near her home in Elkridge, Maryland. She holds a first degree brown belt and is a trained instructor with Tompkins Karate Association in central Maryland, which teaches Tang Soo Do and a variation on traditional ju-jitsu.
Does “happily ever after” actually portend early death, explaining why so many princesses no longer have mothers? Ista dy Chalion, from Lois McMaster Bujold’s
Paladin of Souls, had the fairy tale wedding, but her story’s ending left much to be desired. At age forty, no longer queen or needed as a mother, she leaves on a pilgrimage where she finds herself, continued sainthood, and a romance of her own choosing. Not witch, nor crone, nor madwoman, Ista comes to trust herself and the wisdom she has fought to attain.
Magical and Monstrous Female Beings in South Asian Myth and Folklore
Rachel Manija Brown, Shveta Thakrar
Rachel Manija Brown's memoir All the Fishes Come Home to Roost: An American Misfit in India was published in nine countries. Her poem “Nine Views of the Oracle"\” won third prize in the Rhysling awards. Her manga has been published by Tokyopop and PandaBuddha Press. In collaboration with Sherwood Smith, she wrote the animated series Game World for the Jim Henson Company, and a young adult post-apocalyptic novel, Stranger. Rachel has also written plays, song lyrics, interactive games, and a comic strip to be silk-screened on to a scarf.
Shveta Thakrar writes Indian-flavored fantasy. She has short fiction appearing in various venues this year, including Demeter's Spicebox and Steam-Powered 2: More Lesbian Steampunk Stories, and she is currently working on a young adult novel featuring Indian fey, bleeding thumbs, and family secrets, all in Philadelphia.
The myths and legends of India and many of its neighbors feature beautiful snake women and cannibal demons, celestial dancers and nature spirits, most of whom are largely unknown in the West. Through storytelling, discussion, and slides from popular Indian comic books, we will introduce the magical and monstrous women of South Asian tales, with a focus on the fluidity and ambiguity of their classification as monstrous or simply supernatural.
Making Society Uncomfortable: Why Monsters Matter
Casey Blair
Casey Blair holds degrees in English and Japanese from Vassar College and currently lives in a rice field somewhere in Japan. When not teaching middle school students English, she can most often be found with her nose in either a book or a Word document.
What exactly are monsters, and what are they doing taking over genre fiction? Are they there for spectacle or as plot devices, or is there more to them? From Beowulf to Anita Blake, monsters have challenged accepted behaviors, creating avenues of power for women or confronting the issues of interracial marriage. They are foils for humanity and, more specifically, foils for our heroes’ identities. Find out what makes a fictional monster fall flat, and which monsters we love, or love to fear.
Walking the Walk and Talking the Talk: Understanding and Accepting the Woman Warrior
Katie Hoffman
Katie Hoffman earned a degree in English literature at the University of Washington and is currently pursuing a career as an editor. Like many others of this generation, she grew up with Harry, Alanna and Lucy Pevensie. Her childhood years were full of anxiety about the fate of mankind and admiration for some truly epic female warriors. Not much has changed now that she’s graduated college, except that she hopes her heroines have correct grammar when they save the day.
How does Alanna come to terms with her female body? Why does Kel insist on both wearing dresses and battling bullies? This presentation investigates the performance of gender roles in Tamora Pierce’s Song of the Lioness and Protector of the Small quartets. How do Alanna and Kel negotiate the performative aspect of their gender with the experience of their physical bodies within their status as women warriors? By examining this YA literature with the help of gender theorists Judith Butler and Katherine Hayles, we can hopefully better understand how gender identity is generated, understood, and enacted.
Papers and Lectures
- | - Pre-empaneled Papers
- | - Panels
Workshops
- | - Roundtable Discussions
- | - Additional Presentations
Afternoon Classes
PRE-EMPANELED PAPERS
Pre-empaneled papers refer to a set group of scholarly papers that are presented as a single unit. Like papers and lectures, pre-empaneled papers may be formal presentations of papers, more interactive discussions of a topic, or a combination.
Monstrous Humanity
Monstrous Metal: Android Love in Feminist Fantasy
Lauren J. Lacey
Lauren J. Lacey is Associate Professor of English at Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin. Her scholarship and teaching areas include contemporary fiction, women writers, science fiction and fantasy, and literary and feminist theory. Some of her recent course offerings are Eco-Fiction, Fairy Tales as Cultural Narratives, Fantastic Fiction, Postmodern Literature, and Global Feminisms. Her publications include articles on the works of Octavia Butler, Ursula Le Guin, Doris Lessing, and Leslie Marmon Silko.
