Hitting the Road to WisCon

Yesterday we loaded Kath's car with Aqueduct Press books, and off she drove, heading for Madison. This year at WisCon Aqueduct will be marking its 10th anniversary. Tom tells me that if most humans didn't grow ten fingers and ten toes, 2014 would just be another year for Aqueduct. And part of me feels that it is just another year. But part of me has been hosting the persistent idea that a tenth anniversary is a time for stock-taking--and looking forward. Will Aqueduct exist in another ten years? (When we started, I couldn't imagine our getting to be ten years old.) We have a lot of forward momentum, but the three of us who mostly run the press are in our sixties. So that's something I'm thinking about, too.

To celebrate, we'll be hosting a party on Sunday night. We'll be holding drawings for three prizes: a complete set of the Conversation Pieces series to date; a subscription to The Cascadia Subduction Zone; and a set of two Gwyneth Jones collections-- The Universe of Things and Imagination/Space. We'll also be raffling off a wall hanging made by Kath, celebrating Aqueduct authors and their books, with autographs signed by the authors. (See the photo below of the quilt hanging on one of Kath's looms; it unfortunately doesn't come close to capturing the hanging's charms. We'll be displaying it in the Dealers Room, at our table.) The proceeds from the raffle will be donated to the Carl Brandon Society and the James Tiptree Jr. Award Council. The party will offer other delights as well, including, lubricating beverages and, of course, conversation of the feminist kind (which is not exactly hard to find at WisCon).

Many of Aqueduct's authors will be attending the con, and most of those will be reading. Some of them will be reading together--  Eleanor Arnason, Jennifer Marie Brissett, Nancy Jane Moore, and Sarah Tolmie for the reading titled "Renaissances" in Conference 2, Saturday at 10 a.m., and Liz Henry, Alexis Lothian, Katrinka Moore, Anne Sheldon, and I for the reading titled "Time Cracks" in Conference 2 on Sunday at 1 p.m.

We'll be launching three new books at WisCon this year-- Andrea Hairston's Lonely Stardust, The WisCon Chronicles, Vol. 8: Re-Generating WisCon edited by Rebecca Holden, and Hiromi Goto and N.K. Jemisin's Systems Fail, a numbered, limited-edition chapbook in our GoH series. We'll also be distributing a new issue of the Aqueduct Gazette, which Arrate edited. This issue includes a new essay by Gwyneth Jones, reflections on change at WisCon, interviews with Andrea Hairston and Sarah Tolmie, and "September 1, 2024: A Speculation" by Joan Haran, Kristin King, Josh Lukin, Annalee Newitz, and Kiini Ibura Salaam. We'll be posting a pdf of the issue on Aqueduct's site for free download, after WisCon.

The editor of the next--the ninth!--volume of The WisCon Chronicles will be Mary Anne Mohanraj. Her thematic focus isn't set yet, but she is thinking about intersections and allies, and about living through times of social change, what leads to change (including the frustrations), how we effect change, the strategies for managing change without too much destruction in the process, whether sometimes destruction is necessary, etc.

And finally, I'm pleased to say that Arrate will be joining us this year, for her first WisCon. You'll see her at our table, at the party, and out and about at the con. As you might imagine, I'm looking forward to hearing her comments on the experience.