Wiscon! I went, I met a bunch of wonderful people, I had a seven-day-long migraine. Thank god for marathons of Law & Order on hotel cable when one isn’t up to anything more strenuous than lying down with an ice pack. (Ice machines: also a thing to be thankful for.) When there are gaps of time in the con report below, just picture me listening to the familiar tones of Sam Waterston in a darkened room.

I got to Madison later on Thursday than expected thanks to some goofiness on the part of Delta, who had decided, for kicks, to swap our full plane for a smaller plane and boot 20 people off. This did not go over well, as you might expect, and the process of finding a larger plane meant that we arrived about 2 hours late.

Wiscon itself is fascinating. This was my first con-attending experience of any length; I stopped in at World Fantasy in 2006, when it was held in Austin, but only to meet the two people I already knew who were attending. At Wiscon I was lucky enough to be guided around by Jen Volant, who knows everyone and happily introduced me to them all. When I say “everyone,” though, I mean “writers” — it seemed to me that there are at least two Wiscons happening simultaneously, a writer-centric one and a fandom-centric one. There’s certainly crossover between these groups, but on the whole, they seem to run in parallel.

And then there was the little pride of feral fourteen-year-old girls, daughters of older con attendees, all long-legged and bare-footed, who were clearly having their own shadow convention. We were particularly taken by their habit of occupying the elevators and demanding that visitors to their domain answer personal questions. When I got on, two of them were lying on the floor and punching the elevator buttons with their toes.

Friday I went out to breakfast with Jen and her friend Jessie, dropped off some copies of Alcestis at the Broad Universe table, later worked the Broad Universe table for a little while, went out to dinner with Jen and a huge group of people who I won’t try to name here because I probably would feel like a weird name-dropper, and finally ended up back at the hotel in the evening, observing karaoke shenanigans in which I did not participate.

Saturday I went for a short run (down fraternity row, by accident) and hit the farmer’s market briefly, though I’ve been spoiled by the Texas growing season and forgot that it would be all green onions and garlic. I love green onions and garlic, but it might be unwise to eat them raw in your hotel room, especially if you’re meeting a bunch of people for the first time. Madison is charming, but the layout of the downtown, the narrowness of the bit of land between the lakes, is the most fun part. There’s something really odd but pleasant about running down a normal block in a small city and then glimpsing the lake through the buildings ahead of you. (UW, any chance you want to hire a fiction writer soon?)

I got back to the hotel in time for the 10 am “Craft of Writing YA” panel, which I enjoyed but wasn’t blown away by. Maybe this is because I do tend to read YA writers’ blogs where many of the same issues are discussed. The panelists were all interesting and articulate, but I’d been hoping for something different, I guess — not that I have any idea what. Here’s a transcript of the panel, which is worth a look.

That afternoon I moderated a panel called “What’s the Future of the Past?” I haven’t found any transcripts of it yet, though somebody was live-tweeting it. Now that I’ve moderated one panel on this topic, I feel like I’d actually be prepared to moderate a panel on this topic well — I don’t think I did a great job this time, though I appreciate the great participation of the panelists, who muddled through quite well despite my cluelessness. As on the YA panel, the panelists were conversational and interesting and had clearly thought a lot about the topic, but it seemed to me that the conversation still sometimes felt like we were summarizing notions about historical fiction that have already been expressed rather than reaching for anything new. I think panels of this sort — the “gather a group of people to talk about a certain generic form” panel — may need a firmer moderating hand, and I wasn’t sure how to employ one, given my lack of experience with con panels versus academic panels at which everybody shows up with a prepared talk. This is something I want to think about for next time so that I can facilitate a discussion that moves into more complex territory. Also, note to self: next time, don’t have a migraine.

Saturday I also attended a fabulous reading by Jen, Meghan McCarron, Alice Sola Kim, and Anthony Ha — definitely a highlight, and I hope to be able to read what I heard in print soon.