Looking at Tanith Lee’s
The Silver Metal Lover (1981), Marge Piercy’s
He, She and It (1991), and Jeanette Winterson’s
The Stone Gods (2007), this paper explores the monstrous metal Other as love-object. Using feminist philosophies of the monstrous as a guide, it argues that the novels in question develop models of post-human possibility, and reinvent the romantic love narrative as a method of empowerment and potential.
The Monstrous Female Messiah in The Diamond Age and Cloud Atlas
Rachel E. Poulsen
Rachel E. Poulsen is Associate Professor of English at Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin, where she teaches courses in seventeenth and eighteenth-century British literature, drama, and women’s and gender studies. Some of her recent course offerings include “The Shakespeare Effect,” “Sex and the Early Modern City,” “American Drama Since 1945,” and “Coming of Age in America: Female Experience in Contemporary Fiction and Film.” Her research interests include early modern literature and culture, comparative drama, and the history of sexuality.
Neal Stephenson’s
The Diamond Age (1995) and David Mitchell’s
Cloud Atlas (2004) depict futuristic fantasy worlds scarred by corporate imperialism, global wars, environmental disasters, and technological escalation. The question of what it takes to remain—or become—human in such worlds lies at the center of both novels. Out of the chaos, young women emerge as the chosen messengers of truth. But at what cost?
The Monstrosity of Vampires and Queers: The Normalizing Force of Charlaine Harris
Lisa A. King
Lisa A. King is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin. She regularly teaches courses cross-listed with Women’s and Gender Studies, including Philosophy and Gender and the Ethics of Sex, Love and Marriage. Her research interests include Feminist and Gender Theory, Political Theory, and Continental Philosophy.
Since its inception, queer theory has sought to undermine the normativity of heterosexuality, identifying normalizing power as one of our currently most entrenched forms of oppression. Through the work of Michel Foucault, this paper will argue that Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse series, and HBO’s
True Blood based on it, situate vampires in much the same way that the dominant culture situates those who do not fit into the hetero-normative paradigm, but that Harris’s world ultimately re-inscribes the normalizing practices of the dominant culture.
The pre-empaneled papers listed above received the 2011 Sonnet Award.
Sponsor:
Lauren Kent
Papers and Lectures
- | - Pre-empaneled Papers
- | - Panels
Workshops
- | - Roundtable Discussions
- | - Additional Presentations
Afternoon Classes
PANELS
Panels feature several speakers discussing a topic before an audience. Panels may take questions or discussion from the audience, but are not required to do so.
Book Reviews, Community, and Fantasy
Hallie Tibbetts, Faye Bi, Juliet Grames, Jazz Sexton
An honors graduate of the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music, Hallie taught K–8 music classes in California before pursuing new adventures. She has worked in a variety of media, social work, education, event planning, and administrative positions, and is currently a research assistant in human services. She graduated from the Denver Publishing Institute in summer 2010. In her spare time, she volunteers for Narrate Conferences and the Cybils awards, blogs about books, beta reads, and is an intern at a literary agency that specializes in children’s literature, her very favorite kind.
Faye Bi was a flashlight-under-the-covers reader beginning at age nine, when she first made the conscious decision to emulate Matilda Wormwood. Nowadays she reads children’s novels out in the open, along with plenty of fantasy, young adult, and nineteenth-century literature. She completed an anthropology degree at Columbia University before taking a job in the publishing industry. Faye has a fondness for typography and high-waisted skirts, and would gladly talk your ear off about individual reading experiences and cultural foodways.
Juliet Grames is an editor at Soho Press, an independent publisher distributed by Random House that focuses on literary fiction and international crime.
Jazz Sexton holds a BA in English Writing—Fiction from the University of Pittsburgh. She is trying to write and navigate this grand, magical world without the aid of her fairy godmother, who perished tragically in a head-on collision with a unicorn.
In online communities, the divide between creators and fans is ever-shrinking. In book-related communities, particularly online blogging circles, reviews may be written by and about publishing industry professionals. Recently, there have been discussions (and kerfuffles) of whether creators and professionals can—or should—express negative opinions about books in public, and even whether some people should express opinions at all. This panel will discuss reviewer etiquette, the complications of personal opinions and online presences for professionals, fantasy fan communities, and whether a bad review can kill a career.
Destructive Love Myths
Mette Ivie Harrison, Justine Larbalestier, Dene Low, Laini Taylor
Mette Harrison writes romantic fantasy for the young adult market, including Mira, Mirror, The Princess and the Hound, The Princess and the Bear, and the newly-released Tris and Izzie. She has a PhD in Germanic literature and languages from Princeton University, and wrote her dissertation on the topic of the female Bildungsroman in the eighteenth century.
