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Sirens Newsletter – Volume 5, Issue 10 (August 2013)

Posted on August 21, 2013 at 9:00 am | Comments Off on Sirens Newsletter – Volume 5, Issue 10 (August 2013)

Tagged: books, interviews, newsletters, on-site, volunteering

August’s newsletter includes registration deadline reminders, calls for used books and volunteers, notes about our schedule, and some exciting fantasy book news.

Registration Deadlines
Sirens is less than two months away! If you haven’t purchased your registration yet, including Sirens Shuttle and Sirens Supper tickets, please make sure to do so before registration closes on September 7. If you have any questions, please contact us at (registration at sirensconference.org).

All payments for registrations and tickets are due no later than September 13, 2013.

Hotel Reservations
If you haven’t yet made your hotel reservations, please do so as soon as possible. Skamania Lodge is a resort, and so some reservation and guarantee policies are different than standard hotel policies, including a requirement to reserve rooms well in advance. Please see the hotel page on our website for more details. Hotel reservations must be made no later than September 12, 2013.

If you’d like a roommate (or two or three), please check out our Facebook page and website message boards.

Author Signings
Sirens hosts author signings on Friday and Saturday afternoons. If you are a published author attending Sirens and you’d like to participate in our author signings, please email us at (help at sirensconference.org) as soon as possible. We’d love to have you join us.

Used Book Donations
Beyond the selection of new books that we’ll be carrying by attending authors and others that we think you’ll enjoy (like the ones featured during Books and Breakfast, for example), the Narrate bookstore will sell some used books as well. If you have fantasy books written by or about women that you’d like to donate to the used section of our bookstore, and they are in good used condition, we’d love to have them. You don’t need to attend to donate; anyone can send books by regular or media mail to the following address:

Sirens
c/o Narrate Conferences
P.O. Box 149
Sedalia, CO 80135

Be aware that media mail has restrictions, and that we must receive all packages and mail by September 12, 2013, in order to get your donations to Skamania in time for Sirens. And make sure to stop by and see us at the bookstore this fall! We’ll have plenty of recommendations.

Volunteers
Would you like to help out during Sirens? Volunteer shifts vary in length and responsibilities, but most are low-key, and you’re always able to ask a staff member for assistance if you encounter a problem. Most volunteer shifts are during programming and allow you to attend presentations; you might help people find seats, turn microphones on or off, give presenters their five-minute warnings, and gather lost and found items. See the volunteers page on our website for more details. If you’re a returning volunteer, you don’t need to fill out the form—just keep an eye out for email from the Google Group. Many thanks in advance!

Schedule
If you’ve seen our recently released programming schedule, you may have noticed some changes to accommodate a fourth keynote presentation this year.

Wednesday, October 9, 2013
If you’re arriving on Wednesday and joining us for the Sirens Supper, we’ll email you about where to meet for dinner. If you’re riding the Sirens Shuttle, we’ll email you with the pickup point information in early October.

Thursday, October 10, 2013
Conference registration pickup opens at 3:00 p.m. (If you’re arriving early, please feel free to meet up at noon in the River Rock at Skamania Lodge for lunch.) We’ll have spaces where you can meet, chat, play games, and enjoy an afternoon tea. Look for your Sirens Shuttle email in early October for details on when and where to meet if you’ll be using it for transportation to Skamania.

Friday, October 11, 2013 and Saturday, October 12, 2013
Books and Breakfast begins at 8:00 a.m., followed by our three programming tracks at 9:00 a.m. Keynote luncheons begin at noon, followed by author signings at 2:00 p.m. (And if you’re an attending author who would like to participate, please get in touch at (help at sirensconference.org) as soon as possible.) Presentations resume at 3:00 p.m. and continue until evening. On Friday, we’ll begin Bedtime Stories at 8:00 p.m. On Saturday, the keynote reception begins at 7:00 p.m., with the Reunion Ball and Murder Mystery to follow.

Throughout the weekend, we’ll have spaces near the information desk and the Narrate bookstore for casual chats, auction book page creation, and write-ins. At 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, you can join our exploratory programming team if you’d like to go hiking on the resort golf course trails or go swimming/hot tubbing with other attendees. It’s also a good time for borrowing a bike at the fitness center, visiting the gift shop, squeezing in a pedicure, grabbing that forgotten item from your hotel room, or just relaxing in the main lobby.

All of that said, we’ve squeezed in some free space for meet-ups and those discussions that just weren’t ready for programming proposals yet. Please check the website schedule for available space. You can reserve a room and time once you arrive at Sirens.

Sunday, October 13, 2013
We’ll start the morning early to ensure that attendees catching mid-day flights to the East Coast have plenty of time to get through security lines. (Our tips: Bring your luggage to breakfast, and use the business center in the conference area to print your boarding pass for free before you leave.) If you’re not taking the Sirens Shuttle, we’ll provide meet-up points for creating and crafting with others, or squeezing in a few last minutes outside (in Washington, that means rain or shine) or in the pool until it’s time to check out.

What We’re Excited About This Month

Heiresses of Russ 2013, The Year’s Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction was released August 10, and includes stories by Malinda Lo, Carrie Vaughn, and others.

Kate Elliott on worldbuilding.

Janni Lee Simner concludes her excellent series of posts on Writing for the Long Haul.

Blood of Tyrants, Naomi Novak’s latest Temeraire novel is out August 13! Read the first 50 pages on Suvudu.

The World Fantasy Awards ballot for 2013 can be viewed here. Maybe something new for your reading list?

“Fantasy… makes up worlds and cultures, but it doesn’t do this in a vacuum.” Read more of this interview with Kari Sperring here.

The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon is out August 20.

The paperback edition of Under My Hat is out, and according to reviews, it’s “an enjoyable witches’ brew of tales.”

Sherwood Smith’s short story collection, Whispered Magics, is out; get more information here.

If you have fantasy-related links—reviews, news, announcements, or something else that’s of interest to Sirens attendees—we welcome them! Please send them to (help at sirensconference.org) at any time.

Questions? You can comment here or write to us at (help at sirensconference.org).

Sirens Newsletter – Volume 5, Issue 9 (July 2013)

Posted on July 24, 2013 at 9:00 am | Comments Off on Sirens Newsletter – Volume 5, Issue 9 (July 2013)

Tagged: books, interviews, newsletters, on-site, programming

July’s newsletter includes news about the Sirens Bookstore, author signings (published authors wanted!), the lineup for this year’s Books and Breakfast, and more!

