I attended the Straw Dog Writers Guild annual conference, Write Angles, as a participant. I had a good time! They had invited me to serve on a science fiction panel. In addition, I attended several other panels during the conference and had the opportunity to meet a lot of people I had only met previously via zoom. Plus, I met even several new people (somewhat unusually for me). Overall, it was an outstanding conference experience.

The opening/keynote speaker was Franny Choi. She primarily asked us to consider what literature is for, especially in the face of the terrible events happening in the world around us: What use is poetry in a time of genocide? It challenged me to think about why I write escapist fluff and gave me a context for several good conversations throughout the day.

The science fiction panel, Writing the Future, was focused on near-term science fiction. I’ve written a few short stories like that, although most of my science fiction is set in some distant future — and I write as much or more fantasy than scifi. The panel was organized and moderated by Mark Schlack and included and outstanding and diverse group of writers: Allegra Hyde, Marisa Williams, and Andrea Hairston. We discussed the challenges of writing near-term science fiction and trying to go beyond dystopian fiction toward writing something more useful and optimistic. There were several interesting and thoughtful questions, including one person who said they had misread the topic and were hoping we were going to discuss the future of science fiction writing. That would be an interesting topic too.

I particularly enjoyed a workshop by Tolley Jones, a columnist for our local paper, on intersectionality. She described a technique she calls “writing from the middle” for moving from a personal experience to an essay that puts the experience in a context that others can understand and appreciate. After an introduction, she had us do a couple of writing exercises and share the results with a peer. Afterwards, she invited us to identify other kinds of identities (e.g. gender, race, class, religion, etc., etc.) and consider how our piece related to people with other identities or backgrounds. And if it wasn’t, why was that? It was a provocative question that got me thinking. She ended with a few concrete suggestions: Tell your story before you conclude anything. Don’t speak about others’ stories without input from that community. Be brave. Tell the truth. Consider your audience, but don’t protect them — don’t minimize your story to make it palatable.

After lunch, I attended a panel with three agents. Up to now, I haven’t tried to query for agents to publish my work and have been working with a small press. For my current work-in-progress, I’ve been planning to start querying to see if I can interest an agent in trying to find a publisher. I took a lot of notes. But was overall a little creeped out by the experience. When I described it to Phil, he immediately said it reminded him of how he discovered that Human Resources is not your friend. Yeah. Exactly. It’s not to say that you shouldn’t have an agent or try to get one. But remember to set boundaries and respect that it’s a business relationship — and primarily a relationship between your book — not you — and the publisher.

I ended up slipping out a little early and didn’t stay for the last session. It was such a beautiful a day, it seemed a shame to spend it all indoors. But I will definitely want to attend again next year.