Justine Larbalestier, born to anthropologist parents in Sydney, Australia, now divides her time between Sydney and New York City. Her first work, a scholarly examination called The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction, was short-listed for the Hugo Award in 2003, and her first work of fiction, Magic or Madness, won the 2006 Andre Norton Award for best Young Adult Science Fiction or Fantasy work. Since then, she has written How to Ditch Your Fairy, two additional books in the Magic or Madness trilogy, and the critically acclaimed Liar, and has edited the award-winning Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century and the zombie works in Zombies vs. Unicorns. She has also dabbled in short films, radio programs, essays, and short stories. She is currently working on a book set in 1930s New York City, which means she spends a lot of time listening to Duke Ellington and learning to Lindy Hop.
After writing for newspapers and magazines, Dene Low turned academic. During the process of getting a PhD, she began work on a YA fantasy novel as a release. The novel, Petronella Saves Nearly Everyone, published by Houghton Mifflin, was so much more fun to write than her dissertation that she has decided to focus on fantasy writing in between teaching classes.
Laini Taylor grew up with her toes in many oceans and her nose in many books. A graduate of U.C. Berkeley and a non-graduate of the California College of the Arts, she has written three young adult fantasy books: Dreamdark: Blackbringer, Dreamdark: Silksinger, and Lips Touch: Three Times, the last of which was a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award. She also collaborated with husband Jim Di Bartolo on The Drowned, a supernatural horror graphic novel. Her books have been YALSA Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults, NPR Best Young Adult Fiction and Book Sense picks, and Junior Library Guild selections, among other honors. Her next book, Daughter of Smoke and Bone, will be published in fall 2011.
From the white knight to bad boys, from Cinderella to happily-ever-after, there are strong love myths that drive our choices in romances. But which ones are destructive and why?
Epic Fantasy = Epic Fail?
Marie Brennan, Cora Anderson, Rachel Manija Brown, Juliet Grames, Andrea Horbinski
Marie Brennan is the author of the Onyx Court series of London-based historical faerie fantasies: Midnight Never Come, In Ashes Lie, A Star Shall Fall, and the upcoming With Fate Conspire. She has published more than thirty short stories in venues such as On Spec, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and the acclaimed anthology series Clockwork Phoenix. More information can be found on her website: www.swantower.com.
Cora Anderson has been an avid reader of everything she could get her hands on for as long as she can remember. She is especially fond of fantasy and young adult literature, both prose and manga. Cora has a history degree from the University of Southern California, and currently lives in Seattle, Washington, where she reads, cooks, and plays entirely too many video games. She is currently working on a young adult novel about a were-pigeon.
Rachel Manija Brown has written and sold books, graphic novels, TV series, magazine articles, short stories, poetry, and a video game. She is the author of the memoir All the Fishes Come Home to Roost: an American Misfit in India, about her ashram childhood.
Juliet Grames is an editor at Soho Press, an independent publisher distributed by Random House that focuses on literary fiction and international crime.
Andrea Horbinski is a PhD student in Japanese history at the University of California, Berkeley. She was previously a Fulbright Fellow at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan, researching hypernationalist manga and is the editorial assistant for Mechademia, a peer-reviewed journal of anime, manga, and fan culture studies.
Many epic fantasy authors include almost no female characters in their stories, beyond a token one or two. Others include plenty, but don’t handle them well. (Robert Jordan, we’re looking at you.) What is it about epic fantasy as a subgenre that makes these failure modes so common? And what happens when an author achieves a success mode instead?
Juvenilia
Justine Larbalestier, Sarah Rees Brennan, Laini Taylor, Nnedi Okorafor
Justine Larbalestier, born to anthropologist parents in Sydney, Australia, now divides her time between Sydney and New York City. Her first work, a scholarly examination called The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction, was short-listed for the Hugo Award in 2003, and her first work of fiction, Magic or Madness, won the 2006 Andre Norton Award for best Young Adult Science Fiction or Fantasy work. Since then, she has written How to Ditch Your Fairy, two additional books in the Magic or Madness trilogy, and the critically acclaimed Liar, and has edited the award-winning Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century as well as the zombie works in Zombies vs. Unicorns. She has also dabbled in short films, radio programs, essays, and short stories. She is currently working on a book set in 1930s New York City, which means she spends a lot of time listening to Duke Ellington and learning to Lindy Hop.
