Our Twitter followers may know that we’ve been tweeting out potential topic ideas at the hashtag #SirensBrainstorm on Mondays the last few months. Feel free to take these ideas, bend them, break them, or use them to inspire something else. Remember, these are not real programming sessions—until someone proposes it!

Want the full rundown? Read how Sirens programming works and our tips, tricks, and frequently asked questions. We also go over each presentation format in detail: papers/lectures, panels, roundtable discussions, and workshops and afternoon classes.

And remember, there’s one more programming chat next week, to find collaborators and get one-on-one advice from our programming staff:

• Monday, May 13, 9–11 p.m. Eastern (6–8 p.m. Pacific)

Here are all your #SirensBrainstorm topics in one place!

• Harry, Percy and Aru: The Feminist Evolution of Heroes in Middle-Grade Fantasy

• Fantasy and Slavery Narratives: The Forbidden Wish to Mirage, Beloved to The Fifth Season

• Dystopian Feminism: Alderman’s The Power as Heir to Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale

• The Merry Spinster: Gender, Non-conformance, and Fantasy Literature Reincarnations

• Wild, Wild West: Desolation and Loneliness as Fantasy Constructs

• Feminist Revenge Fantasies: Slice of Cherry, Spell on Wheels, and the Stories of Angela Slatter

• It’s Coming from Inside the House: Haunted Houses as Jealous Lovers

• To Succeed or Not to Succeed: Reimagining Shakespeare for Feminist Fantasy Readers

• Catholic Themes in A Cathedral of Myth and Bone

• How Many Entrails Is Too Many Entrails? The Glorious Gore of Cassandra Khaw

• Pretty Princess Picture Books: Ten Years of Evolution

• I Want to Wear Pants! The Barely-There Feminism of Historical Young-Adult Fantasy Literature

• Higher, Further, Faster, More: The Revolution of Female and Nonbinary Comic Book Heroes

• Decolonizing Paris: A Close Reading of the Work of Roshani Chokshi and Aliette de Bodard

• The Magic of Illustration in Fantasy Works

• Deconstructing the Hypermasculinity of Fonda Lee’s Jade War

• Boundaries as Gender Construct: The Short Stories of Daisy Johnson and Carmen Maria Machado

• Reimagining Myth: Familiar Tropes vs. Feminist Evolution

• The Feminist Symbols of The Stars Are Legion

• Fantasy Poetry as Self-Reclamation: The Work of Nikita Gill and Amanda Lovelace

• Alice and Dorothy: Feminist Evaluations of Childhood Works

• White Women’s Feminism and Practical Magic

• Yes, Your Majesty: Including Women of Color in Traditional Princess Fantasy Tropes

• From Wonder Woman: Warbringer to Leia, Princess of Alderaan: The Evolution of the Tie-in Novel

• Cosplay as Reclamation and Revolution

• The Magic of Marika McCoola and Emily Carroll’s Baba Yaga’s Assistant

• Sentient Settings: Examining Location Selection in Real-World Fantasy Works

• How to Train a Dragon

• Obsessive Love in Heidi Heilig’s The Girl from Everywhere

• Female Friendship as Romantic Subversion in Fantasy Young-Adult Novels

• Show Me the Money: Elements of Successful Fantasy Revolutions

• Revolutionary Love in Fantasy Literature

• I Wish! The Role of Fairy Godmothers

• The Bachelor, Middle Earth Season: Toxic Masculinity in Fantasy Romance

• Guerilla Tactics for Underdog Fantasy Revolutions

• American Gods: Seanan McGuire’s Reconstruction of the Phantom Hitchhiker in Sparrow Hill Road

• Claiming Your Power: Contrasting The Bone Witch, Three Dark Crowns, and Forest of a Thousand Lanterns

• Deconstructing the Monstrousness of Sana Takeda’s Monstress Art

• Someday My Prince Will Come: The Feminist Horror of Sarah Pinborough’s Fairy Tale Retellings

• Valiant: Examining Fearless Authorial Choices in Feminist Fantasy Literature

• Women and War: How Fantasy Literature Challenges (or Doesn’t) Gender Expectations on the Battlefield

• Witchcraft: A Reader’s Examination of Exceptional Writing in Fantasy Literature

• Great Villainess Narratives: Why We Love a Bad Girl

• Beyond Upstairs/Downstairs: Class Depictions and Deconstructions in Fantasy Literature

• Happy Endings: What Does Happily Ever After Mean Now?

• Alice of Wonderland, Meet Alice of Furthermore: The Enduring Popularity of Serial Adventure Fantasy

• My Boyfriend Is a Vampire/Werewolf/Faery/Zombie: A Self-Help Session

• She’s a Witch: SFF Language Used to Constrain and Disenfranchise Women

• Beloved; Kindred; Sing, Unburied, Sing; and An Unkindness of Ghosts: American Slave Narratives in Speculative Fiction

• You Can’t Keep a Good Girl Down: The Rise of the Superheroine

• All the Single Ladies: A Survey of Accomplished, Happily Single Women in Fantasy Literature

• Pushing the Boundaries of “Fantasy” Literature with Space Opera, Romance, Mysteries and More

• Indiana, Meet Owl: A (Necessary) Update to the (Problematic) Adventuring Archeologist Trope