Programming Update
If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the accepted programming page on our website. Many new presentations have been added over the past few weeks. We’ve also just released our schedule! We know it’s going to be very difficult for everyone to choose between so many fantastic offerings. Thank you again to everyone who proposed a presentation this year. We appreciate your willingness to participate in programming! Once again, we know we’ll all wish we could manage to be in multiple places at once.

Author Signings
If you are a published author, please let us know! We’d love to include you in our author signing times and have new books on hand. We have access to many books from major publishers; for those we don’t have access to, like out-of-print titles or books that aren’t available through a major distributor, we have suggestions for how to make sure that your books are available at Sirens. Please let us know if you’d like to take part in the author signings by writing to (help at sirensconference.org) as soon as possible.

Book Donations
Narrate Conferences, our presenting nonprofit, will again run a new and used bookstore during Sirens. For everyone attending, and friends of women in fantasy literature as well, we hope you’ll help us stock the used section of the bookstore. If you have fantasy books written by or about women that you’d like to donate, and they are in good used condition, we’d love to have them. You don’t need to attend to donate; anyone can send books by regular or media mail to the following address:

Sirens
c/o Narrate Conferences
P.O. Box 149
Sedalia, CO 80135

Be aware that media mail has restrictions, and that we must receive all packages and mail by September 12, 2013, in order to get your donations to Skamania in time for Sirens. And make sure to stop by and see us at the bookstore this fall! We’ll have plenty of recommendations.

Auction
We are starting to gather donations for the Sirens auction! This yearly fundraiser has gone a long way toward covering conference costs in the past, and we are always deeply grateful for our community’s participation and support. All sorts of items are welcome—past auctions have included artwork, crafts, character names in new works, signed advance reading copies, jewelry, and more.

If you’d like to donate an item or if you have questions, please shoot us an email at (help at sirensconference.org). We’d love to hear what you’re planning and address any concerns you might have. Also, for those of you with bulky items, we can give you a shipping address, if you’d like. And, of course, thank you in advance for your support!

Books and Breakfast
Books and Breakfast will be held on Friday, October 11, and Saturday, October 12. For those of you who are new to Sirens, this is where we invite you to bring your own breakfast and join us for informal chats about books before presentations begin in the morning.

This year, our reading list includes tales that are new and different takes on the themes of years past. Some of them are new, some of them were game-changing or controversial books, and some we just loved and wanted to share. We think it’s a pretty good start for a summer reading list. It’s perfectly okay to join in if you haven’t read any of the books yet, but if you’d like to come prepared, the schedule is listed below.

Friday, October 11, 2013
Prophecy by Ellen Oh
A Kiss of Shadows by Laurell K. Hamilton
The Space Between by Brenna Yovanoff
Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord

Saturday, October 12, 2013
Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit by Nahoko Uehashi
Bronze Gods by A. A. Aguirre
Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake
Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi

Sirens Supper
If you’ll be in the Portland area on the evening of Wednesday, October 9, perhaps you’d like to join us for dinner. Each year our conference staff hosts a dinner for a limited number of attendees, and you’re welcome to come. We love having a chance to chat before the conference starts!

We hope to have news about our Sirens Supper menu soon—but you might not want to wait to buy your tickets, as there are only a handful of tickets still available.

Tickets for the Sirens Supper are $60, and may be added to a new or to an existing registration. Attendees may purchase additional tickets for the Sirens Supper for others who are at least 18 years old as of October 9, 2013.

Sirens Shuttle
Tickets are still available for the Sirens Shuttle. You can add them to a new or to an existing registration even if you don’t have your flight details yet. A round-trip ticket on the shuttle, at $75 per rider, is less than half the cost of a commercial van service. The Sirens Shuttle is also a great chance to meet others, decompress, and enjoy the beautiful Columbia Gorge scenery. Your trip to Skamania on Wednesday or Thursday will include a brief stop at Multnomah Falls on the Columbia River. Don’t forget to bring a camera!

Deadlines Approaching
The last day to pre-register for Sirens, to purchase a ticket for the Sirens Shuttle, or to purchase a ticket for the Sirens Supper is September 7, 2013. Between September 7 and the conference, we close registration so that we can finish ordering materials and making arrangements. We will have only a limited number of registrations available for purchase at Sirens, so we recommend that you register in advance.

The last day to make a reservation at Skamania Lodge at the Sirens rate is September 12, 2013. If you require a room with two beds, we recommend that you make a reservation soon; the lodge is a popular destination year-round, and last year, we used all of the rooms set aside for Sirens. Please see the linked page for complete details.

What We’re Excited About This Month

Disability in Kidlit posted Haddayr Copley-Woods’s review of Among Others. –SRG

Mette Ivie Harrison posted 12 tips on writing about grief. –Amy W.

Book Riot spotlights 10 Recent & Upcoming Queer Reads, including Malinda Lo’s Inheritance, the sequel to Adaptation! –Anonymous

Cool: The trailer for Holly Black’s The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, which comes out on September 3. –Michelle

Romance Novels for Feminists discusses 1980s Feminism in Lois McMaster Bujold’s Shards of Honor. –Anonymous

Tanita Davis writes about revisiting Red Sonja and a comic book adaptation. –-Anonymous

Girls of Summer interviews Guadalupe Garcia McCall.

Check out the 2013 Mythopoeic Awards.

Check out the 2013 Locus Awards.

Here’s some nifty cover art for Marie Brennan’s upcoming Tropic of Serpents.

Cover art for Rosamund Hodge’s Cruel Beauty, a retelling of Beauty and the Beast.

Nalo Hopkinson shares discussion questions for Sister Mine. If you missed her guest appearance last year, you might be interested in her talk at the 2012 National Book Festival.

SF Signal shares the covers of 178 science fiction, fantasy, and horror books out this month. (Perhaps not necessarily “all,” but interesting to look at.)

Kate Elliott talks women in epic fantasy at RT Book Reviews.

Thirty years of King’s Quest, designed by Roberta Williams. I loved playing as Rosella and Valanice! –Hallie

Questions? You can comment here or write to us at (help at sirensconference.org).

Sirens Newsletter – Volume 5, Issue 8 (June 2013)

Posted on June 26, 2013 at 9:00 am | Comments Off on Sirens Newsletter – Volume 5, Issue 8 (June 2013)

Tagged: books, guests of honor, interviews, newsletters, on-site

June’s newsletter includes a request for your used books, a spotlight on Guest of Honor Guadalupe Garcia McCall, information on traveling to Sirens, and exciting book news.