Sarah Rees Brennan was born and raised in Ireland by the sea, where her teachers valiantly tried to make her fluent in Irish (she wants you to know it’s not called Gaelic) but she chose to read books under her desk in class instead. She began working on her debut novel, The Demon’s Lexicon, which received three starred reviews and was an ALA Top Ten best book, while doing a creative writing MA and library work in England. Since then she has returned to Ireland to write and use as a home base for future adventures. Her Irish is still woeful, but she feels the books under the desk were worth it. Her most recent books are The Demon’s Covenant and The Demon’s Surrender; in 2012 she will publish a romantic Gothic mystery called Unspoken. You’ll find her online at: http://www.sarahreesbrennan.com/.
Laini Taylor grew up with her toes in many oceans and her nose in many books. A graduate of the University of California—Berkeley and a non-graduate of the California College of the Arts, she has written Dreamdark: Blackbringer, Dreamdark: Silksinger, and Lips Touch: Three Times, the last of which was a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award. She also collaborated with husband Jim Di Bartolo on The Drowned, a supernatural horror graphic novel. Her books have been YALSA Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults, NPR Best Young Adult Fiction and Book Sense picks, and Junior Library Guild selections, among other honors. Her latest book, Daughter of Smoke and Bone, was published in September.
Nnedi Okorafor, born in the United States to Igbo (Nigerian) immigrant parents, holds a BA in rhetoric, masters degrees in both English and journalism, and a PhD in English, and is a professor at Chicago State University. Though American-born, Nnedi’s muse is Nigeria, and therefore, many of her stories take place there, either literally or figuratively. Her first work, Zahrah the Windseeker, won the Wole Soyinka Prize for literature, and was shortlisted for several other awards, including a nomination for the Locus Award for Best First Novel. Nnedi’s second book, The Shadow Speaker, won the CBS Parallax Award and was a finalist for the Essence Magazine Literary Award, the Andre Norton Award, and the NAACP Image Award. Nnedi has also won the 2007/08 Macmillan Writer’s Prize for Africa for Long Juju Man. Who Fears Death, published in 2010, features magical realism, and is set to become a film directed by Wanuri Kahiu. Nnedi also writes short stories, plays and scholarly works, and her most recent, the young adult book Akata Witch, was published in spring 2011.
Writers dust off the storage trunks, turn off the shame meter, and read from their 4th- through 12th-grade works of unalloyed proto-genius. (No, not even slightly.) A great way for beginning writers in the audience to feel much better about their own efforts. Yes, even your favorite writers were once terrible.
Monstrous Women and Female Monsters in Anime and Manga
Rachel Manija Brown, Cora Anderson, Andrea Horbinski
Rachel Manija Brown has written and sold books, graphic novels, TV series, magazine articles, short stories, poetry, and a video game. She is the author of the memoir All the Fishes Come Home to Roost: an American Misfit in India, about her ashram childhood.
Cora Anderson has been an avid reader of everything she could get her hands on for as long as she can remember. She is especially fond of fantasy and young adult literature, both prose and manga. Cora has a history degree from the University of Southern California, and currently lives in Seattle, Washington, where she reads, cooks, and plays entirely too many video games. She is currently working on a young adult novel about a were-pigeon.
Andrea Horbinski is a PhD student in Japanese history at the University of California, Berkeley. She was previously a Fulbright Fellow at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan, researching hypernationalist manga and is the editorial assistant for Mechademia, a peer-reviewed journal of anime, manga, and fan culture studies.
Manga and anime feature a wide variety of monsters, from the morally ambiguous homunculi of
Fullmetal Alchemist to the bizarre demon-weapons of
Soul Eater to the charming creatures of
Fruits Basket. Sometimes the monster is female, and sometimes the monster-slayer is—and, as in
Claymore, sometimes the line between them blurs. This panel will discuss the monstrous female and the “monster girl” in anime and manga.
Sponsor:
Sharon Goetz
On Writing Monsters and the Monstrous
Amy Tenbrink and guests
Amy Tenbrink will moderate this author discussion on writing monster women.
Author guests will discuss writing the monstrous feminine.
Sponsor:
Sharina Pratt
Papers and Lectures
- | - Pre-empaneled Papers
- | - Panels
Workshops
- | - Roundtable Discussions
- | - Additional Presentations
Afternoon Classes
WORKSHOPS
Workshops are hands-on explorations of a topic. This category can include writing workshops, practice in strategies for teaching and learning, craft-based presentations, and other hands-on and highly interactive topics. Please note that the seating in workshop rooms is very limited to allow the presenters the maximum hands-on teaching time for each attendee, as well as to control costs that the presenters incur in providing materials. Thank you for your understanding.
Bringing Speculative Fiction to Your Community
Katie Hoffman
Katie Hoffman earned a degree in English literature at the University of Washington and is currently pursuing a career as an editor. Like many others of this generation, she grew up with Harry, Alanna and Lucy Pevensie. Her childhood years were full of anxiety about the fate of mankind and admiration for some truly epic female warriors. Not much has changed now that she’s graduated college, except that she hopes her heroines have correct grammar when they save the day.