Sunday morning, bright and early and migraine-y, I was a panelist on the “What is Feminist Romance?” panel, which was packed despite the 8:30 hour and was very ably moderated by Robyn Fleming. We talked about romance novels and about romantic storylines in other genres, and Robyn did a great job of distinguishing between those generic conventions. The same kind transcriber also recorded this panel, which I’m glad to see, because I think we ended up having an excellent and varied conversation (even if we did tend to get sidetracked listing features of romance novels/romantic storylines that are not feminist).

Sunday afternoon I participated in the Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading. It was scheduled against a reading by Karen Joy Fowler and Carol Emshwiller and others, sadly — I’d have loved to go to their reading! But we had a great audience and I enjoyed hearing snippets of work by other Broad Universe members, including Gwynne Garfinkle, another Team Diana Fox author.

And Monday I made it back to Austin without any complications, unlike just about everyone else traveling home from Wiscon, apparently. I had a great time and I am really hoping to be able to go again next year.

Books I bought or am planning to buy soon:

• Christopher Barzak’s One for Sorrow (bought on my Kindle, so I could read it before the con)
• Greer Gilman’s Cloud and Ashes (same, though I haven’t read it yet; I had a friend’s ms to read instead on the trip up to Madison)
• Neesha Meminger’s Shine, Coconut Moon (Neesha was also on the Feminist Romance panel)
• Emily Horner’s A Love Story, Starring My Dead Best Friend (Emily, too, was on the Feminist Romance panel!)
• Karen Healey’s Guardian of the Dead, which falls into the ever-growing category of “books I’ve heard about and keep meaning to buy but haven’t yet.”

And there are so many people I met who are currently looking for agents or publishers for books — I want to read all of those, too! And short fiction. Argh. So much wonderful stuff to read, so little time.

What is it about half-weeks before a trip that makes them so odd, even when you’re not missing school or work to travel? I’m not leaving for Wiscon until Thursday morning, but I still feel rushed. Partly this is self-induced dissertation pressure; it’s weird to realize that Wiscon will consume the last few days of May and drop me into June. I’m starting to build some real momentum on this chapter, but I’ve been enjoying thinking to myself, oh, it’s still May, I have so much time. In fact: no. From mid-July to mid-August, I’ll be teaching an intermediate fiction workshop at UT — fiction-writing boot camp, basically, meeting M-F for 75 minutes a day. I’m really excited but fully aware that I won’t get much else done during those five weeks. Fortunately, it looks like the 2010-2011 school year is now going to be completely dedicated to writing (of the diss and of Killingly — I’ll say more once everything is confirmed).

I’m going to try to write up a Wiscon report, since it’s my first time going. I’m especially curious to see how panels work and what kinds of conversations they create. I’ve gotten so accustomed to the academic humanities style of conference presentations that I could feel my hackles rise, a few days ago, when I stumbled across a non-academic’s blog post complaining about the way academics organize and perform at conferences. I actually do think that the conference paper can be a valuable genre, though I get why it bothers people. But I’m curious to see how academic round tables, for example, compare to the more free-form discussions I’m anticipating at Wiscon.

Also, I’m looking forward to geeking out.

A few things I’ve been geeking out about recently:

This map of movie locations in California and the other places they’re meant to represent.

This essay about how flawed theories about scurvy led to a temporary loss of the cure for it.

And Janelle Monae’s “Tightrope”:

Let me show you it!

(Wiscon is the annual women’s SF convention held in Madison, Wisconsin. This is the first year I’m attending, and I’m really excited about it; my writing tends more toward the mainstream end of the fantasy spectrum, but my love for SFF is deep and true.)

What’s the Future of the Past?
Sat, 1:00–2:15 pm Conference 4

Katharine Beutner [moderator], Alma Alexander, Christopher M. Cevasco, Joyce Frohn, Linda McAllister

What alternative histories, if any, do a good job of showing a world where there were real differences in gender or racial politics? Which ones fail and why? How can writers get the past right?

What Is Feminist Romance?
Sun, 8:30–9:45 am Caucus

Robyn Fleming (moderator), Katharine Beutner, Emily Horner, Neesha Meminger, Megan

Romances in short stories and novels often follow traditional patriarchal rules, even when feminist individuals are writing. What does a feminist romantic storyline look like? Do we see these or are they rare? How can writers who consider themselves feminist avoid falling back on the old standbys?

Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading
Sun, 4:00–5:15 pm Assembly

Julie Andrews, Katharine Beutner, Ada Milenkovic Brown, Lori Devoti, Moondancer Drake, Gwynne Garfinkle, Catherine Lundoff, Jennifer Pelland, Katherine Mankiller, Trisha J. Wooldridge, Phoebe Wray (and others, I believe)

Members of Broad Universe share tidbits of their available work or works in progress with the audience. Enjoy a buffet covering a wide range of speculative fiction from disturbing horror to humor, paranormal romance to dystopian action/adventure, poetry to prose… and all the realms in between.

(I’ll be reading from Alcestis. )

If you’ll be at Wiscon, please do say hi!

My brain is full of dissertation at the moment; well, dissertation, the sunny-seventies weather Austin’s been having this week, and a million little administrative things that I have to keep track of and sort out in the new few months. But next week I get to do more Alcestis stuff: I’ll be reading at Bloomsbury Books in Ashland, OR, on Thursday night, meeting with a book group Friday afternoon, and filming an interview with a local book TV show in Ashland on Saturday. And then Monday, I’ll hopefully be attending fellow Soho author Cara Black’s reading at the Bookwagon in Ashland, too.

And yes, this is exactly the kind of spring break I like best!

Any advice for books I should read on my trip? I’m thinking about taking The Known World and maybe The Woman in White (both of which are on that list I made of books I want to read this year), but I also really want to read Jedediah Berry’s The Manual of Detection, which just got nominated for this year’s NYPL Young Lions award.

In other news, a few links before I dive back into the diss:

I’ve been a little leery of Dave Eggers’s work since A Heartbreaking Work…, not for any very good reason — too much self-aware self-awareness? The fact that McSweeney’s can be twee? (It can also be awesome.) But this Guardian interview is wonderful, and makes me want to pick up What is the What and especially Zeitoun.

And finally: some great advice from The Millions about how to break into publishing.

Today’s my birthday! I’m officially 28 — I say officially because my brain decided I was 28 about four months ago, and I kept having to remind myself that I was, in fact, still 27. But no longer! So far it’s been a nice relaxing morning, though now I really need to get back to work on dissertation-writing. Eliza Haywood’s early poetry waits for no woman.

Nice things:

• Last weekend the SF Chronicle mentioned the first line of Alcestis in its ongoing series of “Grabbers.” That post also features the first line of Matt Beynon Rees’s new book The Fourth Assassin (published by Soho!).
• Alcestis is listed as a staff pick by Jennifer of the Doylestown Bookshop in Doylestown, PA, not far from where I grew up. Yay independent bookstores! Check out the other staff picks, too — some great historical fiction.
• The book also has a high score on a site called SFF Meta, which looks like a kind of Rotten Tomatoes for book reviews? What a neat idea.
• I’m finally just about over my two-week-plus cold and no longer sound like Batman when I talk!

And a reminder — I’ll be heading to Oregon in mid-March and am reading at Bloomsbury Books on March 18 at 7 pm. More about this soon.

My brief jaunt out of town turned into a slightly longer jaunt out of town, thanks to the snow and ice storm that hit the mid-south this week. But I’m back, just in time for the official launch of Alcestis! Expect a longer blog post tomorrow, but for now, check out this Washington Post article on the comparatively tiny sales of classical recordings required to break into the top ten. Interesting to compare with small press expectations for literary fiction, I think.

I’m sitting in a coffeeshop in downtown Santa Cruz, waiting out the day until my evening flight back to Austin after attending the Dickens Universe on the Santa Cruz campus. My university sends two students every year, and the professor who accompanied us has been going for more than twenty years. This year’s books were Hard Times and Gaskell’s Mary Barton. The grad-student Dickens experience involves three lectures a day, a seminar for grad students, and some sort of other work — a pedagogy workshop, a writing workshop, presentation training, or co-teaching Elderhostel/undergrad/local students. I co-taught — it was wonderful. We had a small class of involved, well-read, interested students, and even after five days of discussing the same novels, they were still talking after our last class session ended on Friday.