The Sirens Bookstore is back and looking for used books!
Our bookstore was very popular last year, and we’re delighted to tell you it will be back in 2013 with new books by attending authors, more new books we think you’ll be interested in, and used fantasy books donated to Sirens. Start putting aside your used fantasy books by women authors–we’ll have details on where to send them in a future newsletter.

Author Spotlight: Guadalupe Garcia McCall
Guadalupe Garcia McCall’s second novel, Summer of the Mariposas, retells The Odyssey with five Mexican-American sisters and La Llorona as a ghostly guide. Summer of the Mariposas was one of the “Best Books of 2012” selected by School Library Journal, is on the 2013 Amelia Bloomer Project List, and was nominated for the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy in 2013. The Kirkus Review says of Summer of the Mariposas “Originality and vibrancy shine through…” and The School Library Journal Review notes “the unusual qualities of mythical characters and the sense of adventure that lies behind every twist and turn of the girls’ revelatory journey.”

Her first novel, Under the Mesquite, is not fantasy, but is a tour de force work of verse that tackles the subject of cancer. Under the Mesquite received the Pura Belpré Author Award and a 2012 International Latino Book Awards Honorable Mention, and was a William C. Morris YA Debut Award Finalist (YALSA). Guadalupe has a BA in Theatre Arts and English from Sul Ross State University.

We’re so excited to have Guadalupe Garcia McCall join Alaya Dawn Johnson, Ellen Kushner, and Robin LaFevers as our guests of honor at this year’s Sirens. If you’re new to their work, our reading list is a great place to start getting acquainted.

Travel Tip: Flying to Sirens
If you’re flying to Sirens, the closest major airport–and the one from which the Sirens Shuttle will depart–is Portland International Airport in Portland, Oregon, also known as PDX. It’s a major west coast airport, and many airlines can get you there. Once you arrive, you’ll find a selection of shops and restaurants inside and outside of the security area, and the airport makes an effort to keep the prices–sales-tax free–the same as you’d find anywhere else in town. Other great amenities include free WiFi, a luggage storage desk, and a direct connection to downtown Portland via the MAX Red Line train.

Travel Tip: Sirens Shuttle
As in past years, we are offering the Sirens Shuttle, a charter bus which will depart from Portland International Airport (PDX) at 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, October 9, and Thursday, October 10, and return to PDX on Sunday morning, October 13, departing Skamania Lodge at 9:45 a.m. The shuttle will travel along the Columbia River Gorge Scenic Highway, and both the Wednesday and Thursday shuttles will make a brief stop at Multnomah Falls. Don’t forget your camera!

The Sirens Shuttle costs $75 per person, round trip, which is less than a one-way ticket on a commercial shuttle service. Shuttle tickets can be purchased when you register for Sirens, or if you’ve already registered, you can log in to add tickets to your existing registration by clicking here.

Travel Tip: Hotel Reservations
Skamania Lodge, which is located in Stevenson, Washington, is once again the home for Sirens in 2013. Built in the style of a Pacific Northwest lodge, Skamania has a cozy, welcoming atmosphere with a fireplace and rocking chairs in the lobby and views of the surrounding forest and the Columbia River Gorge. The health club, pool, and hot tub all are included in the resort fee, as is wireless Internet access. For more information on Skamania, please visit the hotel page of the Sirens website.

To reserve a room with the Sirens discount rates, please click here to reserve online, or to make a reservation by telephone, please call 800-221-7117 and mention the code Sirens2013 to reservations staff.

If you would like to find roommates, you can post a message on the Skamania Lodge section of our message boards.

We recommend making your hotel reservation as soon as possible, especially if you want a room with two beds. Last year, we used all of the rooms set aside for Sirens, and we expect to fill our room block in 2013, too.

Sirens Supper
If you’ll be at Skamania on Wednesday, October 9, we invite you to join us for our traditional pre-conference Sirens Supper. It’s a great way to unwind from travel, meet other attendees, and enjoy a fabulous buffet dinner with friends new and old. We’ll be announcing the menu soon, but in the meantime, we wanted to note that there are only 10 tickets remaining for this event.

What We’re Excited About This Month

Guest of Honor Ellen Kushner’s Swordspoint audiobook won a 2013 Audie award for Audio Drama. Congratulations!

Time has an excerpt from 2009 Sirens Guest of Honor Tamora Pierce’s upcoming novel Battle Magic, which is set two years before the events of The Will of the Empress and Melting Stones. –Michelle

Tamora Pierce talks about winning the Edwards Award, writing female characters, and more. –Z

Richelle Mead’s Gameboard of the Gods was released on June 4, as was Steadfast by Mercedes Lackey. –Anonymous

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes was released on June 4. –Suzi

Mur Lafferty’s The Shambling Guide to New York City was out June 4.

The title for the last book in Laini Taylor’s trilogy that began with Daughter of Smoke and Bone has been revealed. Spoiler: It’s Dreams of Gods and Monsters. –Anonymous

Cassandra Claire’s Vampires, Scones, and Edmund Herondale, part three of The Bane Chronicles, will be out on June 18! –Anonymous

Kate Elliott’s Cold Steel, the final book in the Spiritwalker Trilogy, was out on June 25! –Sabrina

An NPR piece titled “Scheherazade: From Storytelling ‘Slave’ To ‘First Feminist'” includes an interview of Lebanese author Hanan al-Shaykh, and her thoughts about her retelling One Thousand and One Nights. –Anonymous

Janni Lee Simner wants to know if you… Know Your Faeries: Friendly, Fierce, or Fatal? –Anonymous

A meditation on Gender, Ambivalence & the Women of Westeros. –Anonymous

Seen all over Twitter: Karen Lord talking about Redemption in Indigo.

SFWA recently announced the the 2012 Nebula Awards (we recognize some of you on that list!). We also recognize some favorites on the 2013 Mythopoeic Awards list.

Check out these illustrations of East of the Sun, West of the Moon from 1914.

Do you have exciting fantasy book news or links you’d like to share? Email us at (help at sirensconference.org) by June 27 and we’ll include it in next month’s newsletter!

Questions? You can comment here or write to us at (help at sirensconference.org).

Sirens Newsletter – Volume 4, Issue 12 (October 2012)

Posted on October 3, 2012 at 9:00 am | Comments Off on Sirens Newsletter – Volume 4, Issue 12 (October 2012)

Tagged: interviews, newsletters, on-site, volunteering

Checking In at Sirens
You can pick up your registration (and a snack) starting at 3:00 p.m. on Thursday, October 11, in the Conference Center Lobby. Remember to bring a photo ID and a copy of your registration. If you’re a presenter or a volunteer, you’ll also check in with our programming and volunteer coordinators for any last-minute communication and a copy of your schedule. Starting at 4:00 p.m., we’ll open the Rainier room nearby for chatting, informal games, and relaxation.