What brings people together better than the written word? If you’re looking for a way to increase the appreciation and readership of speculative fiction in your city or school, you might consider creating your own literary journal or zine! We’ll learn about the simple steps to create your own journal and then develop a unique concept to take home with you!
The presentation listed above received the 2011 Song Award.
Care and Feeding of Critique Groups
S. R. Gruber
S. R. Gruber lives on the edge between the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains, and has been making things up since she was a small girl in upstate New York. She writes science fiction and fantasy, reads everything, and is trying to figure out how to read, knit, and hike at the same time. A longtime member and occasional leader of several critique groups, Suzi founded Lefthand Writers Group in 2008 and was surprised to find the group nearly runs itself.
Are you trying to find the right critique group for your work, but not quite getting what you need? Critique groups come in many forms, and not every group is suited to every writer. After reviewing common group formats and guidelines, we will discuss how to build your own critique group based on respect for and commitment to the works in progress. Participants will gain a better understanding of their needs and expectations as they develop an outline for their own group guidelines.
Creating Realistic Animal Characters in Fantasy: Exploring the Clash Between Instincts and Intelligence
Clare Bell
Clare Bell is an author, scientist, and engineer whose work has taken her to Norway to build electric cars, to Tahiti for research, to Marine World/Africa USA to meet a cheetah, and to the study of fossils and depths of prehistory to develop the award-winning Ratha series about a clan of intelligent prehistoric big cats who herd their former prey and struggle to survive. Her website is http://www.rathascourage.com.
The
Ratha or
Named series, about intelligent prehistoric big cats struggling to survive and build a community, is noted for its naturalistic yet sympathetic depictions of wild animal characters. The young female, Ratha, also encounters the same challenges as today’s women as she develops as clan leader. Sharing insights gained from writing the series, author Clare Bell will guide workshop participants in creating realistic animal characters for fantasy fiction.
Papers and Lectures
- | - Pre-empaneled Papers
- | - Panels
Workshops
- | - Roundtable Discussions
- | - Additional Presentations
Afternoon Classes
ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSIONS
Roundtables are interactive discussions of a topic led by a moderator, and attendees are encouraged to take an active part in the discussion. Please note that seating in roundtable rooms is very limited to allow everyone in the room the opportunity to participate.
The Celebration of Female Erasure and Silence
Mette Ivie Harrison
Mette Harrison writes romantic fantasy for the young adult market, including Mira, Mirror, The Princess and the Hound, The Princess and the Bear, and the newly-released Tris and Izzie. She has a PhD in Germanic literature and languages from Princeton University, and wrote her dissertation on the topic of the female Bildungsroman in the eighteenth century.
This roundtable discussion will focus on specific examples from television, books, movies, and other media in which female characters are erased and/or silenced, and in which that sacrifice is seen as particularly feminine, of value to society, and of use to the male hero who lives on afterward.
Sponsor:
Hallie Tibbetts
Fear in the Face of Monsters
Katie Hoffman
Katie Hoffman earned a degree in English literature at the University of Washington and is currently pursuing a career as an editor. Like many others of this generation, she grew up with Harry, Alanna and Lucy Pevensie. Her childhood years were full of anxiety about the fate of mankind and admiration for some truly epic female warriors. Not much has changed now that she’s graduated college, except that she hopes her heroines have correct grammar when they save the day.
A woman who is monstrous is also one who inspires fear. How does this fear affect the perceived identity and self-identity of the woman? In this discussion, we will talk about the relationship of fear to this year’s monstrous theme, with reference to popular fantasy.
It’s Alive!: Examining Frankenstein’s Monster
Rebecca Mintz
Rebecca Mintz graduated from Western Washington University in 2009 with a BA in Spanish and TESOL. She now works as a senior library assistant for the Fort Vancouver Regional Library District. Since her graduation, Rebecca has enjoyed less homework and more time to devote to Scottish country dancing and recreational reading.
The image of a man with green skin, stitches, and neck bolts is almost synonymous with the word “monster.” This roundtable will discuss the original monster created by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley in her novel
Frankenstein, as well as Boris Karloff’s version in the 1931 movie of the same name. Please come to discuss what makes a monster. Prior knowledge of the story is not strictly necessary; there will be a brief summary of the novel before the discussion.
