Virtual Memories – season 3 episode 16 – Readercon – Monsters, Memories and Mythmaking
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“Readercon focuses on the literature. And the people who come here are really smart. They take science fiction and fantasy seriously as literature. It’s always interesting to be on panels. It’s also a real community, so I can talk with writers, small presses, editors. Beyond that, it’s really a good scene socially.”
–Theodora Goss
It’s time part two of our Readercon 2013 mega-podcast! I visited the 24th annual Readercon conference on literary fantasy & science fiction in Burlington, MA in July, and recorded five interviews in one day! Readercon has great panels and programming, a fine booksellers’ hall, and lots of fun conversation; if you’re into the “literature of the fantastic,” you really should make a point of attending this event next year.
First, Theodora Goss talks about her new accordion-shaped novella, The Thorn and the Blossom, what writing contracts taught her about writing stories, why most classic literary monsters were female, and the joys of coffee in Budapest. Then (52:00), Valya Dudycz Lupescu explores the joys of Growing Up Ukrainian in Chicago, the role of folklore and myths in her fiction, and how every immigrant wave has to choose what it holds onto when it lands in America. Finally (1:15:00), Nancy Hightower tells us why she gave up Colorado for NYC, how she made the transition from teaching the grotesque to writing epic eco-fantasy, and how we learn the cost of wilderness.
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About our Guests
Theodora Goss was born in Hungary and spent her childhood in various European countries before her family moved to the United States. Although she grew up on the classics of English literature, her writing has been influenced by an Eastern European literary tradition in which the boundaries between realism and the fantastic are often ambiguous. Her publications include the short story collection In The Forest Of Forgetting
(2006); Interfictions
(2007), a short story anthology coedited with Delia Sherman; Voices from Fairyland
(2008), a poetry anthology with critical essays and a selection of her own poems; and The Thorn and the Blossom
(2012), a novella in a two-sided accordion format. She has been a finalist for the Nebula, Locus, Crawford, and Mythopoeic Awards, as well as on the Tiptree Award Honor List, and has won the World Fantasy Award. Check out her website, tumblr, Facebook page and twitter feed for more.
Valya Dudyz Lupescu is a writer and the founding editor of the literary magazine, Conclave: A Journal of Character. Born and raised in Chicago, she received her degree in English at DePaul University, studying with Richard Jones, Maureen Seaton, and Anne Calcagno. She earned her MFA in Writing as part of the inaugural class at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she studied under Michael D. Collins, James McManus, M. Evelina Galang, Rosellen Brown, and Carol Anshaw. Since receiving her MFA, Valya has worked as a college professor, obituary writer, content manager, goth cocktail waitress, internal communications specialist, and co-producer of the independent feature film, The Secret. She teaches workshops around the city and online, and helps to facilitate a monthly gathering of writers and artists in Chicago called the Chicago Creative Cooperative (“the Coop”). Her historical novel, The Silence of Trees, was published in 2010 (Wolfsword Press) in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook (2012, Iambik Audio). She has also been published in various journals, including Sentence, The Pedestal Magazine, and Doorknobs & Bodypaint. She is currently an Artist-in-Residence at the historic Cliff Dwellers Club and at the Everleigh Club in Chicago. Check out her website, tumblr, Facebook page and twitter feed for more.
Nancy Hightower is a speculative fiction author and poet, as well as an art critic who writes for Weird Fiction Review. Her debut epic fantasy novel, Elementarí Rising, will be published in September 2013 with Pink Narcissus Press. She has co-authored, along with Carrie Ann Baade, the Cute and Creepy exhibition catalogue, an art book of contemporary macabre and surrealist works. She reviews books for Fantasy Matters and interviews writers such as China Miéville and Neil Gaiman for DJ Spooky’s Origin Magazine (interviews can be read online here). She has a Ph.D. in literature from the University of Denver, and previously taught the rhetorics of the fantastic, uncanny, and grotesque in art and literature at the University of Colorado. Her short fiction and poetry has appeared in Up the Staircase, Word Riot, Strange Horizons, Neon, Bourbon Penn, Prick of the Spindle, Liquid Imagination, Corvus, Red Fez, Prime Number Magazine, The New York Quarterly, storySouth, and Dense Macabre, among others. She now resides in New York City. Check out her website, Facebook page and twitter feed for more.
Credits: This episode’s music is Budapest by Blimp by Thomas Dolby. All conversations were recorded in a room at the Burlington Marriott on a pair of Blue enCORE 200
mics feeding into a Zoom H4n recorder
. I recorded the intro and outro on a Blue Yeti
into my Mac Mini, at my Ikeahack standing desk. File-splitting is done on a Mac Mini using Audacity and all editing and processing was done in Garage Band. Photo by me.
joins the Virtual Memories Show to talk about her debut novel, Mr. Wicker
