Mary will be at the 4th Street Fantasy Convention from Jun 22-24, 2018 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Register here.
Here’s where to find Mary at the con:
Friday, June 22nd
4th Street Seminar (separate registration required)
10:00am-3:00pm
The Seminar at 4th Street Fantasy is an opportunity for aspiring, neo-pro, and intermediate writers to hear about aspects of the speculative fiction industry from professionals who work in it. Ask questions, eat lunch with our panelists, and meet other emerging writers! This year our Seminar theme is The Business of Authoring. Discussion may include (amongst other possibilities) issues around contracts; being a debut author; self-publishing, Patreon/Drip, and being a ‘hybrid author’; games writing, freelancing, and tie-in writing; and all the other ways people make this business work (or fail to).
In addition to Mary, this year’s Seminar leaders include Max Gladstone, Kelly McCullough, and Patrick Nielsen Hayden.
All the Things We Do That Aren’t Smashing Things
4:00-5:00pm
Based in part on certain ideas expressed in Ursula K. Le Guin’s “Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” essay.
A discussion of all the ways we tell stories about building lives, civilizations, and legacies using anything but the edge of the sword. Why do we so often truncate our experience/expectations of fiction to revolve so firmly around the linked concepts of heroism and violence when there are so many other crucial aspects to being human? How has the fantasy genre dealt with this conundrum, and how have specific fantasists tried to approach it? How do we keep the discussion from degenerating into a prudish or performative rejection of the abstract concept of “violence” altogether, while affirming that there are other common and crucial ways of getting things done?
Saturday, June 23rd
The Craft of Cutting Out: Using Reductive and Restrictive Tools
11:00am-12:00pm
“The difference between life and art is that art has a frame,” someone once said. All art comes from some manner of limitation, and this will be a craft-centered discussion on the use of limitation as a deliberate creative tool— whether it means using minimalist typing programs like Writeroom, or a typewriter, or a notebook and pen, or a simple instrument rather than a complex one, or a limited and controlled environment (Maya Angelou famously maintained a hotel room in which she would write every day sans distraction) to channel creativity. What happens when we go unplugged rather than electrified? Where do we draw the line between healthy asceticism and punitive measures?