If you have a ticket for the Sirens Supper, we’ll bring your registration to you on Wednesday night.

Registering at Sirens
We have very few on-site registrations available, and those will be sold on a first-come, first-served basis starting Thursday, October 11, when the Information Desk opens at 3:00 p.m. If you have been thinking about coming and don’t yet have a registration, you might check the message boards; there are a few still for sale by people who can’t make it this year.

Volunteering During Sirens
We still have many openings for volunteers, and we’d love to have your help! The shifts range from 2-2.5 hours long on average, but we do have a handful of shifts that are only an hour each.

Claiming even one shift would be a huge help to the conference, and it’s easy! For instance, if you’re already planning on attending the programming during a particular shift, you can sign up to cover that room. Room monitors typically stay in the room during presentations, help the presenters get situated, and keep things running on time.

If you’re interested or would like more information, please take a look at the schedule on our Volunteer page at http://www.sirensconference.org/connect/volunteers.html and e-mail us at (volunteers2012 at sirensconference.org) with your top three shift choices and the number of shifts for which you’d like to volunteer. Thank you in advance!

Bookstore
Thank you to everyone who has donated books! We really appreciate your support for our mission to support both Sirens and female fantasy authors, and we hope you’ll stop by during Sirens to browse and maybe find a new (or new-to-you) book to add to your collection. We will also continue to accept donations on site; if you have a moment, please contact Amy Tenbrink at (amy.tenbrink at sirensconference.org) with what you plan to donate.

Auction
Just a reminder–our auction format is changing a little this year, and because of this we’ll need to have a comprehensive list of auction items by the end of the day on Thursday, October 11. All sorts of items are welcome! If you’d like to donate an item or you have questions, please e-mail Amy Tenbrink (amy.tenbrink at sirensconference.org). She’d love to hear what you’re planning and address any concerns you might have. Thank you in advance for your support!

Midnight Ball
On our last evening of Sirens, we invite you to our very own Midnight Ball! Ballgowns are always fun, as are glass shoes, but fantasy creations, cocktail dresses, jeans, and fuzzy bunny slippers are also welcome. Dancing is de rigueur, of course, but our Murder Mystery and our silent auction will run during the Midnight Ball as well. The ball will begin at 9:00 p.m. in Stevenson Ballroom B, and will end at the stroke of midnight.

Do you have a request for the music playlist? Please send it to (help at sirensconference.org) by October 8 and we’ll pass it on to the playlist organizer.

Contacting Us During Sirens
Many of our staff will be traveling to Stevenson as early as this Friday, October 5, to prepare for Sirens. While we are in transit and when we’re on site unpacking and setting things up for the conference, we will not be able to monitor our e-mails as closely as we do at other times. If you have an urgent inquiry during this time, please send it to (help at sirensconference.org), and we will get back to you as quickly as possible.

During the conference, the best way to contact us is in person! If you have any questions or would simply like to chat, please stop by our Information Desk in Skamania Lodge’s Conference Center Lobby starting at 3:00 p.m. on Thursday, October 11.

Sirens Shuttle Meet-ups
Does your flight arrive early on Wednesday or Thursday, or are you driving to PDX and meeting the shuttle there? There will be meet-ups for attendees at Portland International Airport on Wednesday, October 10, and Thursday, October 11 for anyone arriving early who’d like to connect with other attendees. Once you have claimed your bags, please feel free to join us as we gather for a little conversation and perhaps a bite to eat before it’s time to board the Sirens Shuttle. Lunch is on your own.

Location: Beaches Restaurant and Bar, outside the security checkpoint for Concourses D and E at Portland International Airport
Time: Noon and later
Please note there is no event host!

Sirens Shuttle check-in point:
Seating area near Baggage Claim 2/Southwest Airlines baggage assistance desk/ TriMet MAX light rail exit from the airport
Time: Please gather by 3:00 p.m. to ride the Sirens Shuttle.

Travel Tips
Packing and Weather
October in the Pacific Northwest generally ranges from the upper 40s to low 60s Fahrenheit (about 7-17 Celsius), and there is always a chance of rain. Be sure to pack comfortable, casual layers to make the transition between indoors and outdoors more comfortable. Sturdy closed-toe walking shoes are recommended, as is a raincoat or umbrella. And don’t forget your identification! For more packing tips, please check out the Travel page of our website at http://www.sirensconference.org/travel/gorge.html#packing.

Driving Directions
Directions for those driving to Skamania Lodge from the north, south, or east can be found on our website at http://www.sirensconference.org/travel/transport.html#driving.

Where to eat in Stevenson
Skamania Lodge has two restaurants on site, both featuring locally-sourced, regional cuisine. River Rock, the bar and restaurant next to the lobby, is the more informal of the two and typically has slightly lower prices. The Cascade Dining Room, which is farther down the hallway past River Rock, is more formal and has fantastic views of the Columbia River. Room service is available from 7:00 a.m.–10:00 p.m.

The hotel will also offer quick grab-and-go options for breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the Conference Center Lobby beginning with dinner on Thursday, October 11, and ending with lunch on Sunday, October 14 (excluding meals that Sirens provides).

If you’d prefer to have a meal outside the hotel, the official Stevenson website offers a listing of area restaurants on their Dining page at http://cityofstevenson.com/dining.html.

You’re Excited About…

Sirens is next week!!! –Amy

Both The Crimson Crown, the last book in the Seven Realms series by Cinda Williams Chima, and Beautiful Redemption, the last book in the Caster Chronicles by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, are due out October 23rd. –Sabs

Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith sold Stranger to Viking Childrens. –J.

2011 Guest of Honor Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death won the Carl Brandon Society Kindred Award for Best Speculative Fiction Dealing with Race/Ethnicity, and she has a new novella out called African Sunrise. –KP

The Guardian has a piece on Phillip Pullman’s new book: retellings of 50 of the stories of the Brothers Grimm. –Simon

Seen on @nalohopkinson: The #audiobook of my novel Midnight Robber is out, narrated by the extraordinarily talented Robin Miles http://t.co/Wwm3Ks93

Twitter Schedule
Beginning on Thursday, October 11, we will be posting the conference schedule on our Twitter. If you prefer not to receive these reminders, you may want to mute or unfollow @sirens_con until Sunday, October 14. (The schedule will not be cross-posted to Facebook, though a few highlights might be.)