Sponsor:
Sabrina Chin
It’s Cool to Be Queer—Especially If You’re Not Human
Merry Shannon
Merry Shannon is the author of Sword of the Guardian and Branded Ann, lesbian fantasy/adventure romances published by Bold Strokes Books. Her first novel received Gold Crown Literary Society awards for Debut Author and Speculative Fiction. She is a ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year finalist, and a winner of the Lesbian Fiction Reader’s Choice award. She’s a full-time social worker who writes in her spare time, and she currently lives in the Denver area with her partner and their menagerie of small pets.
Vampires and other supernatural creatures are often portrayed with far more flexible sexual tastes than their human counterparts. Does this make such characters more exotic and exciting? Or does it simply emphasize their status as abominations? Join us as we examine the correlation between monstrosity and sexual fluidity, and analyze the feminist implications of the lesbian monster and her simultaneous role as both villain and romantic heroine.
“Life Is Not a Song”: The Women of A Game of Thrones
Sarah Benoot
Sarah Benoot is a fan of many things. She is especially fond of stories about women being their own heroes, both in fiction and in the world it reflects. This is probably why she keeps coming back to Narrate events, in which she’s been participating in various capacities since 2006. Out in the wild, she can be found reading too many books, watching too much television, and occasionally making up more of the stories she wants to read.
At first glance, both the novel and the television adaptation of
A Game of Thrones appear to be a story of men embroiled in a war for a kingdom. A closer look shows that the women of Westeros wield their own kind of power. This roundtable will discuss the role of these queens, mothers, and girls in the game where the only options are victory or death.
Sponsor:
Amy Wilson
The Monster Within: Using Fantasy to Address Mental Illness
Manda Lewis
Manda Lewis holds a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering and served in the Air Force for seven years. She is currently working on her master’s in Tourism Administration at George Washington University and looking forward to putting it to use in the event and meeting planning industry. Manda has always made it a habit to draw, color, and doodle on just about everything within reach and loves themes far more than anyone really should. She’s been a volunteer for Phoenix Rising and Terminus, and for all three years of Sirens.
This roundtable discussion will focus on novels and authors that use magical or supernatural elements to address issues of mental illness. We will explore Dementors, Dark Muses, the side effects of magic (or refusing to use magic), and the many other ways characters deal with mental and emotional trouble. These fantasy elements can help characters to cope with mental health problems and, in some cases, cause them. Lastly, we’ll discuss how these stories help readers deal with their own depression, anxiety, and other disorders.
The Monstrous Feminine in Kristin Cashore’s Fire
Amy Tenbrink
By day, Amy Tenbrink dons her supergirl suit and practices transactional and intellectual property law for a Fortune 200 company in the entertainment industry. By night, she dons her supergirl cape and plans literary conferences, runs marathons, and reads a hundred books a year. She’s been an active member of fandom for nearly ten years, and a voracious fantasy reader since she first picked up Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. She likes nothing quite so much as warrior girls and Weasleys.
In
Fire, Kristin Cashore has honed the theory of the monstrous feminine into a pointed study of feminine beauty, agency, and power. In a land rife with monsters—vivid, deadly versions of normal beasts—Fire is the last human monster, powerful not only in her beauty, but in her ability to bend wills. She is the most beautiful, the most desired, the most feared, and the most reviled person in her land, and men, in response, want to possess her, to subjugate her, and often, to kill her. Join us to discuss Fire’s status as a female “monster,” and how, in learning to accept her power, Fire learns to reject as inauthentic reflections of herself veiled through male desire and loathing.
Sponsor:
Manda Lewis
Obscure Monsters
Casey Blair
Casey Blair holds degrees in English and Japanese from Vassar College and currently lives in a rice field somewhere in Japan. When not teaching middle school students English, she can most often be found with her nose in either a book or a Word document.
You almost can’t glance at the fantasy section without being deluged with vampire and werewolf stories, and if you can navigate around those you’ll inevitably be confronted by the classic elves and dragons. But if you can somehow sneak through the ranks, what strange and terrifying monsters can you find? Who are your favorite monsters? Why do they work so well narratively? Should efforts be made to mainstream more lesser-known monsters? Come prepared to talk about some of your favorite fictional monsters, particularly the less mainstream varieties (possibilities include djinn, stormwings, elgorts, kitsune, incubi, dementors, etc.).
Papers and Lectures
- | - Pre-empaneled Papers
- | - Panels
Workshops
- | - Roundtable Discussions
- | - Additional Presentations
Afternoon Classes
ADDITIONAL PRESENTATIONS
Creating Proposals, Abstracts and Compendium Submissions for Sirens
Hallie Tibbetts
Hallie Tibbetts is one of Sirens's chairs, and has been overseeing programming for Narrate Conferences events since 2006.