Yesterday afternoon a group of the remaining grad students took the bus down to Natural Bridges State Park and sat on the beach. We left behind a sand-castle version of Coketown, which really looked more like a castle than a mill; but it was a really good castle. I wasn’t a castle-builder. My biggest accomplishment yesterday was not getting sunburned.

I’ve also been trying to think about new fiction-writing projects, probably in reaction to having spent the last month writing dissertation prospectus material just about every day. I found a nice little idea while I was looking through microfilm reels of the NY Journal American for a patron’s order at work last week. I really hate microfilm because it makes me feel so seasick and headachey — I wish I could skim through the JA archive in my brain somehow, because it’s so full of strange, vivid, violent stories. Death all over the pages, but interesting early c20 deaths, reported in the lurid house style: “Woman Shot by Woman,” that kind of thing. We’ll see if or when I have time to write this one. It still needs to grow.

A brief list.

1. The CHOP chemo regimen, which has put my father’s cancer in remission, at least temporarily.
2. Paprika — T. and I saw it twice when we were in Portland.
3. Strawberry freezer jam with chevre on a toasted English muffin.
4. GoodReads: still addictive.
5. Pigma Micron pens by Sakura, to which T. introduced me last year. They’re the best ever for marking up books.
6. The fact that Nabokov finished the ms. of Lolita only a few miles from my current location. That house is gone now, replaced with some truly ugly new construction, but there’s a plaque to mark the spot — along with a tiny Japanese maple. I’m not sure what kind of symbolic message that little tree is supposed to send.
7. The area between, say, Division and Belmont in eastern Portland. Even though the Side Street bar near Belmont got rid of its Galaga arcade machine since last summer. Tragedy!
8. The Defoe Review project (based on the HRC’s editions of the periodical).
9. Swagat’s chicken makhani.

Where I work
Originally uploaded by Katharine B.

I don’t always write on this deck — sometimes it’s too bright, and sometimes I need to stay inside with my father. When I do work here, though, I sit in one chair and put my feet on the other so I can balance my laptop comfortably. It’s usually quiet, a little dusty. Sometimes cars go by on the street to the right, or neighbors do, walking their dogs. I bring a mug of tea and my cell phone out with me, but I get a bad wireless signal, which is good for my productivity.

The day I took this picture, the first page of my outline got caught by a breeze and fluttered off the deck. I had to chase it down.

This morning I spent a sunny hour picking sour cherries on a farm five minutes from my parents’ house. It was a stunning crop, the trees all thick with brilliant fruit, and almost all of it ripe. The clusters of cherries looked like Pop Art: stark, amazing, slightly translucent red. We picked nineteen pounds, and it wasn’t easy to stop — there were so many, and they were beautiful and so easy to pick.

Then we came home and I wrote while my parents pitted them. I think I got the better end of the deal.

I’m working on The White Silk Tent, my revision of my grandmother’s memoir. I’ve been reading biographical theory to try to situate myself and my strategies: what kind of voice did I want to use, what sort of other research did I want to do? I thought for a while, and then I started writing. And I’m still thinking, of course. But for now, my version contains three kinds of text:

• Sections of Louise’s original manuscript, very slightly edited for clarity
• Biographical sections based on her manuscript but substantially rewritten and edited, and recast in the third person
• Interpolations in my voice which allow me to comment on her memoir, to add information she didn’t have, to interpret things, etc.

And then, likely, documentary material — text and photos from the trunk of family memorabilia she left to accompany the manuscript, and maybe things from the HRC, as well.

My goal for the summer is to get three chapters completed and polished, so that I’ll have a sense of the process involved in writing the book and the amount of time I’ll need to complete it. And then I’ll need to get back to working on academic projects and thinking about my dissertation — which may also be related to biography. (I’m reading Paula Backscheider’s Reflections on Biography now with great interest. And on that note: you can find my new Goodreads page here.)