Questions? You can comment here or write to us at (help at sirensconference.org).

Registration, Tickets, Hotel, and Volunteering Reminder

Posted on August 17, 2012 at 1:41 pm | Comments Off on Registration, Tickets, Hotel, and Volunteering Reminder

Tagged: on-site, volunteering

Registration for Sirens ends three weeks from today. (We’re getting so close!) The deadline for registration is Friday, September 7, and we very much recommend registering by then. Though we’ll have a few registrations available at the door, it will be only a few, and they will be sold to the first buyers who request them. If you’ve been waiting to register, please don’t miss the deadline! Our at-the-door costs are higher, and yours will be too.

Also, we’ve got a handful of Sirens Supper and Sirens Shuttle tickets remaining. We’d love to have you join us for our pre-conference staff dinner or on our shuttle trip to and from the airport. All payments for registrations and tickets are due no later than September 14.

Hotel reservations for Skamania Lodge can be made until September 18. And, of course, if you’re looking for roommates or travel buddies, please feel free to visit the forums and to post on the Sirens Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/SirensConference

If you have a little time free during Sirens—or just time when you’re planning to be in one room for a couple of sessions in a row—we’d love to have you join our volunteer team for 2012. Typically, volunteers stay in a room during presentations, help the speakers get situated, and keep things running on time. You can find out more on the Sirens Volunteers page.

Questions? Please feel free to ask them here or via (help at sirensconference.org). See you in October!

Sirens Newsletter – Volume 4, Issue 10 (August 2012)

Posted on August 2, 2012 at 9:00 am | Comments Off on Sirens Newsletter – Volume 4, Issue 10 (August 2012)

Tagged: guests of honor, newsletters, on-site, support

Registration and Ticket Deadline
Registration for Sirens, including the purchase of tickets for the Sirens Shuttle and Sirens Supper, ends on September 7, 2012. All payments are due no later than September 14, 2012, even if this means you have fewer than the usual 30 days to complete your payment. Any registrations or tickets that are still unpaid after September 14 will be canceled. We will have only a handful of on-site registrations available on a first-come, first-served basis. Since we can’t hold them for any particular potential attendee, we strongly recommend registering in advance!

As we get closer to Sirens, please keep an eye on your inbox for e-mails from us about where to check in for the Sirens Shuttle and how to pick up your registration materials when you arrive at Skamania Lodge.

If you can’t make it this year, please consider purchasing a supporting registration. This helps us present Sirens this year and offer Sirens in future years, and you’ll receive a 2012 program book following the conference. Supporting registrations cost $50; $35 of each supporting registration is a donation to Sirens, and because Narrate Conferences, Inc. is a charitable organization, that amount is eligible for tax deduction in the United States. (The other $15 covers the cost of the program book and our mailing costs.)

Sirens Supper
There are only about a dozen tickets remaining for the Sirens Supper, our annual pre-conference staff dinner. If you’ll be in the Portland area on the evening of October 10 and would like to join us for a laid-back evening of chat before the conference begins, we suggest you get your ticket before they’re gone! Tickets are $60, and this year’s Pacific Northwest menu will include: house green salad with Northwest organic greens, heirloom cherry tomatoes, English cucumbers, and housemade herb vinaigrette; forest mushroom soup with almond milk vermouth; wild rice and Hood River cherry pilaf; roasted asparagus; tenderloin of pork with pear-brandy demi-glace; grilled salmon with lemon butter sauce and tomato-artichoke ragout; tofu and vegetable curry with coconut milk; rolls and butter; huckleberry crème brûlée; three-berry cobbler; and coffee, iced tea, and lemonade.

Tickets for the Sirens Supper can be added to a new or an existing registration. Family or friends who are traveling with you but not registered for Sirens are welcome to join us for the Sirens Supper, too—just add their ticket to your registration!

Sirens Shuttle
Tickets are still available for the Sirens Shuttle. You can add them to a new or an existing registration even if you don’t have your flight details yet. A round-trip ticket on the shuttle, at $75 per person, is less than half the cost of a commercial van service, and your trip to Skamania will include a brief stop at Multnomah Falls on the Columbia River. The Sirens Shuttle is also a great chance to meet others, decompress, and enjoy the beautiful Columbia Gorge scenery.

Dietary Information
All conference registrations include a dessert reception, two keynote lunches, an afternoon tea, and Sunday breakfast. At this time, we have finalized our buffet menus, which are available on the Featured Events page of our website. (We’ve also sent all registered attendees an e-mail with the menu information.) We know that people have a variety of food allergies and other dietary restrictions, and we’d like to know what your restrictions are so that we may work with the hotel’s catering department to make your Sirens experience as enjoyable as possible.

If you have questions or concerns about the menus or the ingredients, please e-mail us at (registration at sirensconference.org). If we don’t know the answer, we’re happy to ask the hotel.

It takes time to arrange alternatives with the hotel, and we want to make sure that we have time to do so. If we have not heard from you by September 7, we will assume that you are able to eat from our standard menus.

Hotel Reservations Deadline
Have you made your reservation yet? Skamania Lodge, like the Vail Cascade Resort and Spa, operates a little differently from most hotels. One of those differences is that you must make or change reservations earlier than you might for other venues. You can reserve the discounted Sirens rate from October 7-16, in case you’d like to extend your stay before or after Sirens, but reservations and changes must be made by September 18, 2012. For more about Skamania’s policies, including how to reserve a room, please visit the Skamania Lodge page on the Sirens website.

If you would like to find a roommate (or two or three!) to share the cost of a hotel room, you can connect with other attendees on our message boards.

Programming Sponsorships
Another way to support Sirens is by sponsoring a presentation. To do so, visit the accepted programming page at http://www.sirensconference.org/conference/accepted/, and follow the link to donate. You’ll select the presentation you wish to sponsor (if it’s not on the list, it’s been claimed), give us the sponsor name you’d like to have listed publicly, and follow the instructions. We’ll list your name on the website and with the presentation summary in the program book.

In addition to individual programming sponsorships, we are always accepting general donations at http://www.sirensconference.org/support/. Your support helps to defray the cost of Sirens, including the cost of providing audio-visual support for presentations. Thank you in advance!

Author Signings
Narrate Conferences, our presenting nonprofit, will run a new and used bookstore during Sirens. Our goal is to support both Sirens and female fantasy authors by selling new and used books, and we hope you’ll help us out.

