Pardon the large gap between posts. I was occupied with AnimeKon Expo last weekend and spent a fair bit of time away from the computer. Tobias Buckell was with us again, and I had a great time hanging out with him and Robert Sandiford. I’ll cover that in another post which will appear after the summer-vacation series.
This post is about Spartanburg, the central point of my summer travels. I was Amazon Writer-in-Residence for the second week of the Shared Worlds teen writing camp at Wofford College. I can’t even begin to express how packed, intense, thrilling and completely worthwhile that week was. I am quite sure that a few years from now I will see some familiar names as new-minted authors on professional publications. I enjoyed my time with the students, discussing the different ways to tell and experience story, and finding their strengths in longer form or poetic expression, filmic approach or literary subtlety. If there’s one thing I took away from the range of work I saw, and one thing that I hope I conveyed to the students, it’s that SF is a very very large tent indeed, with all kinds of room for a variety of topics and styles.
Outside of the classroom, I set my switch to ‘extrovert’ and immersed myself in the excellent company of writers and thinkers. ‘I’ll sleep later,’ I kept saying as I mainlined conversation after conversation about the industry and the craft.
A couple of highlights. Ann VanderMeer asked me to help her demonstrate what it can feel like when an editor comments on your work.
(Note how I am braced and unbroken!)
Early in the week, we read at Hub City, an independent bookstore in Spartanburg. Will Hindmarch enchanted me with his haiku. Kathe Koja devastated me with her short story. Jeff has a photo album of the event on his Facebook.
On Saturday, we said farewell to the students, and a group of us went to Raleigh NC for our last event together, a reading at Quail Ridge Books .
Karen Lord (archived) 