First blog post on the new website – yay!

Worldcon starts on Thursday, and I’ll be flying to Dublin tomorrow morning. This will be my second Worldcon – Helsinki in 2017 was the first – and I’m incredibly excited to be going. I will be in social mode throughout the con, so please come and say hi!

In addition to tons of socialising with awesome people, I will be on the following two panels, both on topics I’m looking forward to talking about:

Once again upon a time: modern fairy tales 
16 Aug 2019, Friday 15:00 – 15:50, Liffey Hall-2 (CCD)

Fairy tales have an abiding allure, and successive generations of writers have taken these traditional themes and tropes and reshaped them for a modern audience. Sometimes the setting is changed but the roots of the story remain; sometimes authors use the reader’s familiarity with a tale to subvert expectations. Why is it that fairy tales lend themselves so well to repetition? In what ways are modern authors shaping fairy tale tropes? The panel will examine the popularity of fairy tales through the lens of modern retellings.

Miss Lucy Hounsom (M), E. Lily Yu, Mari Ness, Sara Norja, Jean Bürlesk

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‘The road goes ever on and on’: poetry within SFF
19 Aug 2019, Monday 12:00 – 12:50, Wicklow Room-4 (CCD)

Many works of speculative fiction include verse within the story. What purpose does poetry serve in SFF stories? When is it successful, and when does it distract from the story? The panel will discuss SFF poetry written for prose stories, its place in the wider world of poetry, and its purpose within a narrative tale.

Steven Erikson, Sara Norja (M), Karolina Fedyk, Rie Sheridan Rose