If you are a published author, please let us know! We’d like to include you in our author signing time and have new books on hand. We have access to many books from major publishers; for those books we don’t have access to, like out-of-print titles or books that aren’t available through a major distributor, we have suggestions for how to make sure that your books are available at Sirens. Please contact Amy Tenbrink (amy.tenbrink at sirensconference.org) to take part.

You’re Excited About…

The first four chapters of Malinda Lo’s Adaptation are available on Little Brown School’s Facebook page!! –Anonymous

The Demigod Diaries by Rick Riordan comes out on August 14! –Amy

The third book in Kiersten White’s Paranormalcy series is out! Endlessly was released on July 24th. And Girl of Nightmares, the sequel to Anna Dressed in Blood, by Kendare Blake is due out August 7th! –Sabrina

Auction
Last year, we were so overwhelmed and humbled by the generosity of those donating auction items and those bidding on them. It was a great fundraiser for Sirens and went a long way in covering our conference costs–so let’s do it again! We’re changing our auction format a bit this year, so we’ll need to have a comprehensive list of auction items by the end of Thursday, October 11, and all sorts of items are welcome. If you’d like to donate an item and you have questions, please write to Amy Tenbrink (amy.tenbrink at sirensconference.org). (She’d love to hear what you’re planning and address any concerns you might have.) Also, for those of you with bulky items, we can provide a shipping address, if you’d like. And, of course, thanks in advance for your support.

Spotlight: Guest of Honor Nalo Hopkinson
Nalo Hopkinson has published five novels and numerous short stories, and has edited or co-edited four anthologies, most in the realms of science fiction and fantasy. She is a recipient of the Locus Award for Best New Writer, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and the Ontario Arts Council Foundation Award for Emerging Writers. Her works have won a World Fantasy Award, a Gaylactic Spectrum Award, an Aurora Award, and the Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic (twice), and have been nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award, the James R. Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award, the Hugo Award for Best Novel, and the Nebula Award for Best Novel. Brown Girl in the Ring was also a finalist in Canada Reads. Nalo holds an MA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University, and is currently an associate professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside. She has served as faculty for Clarion East, Clarion West, and Clarion South, and she is a founding member of the Carl Brandon Society.

Nifty:
Her website can be found at http://www.nalohopkinson.com/.

Her blog is at http://nalohopkinson.com/blogmain

She can be found on Twitter at https://twitter.com/nalohopkinson.

A few compelling book covers:

Volunteering at Sirens
Sirens will be here before you know it, and we’d love to have your help. Typically, we need people to be the point of contact during presentations—they welcome and introduce presenters, help latecomers find a seat, collect forgotten items, and call for help when audio-visual equipment goes on the fritz. (Some folks choose to volunteer for presentations to ensure that they have a seat for their favorite items!) We can sometimes use extra hands to direct traffic, carry boxes, and so on as well. If you’re interested, please visit this page to join the volunteers group (if you’ve joined in the past, there’s no need to re-apply). You’ll be the first to know about volunteer opportunities.

Many thanks in advance!

Questions? You can comment here or write to us at (help at sirensconference.org).

Sirens Newsletter – Volume 4, Issue 9 (July 2012)

Posted on July 16, 2012 at 9:00 am | Comments Off on Sirens Newsletter – Volume 4, Issue 9 (July 2012)

Tagged: guests of honor, interviews, newsletters, on-site, programming, support

Programming
Have you checked out the accepted programming page lately? Many new presentations have been published since June 1. The deadline for presenters to register and confirm their participation at Sirens was July 1, so the complete list will be available soon. Then, we’ll publish this year’s schedule, which will be packed with fantastic presentations.

Presentation Sponsorships
If you–or your group, or your website, or your business–would like to sponsor a presentation, we welcome your support! To help defray the cost of Sirens, including the cost of providing audio-visual support for presentations, we are always accepting general donations at http://www.sirensconference.org/support/. This year, you can also show your support of specific presentations. To sponsor one, visit the accepted programming page, and follow the link to donate. You’ll select the presentation to sponsor (if it’s not on the list, it’s been claimed), give us the sponsor name you’d like to have listed publicly, and follow the instructions. We’ll list your name on the website and with the presentation summary in the program book.

Book Signings
Narrate Conferences, our presenting nonprofit, will run a new and used bookstore during Sirens. Our goal is to support both Sirens and female fantasy authors by selling new and used books, and we hope you’ll help us out.

If you are a published author, please let us know! We’d like to include you in our author signing time and have new books on hand. We have access to many books from major publishers; for those we books don’t have access to, like out-of-print titles or books that aren’t available through a major distributor, we have suggestions for how to make sure that your books are available at Sirens. Please contact Amy Tenbrink (amy.tenbrink at sirensconference.org) to take part.

Book Donations
For everyone attending, and frankly, friends of women in fantasy literature as well, we hope you’ll help us with our used bookstore, because all proceeds will go to Sirens. If you have fantasy books written by or about women that you’d like to donate, and they are in good used condition, we’d love to have them. You don’t need to attend to donate–though you’ll need to attend to buy all the amazing fantasy works we’ve already collected for sale. We’ll have information on getting your books to us available later this summer.

Sirens Supper
If you’ll be in the Portland area on the evening of October 10, perhaps you’d like to join us for dinner. Each year our conference staff hosts a dinner for a limited number of attendees, and you’re welcome to come. We love having a chance to chat with folks before the conference starts!

We’re thrilled to finally be able to share our Pacific Northwest menu for the Sirens Supper: house green salad with Northwest organic greens, heirloom cherry tomatoes, English cucumbers, and housemade herb vinaigrette; forest mushroom soup with almond milk vermouth; wild rice and Hood River cherry pilaf; roasted asparagus; tenderloin of pork with pear-brandy demi-glace; grilled salmon with lemon butter sauce and tomato-artichoke ragout; tofu and vegetable curry with coconut milk; rolls and butter; huckleberry crème brûlée; three-berry cobbler; and coffee, iced tea, and lemonade.

Tickets for the dinner are $60, and may be added to a new registration (http://www.sirensconference.org/registration/) or to an existing registration (http://www.sirensconference.org/registration/changes/). Attendees may purchase additional tickets for the Sirens Supper for others who are at least 18 years old as of October 10, 2012.

Sirens Shuttle
Tickets are still available for the Sirens Shuttle. You can add them to a new or existing registration even if you don’t have your flight details yet. A round-trip ticket on the shuttle, at $75 per person, is less than half the cost of a commercial van service, and your trip to Skamania will include a brief stop at Multnomah Falls on the Columbia River. The Sirens Shuttle is also a great chance to meet others, decompress, and enjoy the beautiful Columbia Gorge scenery.