Are you thinking of submitting a program item for next year? Want tips on how to prepare your ideas for consideration by the vetting board? We'll cover abstract formats for papers, panels, workshops, afternoon classes, and roundtable discussions. Also, your talk, paper, workshop, or roundtable discussion can become part of a published book: every other year, Sirens produces a compendium of presentations. We will discuss formatting issues, editing, bibliographic citation and why it matters, and some differences between writing for oral delivery and writing for print. The presentation will be very informal; attendees are welcome to drop in for a few minutes to ask a quick question or to use the time for group brainstorming.
Papers and Lectures
- | - Pre-empaneled Papers
- | - Panels
Workshops
- | - Roundtable Discussions
- | - Additional Presentations
Afternoon Classes
AFTERNOON CLASSES
Defending Yourself Against the Monsters
Kristen Blount
Kristen Blount holds a BA in English from The University of Scranton and an MA in publications design from the University of Baltimore, and works as a graphic designer for Howard County Library near her home in Elkridge, Maryland. She holds a first degree brown belt and is a trained instructor with Tompkins Karate Association in central Maryland, which teaches Tang Soo Do and a variation on traditional ju-jitsu.
The world holds monsters that come in all shapes and sizes, and some of them see women as prey. This afternoon class offers a first look at basic self defense, situational awareness, and ways to stay safe. Attendees will be active and work in pairs or small groups practicing some of the techniques. Wear comfortable clothing.
E-readers and Digital Fantasy
Exploratory Programming Staff
The Exploratory Programming team puts together special programs for Sirens that include informal, creative, and artistic events and games.
This afternoon class will focus on fantasy for e-readers. Have an e-reader or a favorite desktop program, or want to find out more about reading this way? Come to share and find out about digital options for reading fantasy, finding fantasy to read, and benefits and detriments of digital stories. The class will center on audience contributions, and drop-ins are welcome.
Sponsor:
Sharina Pratt
Papers and Lectures
- | - Pre-empaneled Papers
- | - Panels
Workshops
- | - Roundtable Discussions
- | - Additional Presentations
Afternoon Classes
Vetting Board
Rachel Manija Brown’s memoir All the Fishes Come Home to Roost: An American Misfit in India was published in nine countries. Her poem “Nine Views of the Oracle” was a Rhysling runner-up. Her manga has been published by Tokyopop and PandaBuddha Press. In collaboration with Sherwood Smith, she has written an animated series, Game World, which was sold to the Jim Henson Company, and a YA post-apocalyptic novel, The Change: World’s End. In addition to fiction, nonfiction, poetry, comic books, and television, Rachel has written plays, song lyrics, interactive games, and a comic strip intended to be silk-screened on to a scarf.
Sharon K. Goetz works for a print-and-digital project that creates critical editions. Too fond of textuality for her own good, she has also written software manuals, taught college writing courses oriented around speculative fiction and King Arthur, and completed a Ph.D. investigating medieval English chronicles amidst their manuscript contexts. Sharon served as Academic Programming Coordinator for Terminus and Phoenix Rising and as Programming Secretary for The Witching Hour; in 2002 she chaired the Medieval Performativity conference that celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the UC Berkeley Beowulf Marathon. Amongst Sharon’s leisure pursuits are reading widely, playing video games, and volunteering as a Strange Horizons copy-editor.
Mallory Clare Loehr is the editor-in-chief of Random House Books for Young Readers, where she has worked for twenty years! She edits everything from six-page board books to six-hundred-page young adult titles, with a particular fondness for fantasy geared toward any age. She is Tamora Pierce’s editor for the Tortall books featuring Kel, Alianne (Aly), and Beka Cooper. Other fantasy/SF authors she has edited include Isobelle Carmody, Esther Friesner, and Lauren McLaughlin. She has also worked on all the Magic Tree House books by Mary Pope Osborne—the ongoing best-selling series that has launched many a fantasy reader. Mallory is in publishing because she is a reader first and foremost, although her reading volume has been stunted by the arrival of two children. Once upon a time she read ten books a week, frequented flea markets, and danced Argentine tango late into the night. Now she lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband, two small(ish) children, and one cat. In her (little) spare time, she reads as well as organizes libraries at home, at work, and at her son’s school. She is addicted to parentheses and footwear.
Dr. Rhonda Nicol is Instructional Assistant Professor of English at Illinois State University. She enjoys teaching and writing about issues of gender, power, and identity in popular cultural texts and is currently obsessed with young adult fantasy fiction, as evidenced by recent academic works such as “Harry Potter and the Reluctant Reader: Teaching Harry Potter in the College Classroom” (in Terminus: Collected Papers on Harry Potter [2010]), “‘Something That Looks So Fragile’: Holly Black’s and Melissa Marr’s Feminist Faerie Tales” (Sirens 2009 presentation), and an article comparing Twilight’s Bella with Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s title character (in Reading Twilight: Analytical Essays [forthcoming]).