• Feminist Reincarnations of Goethe in Fantasy Literature

• Legal Magic: Reviewing a Standard Publishing Agreement

• Strong Girls: White Women’s Heroism in Fantasy Literature

• A Swoon-worthy Survey of the Yummiest, Most Romantic, Sexiest Queer Love Stories in Fantasy Literature

• What Satire Brings to the Fantasy Literature Conversation

• Exploring the Magic of the Tween Years with Actual Magic: A Parent’s Deconstruction of Popular Middle Grade Fantasy Literature

• Empathy Starts Early: Childhood Fantasy Narratives Modeling Heroism

• How to Start Your Own Sirens Book Club

• Modern YA Romance: Attraction and Consent in Brigid Kemmerer’s A Curse So Dark and Lonely

• History and Perspective: One Woman’s Superhero Is Another Woman’s Supervillain

• A Case Study in Villainy: Rin in R.F. Kuang’s The Poppy War

• Ayt Madashi, Hailimi Bristol, and Shuos Jedao: Speculative Fiction’s Master Negotiators

• The Intersection of Race and Class in Anna-Marie McLemore’s Wild Beauty

• And Then? What Happens after Your Successful Fantasy Revolution?

• Master Class: Deconstructing Loss and Grief in Work by Ireland’s Female Fantasy Writers

• In the Absence of Inspiration or Motivation, Discipline: How to Finish Writing That Fantasy Book

• Fantastic! American Monsters in Speculative Fiction

• What Body Horror Has to Say about Reproductive Justice

• Exploring the Growth of Female Friendship in the Teenage Years through Aru Shah and Children of Blood and Bone

• Sidekick: A Problematic History

• Fantasy Worldbuilding as Activism: Imagining Worlds that Right the Wrongs of Oppression

• Fuck, Marry, Kill: An Interactive Roundtable Discussion about What We Want from Our Fantasy Literature Lovers

• Where Faith Meets Fantasy: Deconstructing the Liminal Spaces in Freshwater and All the Names They Used for God

• Analyzing Fantasy Works for Language that Others Marginalized Identities

• Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Wreck-It Ralph’s Vanellope, Shank, Reimagined Princesses, and What It Means for a Girl to Dream

• Crafting Dialogue: A Workshop for Fantasy Authors

• Horror, Monsters, and Gender

• What Women Want, What They Really, Really Want: Female Quests in Fantasy Literature

• Clothes Make the Hero: What Superhero Costuming Choices Say about Gender

• Food, Caretaking, and Magic: Kitchen Witchery

• Ahoy! Lady Pirates of History and Their Feminist Reincarnation in Fantasy Literature

• Gender Stereotypes in Authoring Speculative Fiction

• Contemporary Literary Witches: Addressing a Thousand Years of Persecution

• Princes as Heirs, Princesses as Chattel: Pervasive, Problematic Gender Tropes in Quasi-European YA Fantasy

• Reclaiming Our Mothers: Living, Responsible Mothers in YA Fantasy Literature

• Dystopia vs. Utopia: A Case for Reading Each in Trying Times

• Romeo and Juliet: Shakespeare’s Fantasy in Fantasy Literature

• Deconstructing Strength: A Roundtable on Strong Female Protagonists

• One Last Time: The Women of HBO’s Game of Thrones

• Magical Circuses as Lures in Fantasy Literature

• From Lois Lane to The Shining Girls: Intrepid Journalism

• Lady Thor, She-Hulk, and Kate Bishop: When Comics Finally Pass the Torch

• Reissued! A Discussion of Republishing Decades-out-of-Print Fantasy Books

• Fantasy Literature as Classroom Teaching Tool

• Examining the Fantastic, Feminist Art of Isabel Greenberg

• A Reader’s Perspective: Effective Writing of Liminal Spaces

• Deconstructing Societal Baggage about Identity via the Dialogue of First-Contact Novels

• Feminist Retellings of the Mahabharata

• That’s Really…Weird: What Our Strangest Fantasy Fiction Says about Us

• Presenting Masculinity: Use of the Penis (or the Absence Thereof) on HBO’s Game of Thrones

• The Fairy-Tale Crumbs in Helen Oyeyemi’s Gingerbread

• The Commercialization of Childbirth and Motherhood in Dystopian Fiction

• Suburban Monstrousness: Headley’s The Mere Wife and Link’s Pretty Monsters

• How to Create a Heroine: A Workshop for Artists

• Civil Engineering: Magical Transportation Systems

• Furious! Fantasy Heroines Whose Rage Propels Their Stories

• Fantastic Parenting: Brainstorming How to Take Your Kid on a Quest to Save the World

• Examining Freedom and Duty through G. Willow Wilson’s The Bird King

• Building Fantasy Worlds by Crafting Justice Systems

• Deconstructing the Male Gaze through Written Descriptions of Heroines

• Dreaming Epiphanies in Fantasy Literature

• Near-Future: The Intersection of Magic and Tech

• An Argument for Space Opera as Fantasy Literature

• Where Wonder Meets Fear: Middle-Grade Portal Fantasy as Self-Discovery

Contributed by our community:

• Performative Tools to Bring Your Fantasy Novel to Life

• Why We Write About War

• Jewish Women and Jewish Life in SFF

All set? Submit your proposal here.

More questions? You can contact our programming team at (programming at sirensconference.org).