Books and Breakfast Reminder
Books and Breakfast will be held on Friday, October 12, and Saturday, October 13, first thing in the morning. You can grab a to-go breakfast from the River Rock restaurant—they’ll have light items on hand—and join any of these discussions. It’s perfectly okay to turn up if you haven’t read any of the books yet, but if you’d like to come prepared, the schedule is listed below.

Friday, October 12
Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins by Emma Donoghue (HarperTeen, 1999)
The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden by Catherynne Valente (Spectra, 2006)
The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (Doubleday, 2008)
Roses and Bones: Myths, Tales and Secrets by Francesca Lia Block (HarperTeen, 2010)
Sailor Moon manga, being re-released as Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon by Naoko Takeuchi (any release of Acts 1-5, which was released in the U.S. by Tokyopop in 2003; other versions also available)
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2011)

Saturday, October 13
A Curse Dark as Gold by Elizabeth C. Bunce (Scholastic, 2008)
The Dark Wife by Sarah Deimer (Createspace, 2011)
Mella and the N’anga: An African Tale by Gail Nyoka (Sumach Press, 2006)
Peaceweaver by Rebecca Barnhouse (Random House, 2012)
The Sigh by Marjane Satrapi (Archaia Entertainment, 2011)
There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby: Scary Fairy Tales by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya (trans. Keith Gessen and Anna Summers) (Penguin, 2009)

Spotlight: Guest of Honor Kate Bernheimer
Kate Bernheimer has been called “one of the living masters of the fairy tale” by Tin House, and is the author of four books of fiction, most recently the final novel in a trilogy, The Complete Tales of Lucy Gold (FC2 2011), and Horse, Flower, Bird, a collection of stories with illustrations by Rikki Ducornet (Coffee House Press 2010). She has edited three anthologies including the World Fantasy Award winning My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales (Penguin 2010). Her fiction and critical essays have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Fence Magazine, Bookforum, Puerto del Sol, Bomb Magazine, Marvels & Tales: The Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies, and elsewhere. She teaches in the MFA Program at the University of Arizona, and is founding and acting editor of Fairy Tale Review.

Nifty:
Her website can be found at http://www.katebernheimer.com/.

Her blog is at http://www.katebernheimer.com/news.php, where you can find out the story behind the AIANY Unbuilt award for Baba Yaga’s house.

Hear her “loving homage to and deconstruction of Hansel and Gretel” at http://catranslation.org/blogpost/two-voices-a-night-of-fairy-tales.

And a few beautiful book covers…

Volunteering at Sirens
Sirens will be here before you know it, and we’d love to have your help. Typically, we need people to be the point of contact during presentations—they welcome and introduce presenters, help latecomers find a seat, collect forgotten items, and call for help when audio-visual equipment goes on the fritz. (Some folks choose to volunteer for presentations to ensure that they have a seat for their favorite items!) We can sometimes use extra hands to direct traffic, carry boxes, and so on as well. If you’re interested, please visit this page to join the volunteers group (if you’ve joined in the past, no need to re-apply). You’ll be the first to know about volunteer opportunities! Many thanks in advance.

Travel
Diana needs a roommate. Do you? Visit the message boards to join her or to post your own request for a share.

Questions? You can comment here or write to us at (help at sirensconference.org).

Sirens Newsletter – Volume 4, Issue 8 (June 2012)

Posted on June 7, 2012 at 4:42 am | Comments Off on Sirens Newsletter – Volume 4, Issue 8 (June 2012)

Tagged: interviews, newsletters, on-site, programming

Programming
Thank you, so many of you, for proposing programming for Sirens in 2012. We received a record number of proposals! At this point, we have e-mailed all notices regarding this year’s proposals, so if you’re not sure about the status of a proposal, please check your bulk folder, and if you can’t find your e-mail, write to us at (programming at sirensconference.org) to have it sent again.

Thank you also to the members of the vetting board, who had the tricky task of selecting this year’s programming from among the offerings. We think you’ll be thrilled with their picks.

Accepted presenters have until July 1, 2012, to confirm their presentations by registering for Sirens. As they do, we’ll publish their titles, summaries, and presenter biographies on the accepted programming page of the Sirens website.

Books and Breakfast
We know you’re busy reading books by guests of honor Kate Bernheimer, Nalo Hopkinson, and Malinda Lo, but we thought we’d encourage you to seek out a few more! One of our favorite bits of informal programming is Books and Breakfast, held on both Friday and Saturday of Sirens. These theme-focused book discussions are held before presentations begin, and we encourage you to bring your breakfast along, whether that’s a grab-and-go item from the hotel’s River Rock restaurant, something you brought from home, or a cup of coffee (or tea, cider, or cocoa) from the free offerings in the hotel lobby. This year, we wanted to expand the book formats, so we’ve added middle grade selections and a graphic novel to our list of retellings. And, as always, we wanted to offer a variety of books that we thought would spark interesting discussions.

book covers of the books mentioned below

Friday, October 12
Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins by Emma Donoghue (HarperTeen, 1999)

The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden by Catherynne Valente (Spectra, 2006)

The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (Doubleday, 2008)

Roses and Bones: Myths, Tales and Secrets by Francesca Lia Block (HarperTeen, 2010)

Sailor Moon (manga, being re-released as Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon) by Naoko Takeuchi (any release of Acts 1-5, which was released in the U.S. by Tokyopop in 2003; other versions also available)

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2011)

Saturday, October 13
A Curse Dark as Gold by Elizabeth C. Bunce (Scholastic, 2008)

The Dark Wife by Sarah Deimer (Createspace, 2011)

Mella and the N’anga: An African Tale by Gail Nyoka (Sumach Press, 2006)

Peaceweaver by Rebecca Barnhouse (Random House, 2012)

The Sigh by Marjane Satrapi (Archaia Entertainment, 2011)

There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby: Scary Fairy Tales by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya (trans. Keith Gessen and Anna Summers) (Penguin, 2009)

Sirens Supper
Unfortunately, we don’t yet have anything to report, since we don’t want to sell tickets until we can offer a menu. We are, of course, wrangling Skamania for menus, and as soon as tickets are available, we’ll post announcements and e-mail all registered attendees. Thank you for your patience!

