The WisCon Chronicles, Volume 4

The WisCon Chronicles Volume 4: Voices of WisCon, edited by Sylvia Kelso, is now available from Aqueduct Press. (Our apologies for our delay in getting up.) This volume chronicles WisCon 33, held in 2009. In her introduction to the volume, Sylvia writes of "the voices of WisCon":

They are widely diverse, not only in what events the writer attended, what he or she saw and felt, but in the writers themselves. There are first-timers and long-termers, there are women and men, there are POC and whites. There are reports in prose and reports in verse, reports from people who went to panels and reports from those who ran parties, reports that rhapsodize about WisCon 33 and reports that critique it, or indicate that it is not always a coming-home and recognizing-the-tribe experience. These are strong, clear voices showing that the experience of WisCon is multi-hued and complex.

The volume's contributors include a mix of writers, scholars, and fans, among whom number Nisi Shawl, Nancy Jane Moore, Andrea Hairston, Jennifer Pelland, JoSelle Vanderhooft, MJ Hardman, Julie Andrews, Elise Matthesen, and Beverly Friend. It also, notably, includes a handful of short stories. And as with previous volumes, it does not shy away from controversy. You can buy your copy here.

WisCon Chronicles 4: The Cobbler's Toss

When I was a kid growing up in the bush, and they were branding calves, my father would often say, as the final sufferer was let up from the ropes or out of the branding cradle and hurtled away, "Well, there's what the cobbler threw at his wife." And it amused us kids mightily to ask, "What did he throw, Dad?" And be told in reply, "The last."

So with WisCon Chronicles 4, I'm now at the cobbler's toss. This is the final update post. The submissions are all in, all edited, all typeset. The Table of Contents is laid out. The permissions to print are received, the errors and addenda fixed, the comma wars over (don't ask Kath about that!) The cover is designed. The photos are cleared for use, those on the cover and those inside. Last week the printer received the entire ms.

Now it's time for me to repeat, Thanks so much, to all the people who answered my calls for submission, and patiently followed all my requests for revisions. Also thanks to Kath Wilham at Aqueduct for typesetting the lot, picking up syntactical and other errors, putting up with my punctuation and other crotchets, and coming up with the idea of pictures for the cover, along with the sub-title.

WisCon Chronicles 4 is sub-titled WisCon Voices. It will be available for sale at WisCon 34 at the end of May, at the Aqueduct table in the dealer's room. If you're a contributor, one more reminder that you have a gratis copy coming your way. For everyone else, I hope you'll buy a copy, at WisCon or elsewhere. Here's a preview of the cover:

I hope you'll enjoy what's inside.

WisCon Chronicles 4 - Pushing Up the Ceiling

The first submission deadline for WCC4 was August 1st, and a good number of people made that. Some delayed subs. were still straggling in by September 1st, often with v. good cause, and there are still a couple of items outstanding -

BUT!

We have now exceeded the notional top cap. of 60K words for the volume, and are prodding hard at the absolute ceiling of 70K, because in fact the submissions are already up to 68K words approx. And there may be another 6-7K still to come.

Thanks so much, well done and congrats. to everybody who sent me material, and there will be some really cool stuff in this one, from Nisi Shawl's exchange of letters with her mother, who was at WisCon too, if you hadn't heard, to Elise Matthesen's account of the Haiku Earring parties, with a package of stunning poetry from people well-known and not yet known - bet you never knew Pat Murphy and Sharyn November wrote haikus, or more correctly senryu, did you?

There will also be some very strong and thought-provoking panel reports and MyWisCon impressions, particularly from POCs. The POC presence in this volume is one of the things I'm really happy about.

And now, the second round commences. The editor stops soliciting, um, requesting material and starts snipping, then sending revisions for OKs so they can go off to be typeset. Important notice here:

If you have contributed material to WCC4, you are a pearl. If you have my editing requests, be a diamond and get them back as fast as possible.

The production sked is laid out, and we are already in danger of falling behind. So this round of first-edits needs to be telescoped. This is particularly important because we have the excellent cap. fill, BUT if edits don't get back in time for me to send away by end of September - not get to me but get on past me by then - I may have to jettison those pieces to stay on sked.

