My Readercon schedule

[kestrell]

Here is my Readercon schedule--note that Readercon uses my mundane name. Also, there is a HTML version of the Readercon program at
http://readercon.org/docs/RC22schedule.htm

1. Saturday July 16
11:00 AM    F    Book Design and Typography in the Digital Era. Neil Clarke, Erin Kissane, Eric Schaller, David G. Shaw (leader), Alicia Verlager.
Design and typography can heighten the experience of reading a written work; in the case of poetry, typesetting can be crucial to comprehension and interpretation. E-readers can change font sizes with the press of a button, making books far more accessible to people who have visual limitations or just their own ideas about how a book should look. What happens when these worthy goals are at odds? Will the future bring us more flexible book design, much as website design with CSS has become more flexible as browser customization becomes more common? Or will we see the book equivalent of Flash websites where the designer's vision is strictly enforced?

2. Sunday July 17
12:00 PM    F    A Fate Worse than Death: Narrative Treatment of Permanent Physical Harm.
John Crowley, Glenn Grant, Mary Robinette Kowal, JoSelle Vanderhooft, Alicia Verlager (leader). Cinderella's sisters cut off parts of their feet. Rapunzel's prince loses his eyes to a thorn bush. But in present-day fantasy, it seems less shocking to kill a character than to significantly and permanently damage their physical form; witness the thousands of deaths in George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series that don't get nearly as much airtime as one character losing a hand. What changed--for storytellers, and for audiences? How does this fit in with our culture's mainstream acceptance of violence alongside an obsession with youth and physical perfection? As medical advances help people survive and thrive after drastic injuries, will there be more stories that explore these topics?

Comments

[rinue]

I've worked with JoSelle and think she's great. (With you on the Physical Harm panel.) Sounds like that's going to be a really interesting discussion, based on what I've heard the two of you say on the subject in the past.

[kestrell]

Oh, it's great to hear this--I've been googling to find some of her work or interviews online, but I keep getting my screen reader crashed by one site which is using non-consentual flash. Do you have any links to any of her work online?

[rinue]

Here's her livejournal, in which she often links to her other stuff. Her lj profile lists a partial bibliography. The journal has lately been a bit more publishing-and-personal life focused, but she's written a lot of posts about ableism and discussions about it that you can find if you press "back" enough, and also about ways it links to feminism and gay rights.

Here's the stuff she published with Reflection's Edge, which I think is all short stories and book reviews rather than essays.

[kestrell]

Thank you, this is great!

[jesse_the_k]

She also publicly identifies as someone with mental illness, and did a rocking job on a "Transcend the tropes: the holy fool" panel at WisCon last year.

[kestrell]

The "Transcend the Tropes...Holy Fools" panel sounds awesome, I may try to find online reports about it. I'm sorry to hear about the lack of wheelchair access: what bothers me is that even new buildings seem to be ignoring access laws, and failing to put in wheelchair-accessible entrances/exits and bathrooms. These *are* laws, aren't they?

[jesse_the_k]

Well, they are *civil* rights laws, enforced by those of us with standing and the spare $10,000 or more. Right-wing ideologues notwithstanding, there are no ADA police.

http://upstart-crow.livejournal.com/ is JoSelle's journal. The panel didn't address its stated purpose: as Suzy Charnas wrote http://suzy-m-charnas.dreamwidth.org/2010/06/08/ there.

Too fuzzy to find more links, but here was the original panel description:

Mental illness is not always framed as a medical problem: visions, hearing voices, and altered perception can be interpreted as signs of spiritual power. From the Firefly/Serenity character River to Tiptree's story Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light! to Watts' entire crew in Blindsight, SFnal characters often exhibit diagnosable behaviors. Do these characters help us understand living with mental illness? Are they role models or stereotypes? Do their impairments function as narrative shortcuts, permitting their authors "they're just craaaaaazy" non-resolutions?

Hope you have a great con. I'm also tickled that you're on a book-design panel -- you will definitely bring a diff perspective!