Sirens Shuttle
We can, however, report good news about the Sirens Shuttle! The announcement about shuttle times and tickets can be found here. Even better, we verified that Portland International Airport has a luggage storage facility. What does this mean? If you’ve got a long wait at the airport—and you’re tired of the free Wi-Fi, or the restaurants and shops, many of which are available before and after the security checkpoint and offer the same prices as off-airport locations—you can drop your bags with luggage storage on the baggage claim level for $10 per bag. Then, from the other end of baggage claim, you can take the MAX Red Line to Portland for sightseeing. Please plan to arrive back at the airport by 3 p.m. if you need to get your luggage and catch the Sirens Shuttle.

Questions? You can comment here or write to us at (help at sirensconference.org).

Sirens Shuttle

Posted on May 24, 2012 at 9:00 am | 1 Comment

Tagged: on-site

We have good news—and even better news! First, we have finished our research on the Sirens Shuttle, so we have dates, times, and other information for you. Second, and even better, the ticket price is cheaper than last year!

Just like in past years, as the logistics and cost of arranging transportation between the closest airport and the Sirens hotel can be daunting, we’re offering the Sirens Shuttle, a charter bus reserved just for Sirens’s attendees. We hope this helps you travel more cheaply, ride in comfort, and enjoy the company of friends along the way.

When will the Sirens Shuttle run?
The Sirens Shuttle will pick up from Portland International Airport at 3:30 p.m. on both Wednesday, October 10, and Thursday, October 11. The Sirens Shuttle will pick up from Skamania Lodge at 9:45 a.m. on Sunday, October 14. The Sunday departure time is admittedly strange, but we noticed that some major connecting flights depart for the East Coast at 12:15 p.m., and we wanted to make sure those flights were an option for riders.

What flight times work?
We recommend that you book a flight arriving in Portland no later than 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday or Thursday (depending on which day you arrive). We recommend that you book a flight leaving Portland no earlier than 12:15 p.m. on Sunday.

What does the shuttle cost?
Round-trip tickets on the Sirens Shuttle cost $75. That’s actually less than a one-way trip on a commercial shuttle—and, of course, less than half the cost of a round trip!

What is the Sirens Shuttle route?
Our shuttle will follow the Columbia River Gorge Scenic Highway from Portland to Skamania (and back). The view is majestic, with the Cascade Mountains rising on either side of the Columbia River. And the nice thing about a bus is that you can do all the gawking—and picture-taking—that you like! The shuttle will make a brief stop at Multnomah Falls in Oregon, one of the tallest year-round waterfalls in the United States, for sight-seeing on Wednesday and Thursday.

How do I buy a shuttle ticket?
Our shuttle tickets are now available in our registration system. If you’ve yet to register for Sirens, just add the shuttle when you do. If you’ve already registered, just log back in to your registration and add the shuttle. You won’t need your flight information to add a shuttle ticket yet, but if you don’t have your information now, please make sure to add it to your registration later this summer so we can track your flights.

What if I have questions?
Ask! Just shoot us an e-mail at (registration at sirensconference.org) and we’ll be glad to help.

Sirens Newsletter – Volume 4, Issue 7 (May 2012)

Posted on May 3, 2012 at 8:00 am | Comments Off on Sirens Newsletter – Volume 4, Issue 7 (May 2012)

Tagged: interviews, newsletters, on-site, programming

Programming Proposal Deadline
The deadline for proposing programming is Sunday, May 6, 2012. That’s just 4 days away! We can’t emphasize enough how important it is that you take part. Your thoughts on everything from this year’s theme, tales retold, to fantasy by and about women, to craft-focused presentations and even general fantasy discussion are welcome—but we do need you to submit them for consideration! Even though the proposal deadline is now, you’ll have until October to finish your paper or presentation, polish your panel, refine your workshop, firm up your roundtable discussion questions, or add the finishing touches to your afternoon class.

Where to Get More Information
We highly recommend the following links:
The programming section of the Sirens website
This is where we go over our requirements for programming in a formal manner, and where you can find the submissions system to provide us with your proposal.

The archive section of the Sirens website
For all of your questions about whether something has ever been presented before.

The Sirens LiveJournal programming tag
For a series of informal posts on how to put together a proposal.

(programming at sirensconference.org)
Where to e-mail us for more specific questions or for clarification.

Where to Find Collaborators
Folks have ads up and are looking for people to partner for presentations at…
This brainstorming post
The Sirens Chat LiveJournal
Facebook
Sirens message boards

Programming Deadline Chat
Just ahead of the programming deadline, we’ll open the chat room so that you can get last-minute feedback from others, ask questions, or just hang out to be a cheerleader and talk about books. Please note that this chat is at an unusual time for us!

DATE: Friday, May 4, 2012
TIME: 9 p.m. Eastern (6 p.m. Pacific), lasting about two hours
LOCATION: www.sirensconference.org/chat/

Remember, you won’t need any special software or a login; the page will turn into a chat room during the chat time. (You will need to refresh the page if it isn’t in chat mode when you arrive.)

You’re Excited About…

Kristin Cashore’s Bitterblue, a companion book to both Graceling and Fire, was released on May 1! Veronica Roth’s Insurgent, sequel to Divergent, was also released on May 1! –Sabrina

And Kristin Cashore, a past Sirens’s guest of honor, is going on tour for Bitterblue. More info is on her blog: http://kristincashore.blogspot.com/–Amy

Flora’s Fury, the third book in Ysabeau Wilce’s Flora series, about a plucky girl in a very strange world indeed, is coming out May 8. –Sarah

Travel Tip: Sirens Shuttle
Are you waiting for the information on the Sirens Shuttle from Portland International Airport to Skamania Lodge before you finalize your plans? We are too! We’ve been working with local transportation providers on quotes so that we can, in turn, offer you a no-fuss option for getting to and from Sirens at a cost cheaper than car rentals and private shuttles. We just about have the details sorted, and we expect to pass them on to you later this month. Once the Sirens Shuttle information is ready, you’ll be able to add a ticket to a new registration or log in to your existing reservation to purchase your space on the shuttle.

Travel Tip: Hotel Reservations
Skamania Lodge is part of the same hotel system as the Vail Cascade Resort and Spa, so you might already be familiar with their reservation policies. If you’re not, Skamania Lodge operates a little differently from most hotels. One of the differences is that you need to make or change reservations in advance of when you might make them at other venues. You can get the discounted Sirens rate from October 7-16, in case you’d like to extend your stay, but reservations and changes must be made by September 18, 2012. For more about Skamania’s policies, please visit the Skamania Lodge page on the Sirens website.

If you missed the pictures from our recent staff trip to Skamania Lodge, you can see them on the Sirens website here.

Questions? You can comment here or write to us at (help at sirensconference.org).

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