The WisCon Chronicle publishing sked. is a little more rigid than most , because it has an absolute back-wall - the volume has to be ready to release at WisCon 34, end of May 2010. No delays, no failed deadlines and cancelled publication, no nothing. And while that sounds centuries away, in actual working time, it's not very far at all.

Soooo, if you've had one of Those E-Mails with a revised file attached, please open it up, run down the Mark-ups, tick or X, and send it back. Then the happy but still anxious editor will be able to get on to the more delectable worry, sorting out the Table of Contents. And will that be a dilemma of feasts, oh, yes, indeed...

WisCon Chronicles 4 - Fiction with Tails

A faster than usual update here ...

There’s still some room in the Chronicles plan, so we’re calling this time for anyone who read at WisCon 33, who would like to give us an excerpt or completed piece of fiction – reprints are fine if with permission of your publisher – up to 4 thousand words. And with it the option of a tail.

It isn’t mandatory, but we’d love to have up to five hundred further words with the writer’s own comments/take on the piece. What you wanted to do here, what worked or didn’t work, what was the most interesting or exciting or taxing part of writing this one. If thinking about race, class and gender proved to be important parts of this process, so much the better, but what we’d really like is to showcase some of your work inside a personalized frame.

I already have a number of pieces of fiction in, and I’ll be offering those people this option in retrospect. We still have space, though, so if you’d like to join the party, do!

My contact e-dress is still

sylvia.kelso@gmail.com.

WisCon Chronicles 4 - There's Still Room

The initial deadline for material to be considered for WisCon Chronicles 4, aka MyWisCon, passed last Sunday, 1st August, and things are shaping up pretty well. The academic component is up to projected capacity, with some very interesting papers, and more to come: parts of what may become a conversation on Women Warriors, an academic paper, response, and further response from the papers' authors.
Panel reports and My WisCons are looking good, with four My WisCons in and some very interesting things promised for mid-August, including a couple of long-attendees’ perspectives and two full panel transcripts. Some people have needed extensions, and I’ve had a few bright ideas along the way as well. We’re also hoping for some party reports.
Fiction and poetry are behind the other two, but what we have is of great quality, and I have ideas for more. Guest of Honour speeches are still promised, along with the WisCon ethnography. As things stand, we will comfortably reach our middle-range capacity for the volume, with the contributions coming or already in hand.

However, before we hit the top cap., there’s still room for more panel reports or My WisCons, as in overall impressions and thoughts on the Con, and if you have poetry or fiction, and you read at WisCon and would like to have something published in here, I have room. Complete poems, fine, excerpts of fiction, up to 4K words, or shorter complete fiction – Nancy Jane has given me a great flashfic – road stories of the future. Nisi Shawl is putting in a story from Filter House too! Thanks so much, Nisi. I have a couple of ideas for fiction presentations, but if you have something as yet unpublished, or something out which the publisher will allow you to reprint or excerpt, here we are.
Contact me with thoughts, queries or material at
sylvia.kelso@gmail.com

WisCon Chronicles 4 - Update

(Aqueduct at WisCon 33 - part of Nisi Shawl's hand to the right as a special favour)
I last posted about this a fortnight - or is it three weeks ago? Things are slowly gathering momentum here. Almost enough academic papers are promised, or on the way, or actually submitted Lots of other interesting things beginning to appear, eg. we hope one Guest of Honour speech already, courtesy of the publisher, plus 2 pieces from Nisi Shawl, our Tiptree prize winner, 2 poems on panels from Anne Sheldon, that a truly excellent poet, and a My WisCon in verse in process from Robin Small-McCarthy, attending her first WisCon.

A piece on language at Cons and elsewhere from MJ Hardman is on the way, and I'm hoping for an ethnography of WisCon from a writer and archaeologist with a similar interest in Peru, Meg Turville-Heitz. Nancy Jane Moore is doing a response to one of the academic papers, and a report with Diane Silver on a panel about a Writers' Community, and other panel reports are also coming in. There's also some fiction and poetry from people who read at the Con. I'd really like at this stage, some more overall views or My WisCons, and more panel reports. The ones I'm getting are excellent, so more please. More!
Current deadline for materials is August 1st, so if you have any thoughts or retrospects about WisCon 33 that you'd like to have considered for print, send them off to me, preferably in .rtf or Word format (easier for the typesetters, helloooo, Kath...) at
sylvia.kelso@gmail.com