Pat Schwieterman currently teaches at the University of San Francisco, where he occasionally has the opportunity to offer a course on his academic specialty: supernatural beings in medieval literature. He has also taught composition courses at UC Berkeley and, while there, helped to organize conferences on Old and Middle English literature. He’s been an obsessive fan of fantasy literature ever since reading Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea as a teenager, and his other interests include various dead languages, living without a car, and collecting far more folk and indie-rock CDs than he has room for.
Sherwood Smith writes fantasy and science fiction novels and short fiction. Her stories have been finalists for the Nebula and Mythopoeic Fantasy Awards, and her characters, including Meliara, Wren, and Inda, are fantasy favorites. Her recently published works include Crown Duel and its prequel, A Stranger to Command; the four Inda books; Sasharia en Garde: Once a Princess and Twice a Prince; Senrid; the Wren series; and stories in Lace and Blade, Firebirds, and Firebirds Soaring: An Anthology of Original Speculative Fiction. In September 2010, DAW published Coronets and Steel, a Ruritanian romance. In addition to coauthoring the Exordium series with Dave Trowbridge, she has published novels set in others’ worlds, including Earth: Final Conflict, Andromeda, L. Frank Baum’s Oz, and (with Andre Norton) the Solar Queen and Time Traders universes.
If people let her, Shveta Thakrar would eat books for dinner. Since they won’t, she settles for writing Indian-flavored fantasy. Drawing on her heritage, her experience growing up with two cultures, and her M.A. in German literature, she likes to explore the magic that is just out of sight as well as that which stands right in front of our faces. Other things that interest her include feminism, cultural and racial notions of beauty, and how language influences how we think. Shveta is currently working on a YA novel featuring Indian fey, bleeding thumbs, and family secrets, all in Philadelphia. She blogs at http://shveta-thakrar.livejournal.com/.
2011 Call for Proposals
CALL FOR PROPOSALS: Sirens
Vail, CO
October 6–9, 2011
A conference on women in fantasy literature presented by Narrate Conferences, Inc.
Sirens, a conference focused on literary contributions by women to the fantasy genre and on fantasy works with prominent female characters, will take place October 6–9, 2011, in Vail, Colorado. The conference seeks papers, panels, interactive workshops, roundtable discussions, and other presentations suitable for an audience of academics, professionals, educators, librarians, authors, and fantasy readers.
The theme for 2011 is “monsters,” and presenters are invited to explore what it means to be “monstrous.” Programming prompted by the theme is encouraged; presenters are not limited to this theme, however, and proposals that address specific aspects of a work or series, works related by other themes, and studies of the fantasy genre across all disciplines are encouraged as well. A non-exhaustive list of sample topics includes literary analyses of novels; studies of genre history; use of fantasy works in schools and libraries for education; examination of related business and legal issues; media and fan studies; craft-based workshops in writing, art, and publishing; and overviews of how fantasy works fit into larger contexts.
Presentation submission to the vetting board is by online system only. No other format or contact will be considered. The online submission system is located at <http://www.sirensconference.org/submissions/>.
The deadline for proposals is May 7, 2011, and notices regarding proposals will be sent no later than June 1, 2011. Those requiring an early decision in order to obtain travel funding should contact the programming coordinator at (programming at sirensconference.org).
At the time of proposal submission, presenters must provide an abstract of 300-500 words, a 50-100 word presentation summary for publication, and a presenter biography of no more than 100 words. Those wishing to submit a proposal for an interactive roundtable discussion may submit a brief explanation of a topic and a list of 10-15 sample discussion questions in lieu of a formal abstract; workshop proposals may be formatted as lesson plans. Afternoon classes—interactive demonstrations of interest to fantasy readers that may be less formally related to the theme—may also be presented as lesson plans. Presenters must be available to attend the conference in its entirety; no partial or day registrations will be offered.
Conference papers will be collected for publication at a later date. Presenters must be registered for the conference no later than June 30, 2011. For more information about programming, the review process, suggested timing and structure of presentations, audio-visual availability, and proposal submissions, please see the Sirens website at <http://www.sirensconference.org/programming/>. Questions specifically about programming may be directed to (programming at sirensconference.org), and general conference inquiries may be sent to (help at sirensconference.org).
Sirens is a presentation of Narrate Conferences, Inc., a 501(c)(3) charitable organization with the mission of organizing academic, literary, and exploratory educational conferences that address themes of interest to scholars, educators, students, professionals, and readers. For inquiries about Narrate Conferences, Inc., please write to (info at narrateconferences.org).
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